This article proposes a ‘Concentric Circles Model’ (CCM) for a diglossic ‘balancing’ of both prescriptivist and descriptivist concerns regarding English usage in Japan. The model draws on theories of lexical priming and cultural intelligence, and characterises the construct of ‘Japanese English’ as inseparable from the speaker’s prior linguistic, societal and cultural experiences. Codification is an important step towards the legitimisation of a non-native variety such as Japanese English; at the same time, the dictionary has become a more fluid notion that is characterised by both ‘competitive’ and ‘cooperative’ lexicography. The article also demonstrates the use of the corpus-based methodology to enrich the lexical content of dictionary entries encapsulated by the CCM. In addition, a resource such as the Global Web-based Corpus of English (GloWbE) is used to demonstrate a bright future in which internal and external norms move away from the current adherence to monolingual standard English to one that represents broad agreement in terms of empirical frequencies of usage across varieties of English.