Comment by xt00

Beside the demographics, another aspect is that even with low birth rates, salaries in Japan don't seem to have much growth over the past say 20 years, and you are starting to see trends to have companies work lower hours -- which likely will see either flat GDP or potential lower GDP. Japan has been hit with a ton of competition in many big industries by their neighbors like China, South Korea, Taiwan, and others. So I don't personally have any information, but I could guess that with those prevailing forces / trends being well known in Japan, I wonder if many brands are willing to accept smaller margins to avoid passing on costs to consumers, or something similar? Would be great if anybody knew more details -- like if you produce some goods in Japan, do you see that costs are rising, but do not want to increase prices?