Japan's Invisible Ultra-Affluent
Wednesday, May 30, 2007SUZANNE PRATT: And finally tonight, just under a fifth of the world's richest people are clustered in Japan, which is second only to the U.S. in its share of millionaires and billionaires. But until recently, the ultra- affluent were an overlooked segment of the Japanese retail. Lucy Craft reports.
LUCY CRAFT, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: Business in Japan has been, well, taking off for Georgia-based Gulf Stream, maker of that ultimate status symbol, the private jet. Salesmen at Marubeni Corporation, the agent for Gulf Stream's international charter air service, were literally shown the door when they tried to call on prospective clients just five years ago. But now, the firm has to turn customers away, says Marubeni's Shingo Ueda.
TRANSLATION OF: SHINGO UEDA, GM, COMMERCIAL AIRCRAFT GROUP, MARUBENI AEROSPACE CORPORATION: In the past, business jets were considered just a frill. But these last few years, the mindset has changed dramatically. More and more, Japanese companies see it as a business tool, not a luxury.
CRAFT: Japan's traditionally egalitarian society, where the most affluent used to spurn gaudy displays of privilege, is splintering into haves and have-nots these days. The upper crust is growing and it even has a new name: fuyuso (ph), the free-spending super-rich. Publisher Hirofumi Usui, whose magazine rhapsodizes the finer points of Swiss boarding schools, yachts and villas on Diamondhead, says about one in every hundred Japanese qualifies as a fuyu-so, and they have become discriminating consumers.
TRANSLATION OF: HIROFUMI USUI, PRESIDENT, E-MARKETING INC.: It used to be that you got the same standardized treatment at the hospital, the bank, or wherever, even if you could afford better service. Japanese thought this was normal. But then they noticed that this wasn't the case overseas and they have started to wake up.
CRAFT: Japan's super rich are suddenly a high-profile presence in the U.S. and other foreign art markets, says Tokyo gallery owner Kara Besher, whose business includes brokering American pop art to Japanese dot-com millionaires, entrepreneurs and other wealthy professionals.
KARA BESHER, ART DEALER, MARU GALLERY: Previously, conspicuous consumption was seen to be something somehow immodest. I think it's always been that way in Japan. I heard that even in the Edo period, the rich merchants would wear gold embroidery on the inside of their kimonos. But nowadays, the wealthy are much more, they're much less inhibited about that sort of thing.
CRAFT: High-end hotels in Tokyo are at or near full occupancy, despite an expansion of capacity and prices that start at $600 a night. Most patrons of the new Ritz-Carlton are neither Hollywood celebs, nor visiting pashas, but revelers from the Tokyo metropolitan area who can't seem to get enough when it comes to baroque excess. Ricco Deblank is the hotel's general manager.
RICCO DEBLANK, GM, THE RITZ-CARLTON TOKYO: The $1,000 omelet that we serve in the restaurant, does it sell? It sells every week and the customer loves it. It comes with champagne, caviar, lobster and truffles and it is a unique item on the menu.
CRAFT: Marketers reckon that here in Japan, as in the U.S., the consuming passions of the affluent will trigger a new breed of materialism among Japan's middle class, spurring the masses to seek their own token of the good life. Lucy Craft, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Tokyo.
