Certainly the message in Japan's results at home is clear - don't mess with us if you aren't serious.

French jockeys may have been to the fore in Sunday's Japan Cup, but it was the Japanese horses who held sway again. Wins by visitors are starting to become a distant memory and as the history builds, it must be getting more and more discouraging for connections of the world's top-end horses.

Surely the Japanese themselves have recognised the problem, which is why huge bonus offerings have been put in place for horses which have previously won other World Series legs during the year and then go to the Japan Cup and win. But despite the extra dollars, only the redoubtable Clive Brittain was in there pitching for it with Warrsan, winner of the Grosser Preis von Baden.

This is a question inside a riddle wrapped in a conundrum and you can throw in a Rubik's Cube for good measure.

In pursuit of higher domestic standards, Japan had to suffer at the hands of the marauding invaders for many years. Now the race has done its job and brought Japanese runners to the point where nobody particularly wants to come and take them on at home, at least no real A-graders.

The visitor contingent has narrowed and now comes from just a few jurisdictions. Many of them are fringe horses hoping to pull off a surprise in the kind of race they can't win at home against those A-graders. Having opened their prime race to outsiders, the Japanese have now made such a success of it that the race itself is becoming the loser.

To a lesser extent, because it is a handicap, a similar thing was threatening the internationalised Melbourne Cup until Media Puzzle won it and gave the northern hemisphere raiders a second win.

Sure, the visitors had contributed to the situation by taking the wrong sorts of horses and their own jockeys. But after the locals ranted 'they'll win it every year' after Vintage Crop's 1993 win, the perception changed to 'what a bunch of overrated plodders' before Media Puzzle broke through in 2002.

Now that cycle has begun anew and a few years from now, it will be back to lower-rated British horses making the trip in the hopes of a lottery win rather than high-class stayers like Vinnie Roe.

Can the same thing happen here? In some regards, it is already happening. When the cap on local runners was replaced by a policy of inclusion on merit regardless of country of representation, some of the fringe candidates from overseas were squeezed out and the message was that we want quality not quantity. Easier said than done except in the longer events, where foreigners are likely to be superior.

If Hong Kong continued, for example, to churn out sprinter-milers of the calibre of Fairy King Prawn, Electronic Unicorn or Silent Witness - unlikely but not impossible given the emphasis on sprinter-milers here - would high-grade European horses want to turn up?

The Hong Kong Sprint, in particular, is vulnerable since the Americans rarely threaten, the Europeans are by and large uncompetitive and, as their meagre participation this year shows, the Australians aren't that keen to travel if they have no edge.

And despite all their success at Sha Tin, the Japanese have not got into the call down the straight 1,000 metres and unless they become more prominent at the business end, they are going to become shy about turning up, too. This year might be the crunch time, with their undisputed best two sprinters coming for the race.

And what do you do about this syndrome anyway? It's like the old argument that once you have racing running with good skills, without interference, well-policed and your public well-informed, there is no longer any incentive for anyone to have a bet. The success of the endeavour brings it undone.

The idea of International Day is to showcase how far Hong Kong horses have come and foster some kind of world championship mentality with benefits for the sport overall, but in doing one thing, the other withers, as Tokyo's big race is starting to show.