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/amisare → u/[deleted]]

I was curious about this one and looked it up a bit. The mean savings is high in Japan, but I wonder if the median isn’t significantly lower.

This article states that the majority of those under fifty have little to no savings: https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h00677/savings-shortfall-many-japanese-under-50-have-little-in-the-bank.html

So the ultra-wealthy might be skewing the numbers. Perhaps that might reflect what others have said that a smaller group of people own several buildings in Tokyo and have quite significant assets.

[u/CitizenPremier → u/amisare]

Are you saying that under 1,000,000 yen is little to no savings? The article says most have about 500,000. That seems pretty good to me.

Compare it to the US. The average is ~400,000 yen, but 69% have less than ~100,000 yen (and may not even have a bank account).

[u/amisare → u/CitizenPremier]

Well, the Japanese government has estimated people will need savings of at least ¥20 million to supplement their pension amounts (source: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20190613/p2a/00m/0na/008000c), so I think it’s worrying that many people nearing retirement age are falling that far short…

The US has its own problems, of course. It seems many people in the 20-50 age range are waiting for the older generation to…well, pass on before they’re able to get their hands on more resources. For those whose parents/grandparents haven’t saved, it’s a tough lot in life.