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In my experience, not very frequent.

REALLY Good topic! I'm glad someone talked about this!

In my experience, it's not near as common as in my country (USA). Also, it's not used much in comedy the way it is in western society. At least for Americans it's like a staple of comedy routines / sit-coms / come-backs / 1-line jokes / complaints and gripes. When I was in Germany speaking in German, the same amount of usage was prevalent, but I found it to be a little different. Still used for jokes but I thought it was more negative and mocking. I did meet a Greek guy in Germany too, our common language was German so that was how we communicated. We had fun with a lot of sarcastic jokes now that I think of it. So my opinion is that sarcasm is universal in most western countries, but fine tuned to fit the culture / language.

As for Japan, Japanese comedy shows are mostly slapstick / 3-stooges / public embarrassment / prank oriented (hence I get bored with them after about 30 seconds). Comedians basically make fools out of themselves. I kind of feel sorry for them haha. I guess people find hilarity in just the silliness, but also they seem very interested in people's reaction. My Korean friend and I watched some Japanese "variety / comedy" show, and he told me that kind of humor was even "extinct" in S. Korea ages ago haha. I'll ask him about sarcasm next time, he's living in the USA and he seems to understand (and enjoy) sarcasm to a great extent. It could be different in his country, or maybe it's just him. Korea and Japan have a lot of common points, but there are some drastically different cultural things that are part of everyday life so I feel it's overgeneralizing to put them in some kind of "Asian" category.

There is one kind of sarcasm that I have experienced in Japan though. Superimposing unfitting language over some set of circumstances to make it "sound" better (yet everyone knows it's the opposite). For example I live in the countryside. There is nothing but farms here. Lots of farms means lots of manure! Sometimes you can even smell it inside the school building if the windows are open. When people complain about it however, they don't say "god it smells like shit!" Instead they say "今日田舎の香水がスゲーなぁ！" (The "perfume of the countryside" is really awful today, isn't it!). Everyone knows however, farms and manure are necessary for food production. So it's more of an intentionally silly euphemism. In the truly negative sarcastic complaint category, I haven't heard anyone speak that way. Like when something bad happens I would say "Oh that's just FUCKing great!"

I'm trying to teach the concept to my students. The problem is that when you look up the word "sarcasm" in a Japanese-English dictionary, you always get multiple definitions, and one of them is "irony." At least in American English, irony and sarcasm are different concepts. Both include the "opposite" of what one would expect, but they serve such different purposes that I think it's incorrect to say that Japanese 皮肉 means both "sarcasm" AND "irony." (But that's what most dictionaries say :-/ ) Most commonly I just say 久しぶり！ When I see students from a class that I just taught 2 minutes earlier. Some of them laugh, some of them are confused, some of them think my Japanese is wrong or something haha. Then I explain a little bit about how we use the exact opposite meaning (with a sarcastic tone of voice) to express something funny. If I'm handing out papers and accidentally drop all of them all over some kid's desk, I'll just say "oh yeah, I meant to do that." Sometimes our copier is a little screwed up, so it spits out blank pages. When I hand out worksheets and one of them is totally blank, I just say "What? You can't copy your neighbor's worksheet onto yours?" :-P I always make it clear it's a joke. They may not get it, but at least it's exposure to a different way of thinking, which is BADLY needed in the isolated places in the Japanese countryside. So I do my best!

Just want to point out that humor and learning a language are hard to mix. I think they understand, and I have talked to some of my higher level students and they say they do use it, but when people are trying to understand what you say, it's hard to understand how to use it. It's not as common as it is in English though, I think we tend to use it when we shoot the shit, so to speak.

Actually depends where you are and who you meet. In my experience I always seem to meet people that are funny and make a lot of jokes. Although sometimes it is indeed harder to joke in Japanese as they dont understand what you mean, like [PaulusMaximus] explained above. This I find unfortunate, because im funny dayo :P

I also think you have a bigger chance of meeting funny people in Osaka than Tokyo. Thats why 80% of the comedians on the TV are kansaijin!

I hate it when I try to crack what I think is a quick throwaway joke and they're like "どういう意味ですか？"

Then I have to explain it and it's just like... gah...

This is something I've thought about a lot.

Us English often say that Americans don't get sarcasm, but the Japanese are reeeeaaaaal masters at it (poor attempt at ironic sarcasm).
I often find it hypocritical that a westerner learning Japanese is expected to be aware of the diferent politness levels, the indirect us of language, tatemae and all that stuff, but a Japanese learning English is never taught about our use of sarcasm.
It's not that the Japanese don't understand sarcsm per se, it's just that they don't use it in everyday conversation like us.
The comedy of a country offers a great insight into that countries society. Alot of Japanese humour is based on humilation and acting silly. Which is a reaction to
Japanese society where everyone is afraid of being embarrassed and not fitting in and there is great pressure to act resareved and majime.

In my opinion, at least in the UK, sarcasm is our form of tatemae we use inorder to avoid dealing with emotional issues. Us English lik the Japanese are both known for being awkward with emotions. But where the Japanese will hide from such things with breaking eye contact and lots of tabun, kedo, sumimasen, desu ga, kamoshirenai ect We will use sarcasm for example
My friend just went to his grandads funeral. He was telling his Japanese friend this, who said he was very sorry for his loss, to which my friend replied
"Oh don't be, it's the only time he ever paid for the drinks".
Now we would see the this joke as a atempt to deal with the painful emotions, but the Japanese guy assumed he was not fond of his grandad.

I'm a right ol' sarky git, and I have inadvertenly upset alot of japanese people, but as Morrisey sang "Sweetness, I was only joking when I said i'd like to smash every tooth in your head".
I would be very careful when using it on email texts, ect where ever important vocial tonalty is not present. And make sure to use plenty of :-p 笑 ect
Also alot of Americans do this they add a "Just kidding" at the end just to make sure. In England that kind of weakens the joke, but it may be needed.

As for me, I refuse to stop using sarcasm because
A) im a stubborn ol fool
B) I think that to stop using it would be to limit the cutural exchange. Sarcasm is huge part of western culture, and it would be shame to hide it away.

I have had alot of great reactions using sarcasm, that really drives the Japanese crazy because like all the best comedy, they find it really edgy. But using carefully and clearly.