It's funny, a friend of mine asked me why "all Japanese people want to look white" as I am from japan (I don't look even a little bit white, let alone Japanese). The fact is that paleness has been associated with beauty there since before they knew that Caucasians even existed. So I don't particularly have an answer, but it's clear that it's not that they want to be white because Caucasians are white.
A former hostel-mate of mine was Japanese and we would hangout with the Japanese expats in Shanghai. 100% of the time, Japanese people would speak English to him. I forgot where exactly in Japan he is from, but he said everyone in his home town looked like him, but Japanese people elsewhere would assume he is something else; 6.4 tall, full beard, and looked a lot like Tarkan, the Turkish singer:
