I prefer western way...
1 - The album is made at once, what makes it more cohesive, while in Japan sometimes u have material from an entire year (or more than that) needing to fit an album that was finished on a totally different moment... and then u get glitter on Guilty or Colors on Ultra Blue
2 - By promoting the album and not only singles, there's a bigger chance to make the album sales increase, considering people may not buy it for it's first or second single, but may buy it later for other music, while in Japan it pretty much is finished after the album first month on sale
So, IMO, western way tends to generate more coherent works and albums that really work as a whole^^