"Brand Japan is going to suffer a great deal," said Jeffrey Kingston, director of Asian Studies at Temple University Japan. "His case is certainly a major black eye for the Japanese judicial system."

Ghosn is already using his newfound freedom to rail on the country's criminal court system, which boasts an incredibly high conviction rate, and which he claims had held him "hostage." He has promised to communicate "freely" with journalists about his plight.

The former Nissan chief may be guilty of various financial crimes, Kingston said, "but that has all been over shadowed" by Ghosn's treatment and his arguments that the judicial system is rigged.

More public attacks by Ghosn on the justice system and Nissan could scare off corporate Japan from wanting to deal with any foreigners at all.

For Japanese companies following the Ghosn debacle and mulling hiring foreign executives, "the lesson is: the risk is too high," according to Kingston.

Potential candidates are also likely to think twice. Attracting international talent will likely become a lot harder because foreign executives may not want to deal with Japanese firms, fearing they could become the next Ghosn, according to Kingston.

"Imagine if you're a foreign CEO being recruited into Japan," he said. "Can we say, 'evacuation insurance?'"

Foreign CEOs in Japan don't usually work out

Ghosn's fall in 2018 was stunning, but tensions between foreign management styles and the rest of corporate Japan have long predated this latest controversy.

The reality is the overwhelming majority of Japanese companies don't bring in outside CEOs because the salary-man, lifetime employment system means they rarely need to hire outsiders, let alone foreigners who may have a tough time fitting in. And several high-profile CEO appointments to big Japanese companies haven't worked out so well.

A brash style and lavish compensation

The tension leading up to Ghosn's ouster, meanwhile, was partly fueled by resentment toward having a foreign CEO and a foreign shareholder imposed upon Nissan, according to Stephen Givens, a law professor at Tokyo's Sophia University. With that resentment came criticism about how Ghosn ran the company and how much he was paid.

But in recent years, Ghosn's brash style and generous compensation began to rub many in Japan the wrong way.

"Japanese will tolerate a lot of things, but they will not tolerate greed and self-enrichment," said Jesper Koll, head of Tokyo-based investment fund WisdomTree Japan.

Executive salaries in Japan are generally lower than in the United States, which made Ghosn's reported Nissan salary of about $9.7 million in 2017 stand out. A study last month from advisory firm Willis Towers Watson found median CEO pay in Japan was 156 million yen ($1.44 million) in 2018, compared to $13.7 million for CEOs in the United States.

Japanese companies want "the CEO superstar" to grow business globally, but they don't "want to fall into the American trap of CEOs taking all the money and leaving nothing for regular staff," said Koll.

"It's a huge challenge for corporate Japan. You have to pay somebody Michael Jordan wages, but in Japan they want to find another way," he said.

'Global talent remains essential'

Some experts caution against using Ghosn's case as a precedent for Japanese firms looking to hire global talent.

His situation isn't necessarily indicative of a larger trend against foreign CEOs, according to Sophia University's Givens and others. Rather, the circumstances behind his downfall are just so bizarre and outlandish that they aren't likely to be repeated.

At a better-governed company, "this strange series of events would never have occurred," said Nicholas Benes, head of The Board Director Training Institute of Japan.

"If anything, this will strengthen further the perception that hiring global talent remains essential but good governance is necessary in any case — because no matter what, it doesn't make sense to have the CEO in de facto control of the board," Benes said.

— CNN's Yoko Wakatsuki contributed to this report.