Dear friend,
I am not giving importance to the sentence.
I hope you answered grammaticaly.
I am not asking whether Japan is a richest country or not.
I am giving importance "country" and "countries".
Japan is one of the richest countries in the world. CORRECT
(There are many countries in this world and Japan is richest of them.)
Here we will not use country . Since you added in the world we are talking about the countries in the whole world.