A big boom in Japan swirling around the work of French economist Thomas Piketty since last year seems to be fading fast. Why is the furor, which built up so rapidly here, losing steam just as fast? In short, a large majority of Japanese are extremely insensitive to issues related to inequality, the area where Piketty has gained his fame.
Japan indeed has serious inequalities, as enumerated below, and they are all expanding. Yet they are not being recognized by politicians, business leaders, civil servants or ordinary citizens.
First, income inequality in Japan is often thought not to be very large. But when a comparison is made using the Gini coefficient (the most commonly used measure of inequality in which zero represents perfect equality and 1 represents total inequality) after income redistribution, Japan ranks 10th among the 34 member nations of the OECD.