And yet Japan makes AAA games like Final Fantasy and Nioh so I'm not sure your point holds.Nope, what counts as a AAA game differs from one region to another.
For example The Witcher 3's budget was 81 million INCLUDING the marketing, compared to an average CoD or Rockstar game which costs over 250M without it! You can't think for a second The Witcher isn't a AAA game!
Same thing with Nintendo's IPs and Yakuza etc, they're considerd "prestige" games, FFS Tales Of, Musou and SMT/Persona are considered AAA by their publishes!
Japanese AA games are something like NiS games (Disgaea) Gust games (Ar Tonelico, Atelier series) Nihon Falcom (Ys, Trails) Compile Heart/Idea Factory games (Neptunia/Death end Re;Quest) etc.
I agree with NIS, Nihon Falcom, etc being AA studios, though some of their games in the past - like Gurumin or htoL#NiQ, are a stretch for AA status IMO.
And to cite the Pokemon example, Trails of Cold Steel 4 (I've purposely avoided looking at the latest Trails games to avoid spoilers) clearly is a different level of budget from Pokemon in terms of the game itself, though, again, Pokemon is a "prestige" title. It's silly to say Pokemon has AAA production values though - and some would argue it's not even AA, when you compare it to something like Cold Steel 4.
(I will submit that Pokemon is fully AAA if you consider advertising and merchandising)
And then there's attempts at AAAA games - stuff like Anthem and Destiny, though I'm not sure that designation held.