[quote=spdrun]Japan had a higher percentage of comparatively well-off people than China or India does today. Japan was a much wealthier country on average by the 80s than China or India are today.

(Actually, parts of NJ are heavily Indian — around Edison. But fortunately, that hasn’t helped prices recover very well so far.)[/quote]
We don’t care about average. We care about total number of rich people. Japanese total population is 127M today. 30-40 years ago, their population is much smaller. So, combining China and India, you have almost 3B people. If you’re counting just 0.1%, that’s 30M people. So there are more people in the top 0.5% of China & India than all of Japan. Also, you’re more likely to see 0.1% of the population in China & India leaving for greener pasture than 25% of Japanese leaving Japan. My bet is, 0.1% of Chinese and Indian are A LOT richer than the top 25% of Japanese.