Why did Queen tend to play such awesome setlists in their Japanese shows, especially early on. Check out this setlist from the SHA Japan tour.
Procession
Now I'm Here
Ogre Battle
Great King Rat
White Queen (as it began)
Flick Of The Wrist
Hangman
Doin All Right
In The Lap Of The Gods
Killer Queen
The March Of The Black Queen
Bring Back That Leroy Brown
Son And Daughter
guitar solo
Keep Yourself Alive
Seven Seas Of Rhye
Stone Cold crazy
Liar
In The Lap Of The Gods....rev.
Big Spender
Modern Times' Rock And Roll
Jailhouse Rock
Shake Rattle And Roll
Stupid Cupid
Be Bop A Lula
Jailhouse Rock reprise
See What A Fool I've Been
God Save The Queen
I would kill to have the recording of that show. Even The legendary Rainbow '74 performance couldn't live up to one that included about 10 more songs and none of them cut. And check out this setlist from the ANATO tour. link
check out 01.04.76 in Tokyo, sick
Did they just like the Japanese more?
Maybe, Queen intended to express their deep pleasure and gratitude for huge welcoming from the Japanese fans. As most of you know, thousands of enthusiastic fans waited and welcomed them screaming at the airport. It's said that their enthusiasm was like that for Beatles' coming. And the mass media as well welcomed and treated Queen like a superstar. They were amazed, kind of confused at first, but so much pleased. And besides iirc, they'd never performed before a capacity of audience of 10,000 people, i.e. it(Budokan concert)was the first time for them to play before such a huge audience. So, perhaps they intended to play with the set list like a compilation of all of their live repertoires they'd played up to that time.
just my opinion...