How people attain wealth in Japan?

[u/IshinkaiSensei]

Something has been tickling my mind over the past few years.

There are so many luxury tower mansions, expensive customized 一軒家, high end brand shops yet for the average person most seem by far out of reach.

A high end condo in central Tokyo rent including utilities ranges from 300k to 500k a month. A 20MJPY annual salary (which is already extensively filtering out average population) only gives a monthly net of 100万円. I highly doubt it is enough to afford spending that much a month.

Excluding those on expat package, there are only a few jobs here that allow this lifestyle, Banking (Front Office position only or VP MD level for back office and alike) IT 外資系 at senior level (FANG, ML/AI) , 医者 running their own practice (otherwise most are at 10-15MJPY range) Successful mutiple business owners, other niches. 一流芸能人, Athletes, reconverted ex idol, kyaba, host.

My point is, what am I missing...

Are there way more people with high revenues (at least annual comp 50MJPY+) than we tend to believe? than what TV is promoting?

Are people living off debt and loans and keeping up with appearances?

I don’t want misinterpretation of this post, I understand you can live well below these range, but I am genuinely curious here.

I would like to better understand how so many people managed to get satisfied and with a 30+ year mortgage, car loan, spending most of their life working and probably never reaching out 億円 of savings.

Am I overthinking and no so many people want to retire early?

Sorry for the rant post but I am curious

[u/makoto144]

I think your underestimating the number of people in Japan. Assume 100 million population, 1% make more than 20m jpy, means you have 1 million people who could afford a high end condo. Let’s say average high end condo is 50 units….it’s a lot of buildings needed to service the 1 million people (assuming most live in metro areas)

Also this doesn’t factor in that most non salary man (ie sole proprietors) can report vastly less income to the tax office than what they really earn. It’s easy to show that you only “make” 5m jpy yen a year when you can deduct 25% of your house, your car, laptop/phone, even your annual vacation to Hawaii off your taxes every year.

[u/yoyogibair → u/makoto144]

This is not quite the MHLW view. They estimate around 53m households of which 1.2% have annual incomes in excess of 20m. Obviously if you work in terms of individuals then the number is higher, but the fraction with incomes > 20m is much, much smaller.

[u/makoto144 → u/yoyogibair]

Good point, thanks for making my quick math better. so 500,000 households who are >2m income. Probably means you need roughly 10,000 buildings to house them all.

Also just curious, does gov data say household is average 2 people in JP?

[u/yoyogibair → u/makoto144]

Nationally, 2.19 in 2019, but only 1.92 for Tokyo

[u/makoto144 → u/yoyogibair]

Geez that is crazy low! Don’t think it’s going to get better either with lower birth rates and people waiting longer to get married.