Those who keep banging the drum for AA to duplicate the JAL hub at Tokyo apparently subscribe to several beliefs that I discount, one being the "build it and they will come" philosophy. Implicit in this belief is that between JAL, DL, UA and NH, the various Asian markets are underserved and an additional daily frequency on AA metal is just the ticket to satisfy the unmet demand on these routes. Given that JAL and NH serve many of them with multiple daily frequencies (not counting all the other carriers, like SQ, CX, KE, TG, etc), I'm not certain that there's sufficient high-yielding (meaning profitable) unmet demand. And if there was unmet demand, why do so many assume that AA is the right airline to add flights? IMO, such an assumption is as ludicrous as one that says that JAL et al should add flights between YYZ and NYC because obviously, none of the USA-based airlines nor the AC is able to adequately serve the USA-Toronto market.

IF AA did decide that for some reason it needed to duplicate the JAL hub, which planes would it fly to BKK, HKG, SIN and the rest? Would AA move some 763s or 757s to Tokyo and use them (with very low utilization rates) or would it fly its 777s on those flights? Only one AA 777 sits at NRT overnight (one of the DFW flights) and the rest are cleaned, serviced and flown back to the USA 2-3 hours after they arrive, keeping utilization high.

If AA is delivering sufficient numbers of passengers to NRT to overload the current JAL schedule, I'm confident that JAL can fix that problem much more efficiently than can AA.

So far, there's no evidence that AA and JAL are selling out the premium seats (or the economy seats) on its TPAC flights to NRT or the JAL connections from NRT to the various Asian destinations.

IMO, it boils down to "I'd like to upgrade on AA metal instead of riding in JAL economy on the intra-Asian connections" and/or the "dots on the map" strategy (there are cities not served by AA but well-served by AA joint venture partners so AA should duplicate the partner's hub structure). IMO, neither rationale presents a convincing business argument for AA to fly from Tokyo to various other Asian cities.