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Yet, while the poor get poorer, the rich are getting richer. Last month, the national tax agency released its annual list of the country's top 100 taxpayers. Tatsuro Kiyohara, a 46-year-old fund manager at Tower Investment Management, ranked No. 1, with a tax bill that suggested a personal income of approximately $100 million. This marked the first time a wage earner had captured the top spot, an occasion that many writers and talk-show hosts alternately hailed and lamented as a signature moment in the new, more Darwinian societyfor Kiyohara's pay is almost entirely performance-based. The Nikkei Weekly business newspaper opined: "This new era is one in which individuals can have a significant impact on a company and its image, as demonstrated by the enormous compensation paid to this one person for creating new revenue streams."
Shinsuke Fujimoto, 37, would recognize that sentiment. Founder and CEO of Digital Hollywood, a school for computer-graphic designers and programmers, Fujimoto demonstrates a sure-handed independence and confidence in his own abilities, not to mention a distrust of conventional routes of Japanese salaryman success. Fujimoto set up his company 10 years ago, and Digital Hollywood has since grown into a $30 million business, with a network of nine schools across Japan. Fujimoto says the keys to success are clear-cut: "It's all about will, timing and the idea," he says.
And location. Situated in the middle of a rowdy Tokyo neighborhood called Ochanomizulight years from the depressing nothingness of OhdaDigital Hollywood's headquarters is surrounded by bookstores, cheap eateries and the capital's best universities. But Fujimoto these days is most at home in the glittering towers of Roppongi Hills, the urban development complex that has come to represent Japan's new superclass. Its avenues feature shops by Louis Vuitton, Issey Miyake, agns b. and Anna Sui and some of the city's best restaurants. Two residential blocks in the development are among Tokyo's most prestigious addresses, and the main office tower houses the most famous companies of New Japan, including tech superstars Livedoor, Rakuten and Yahoo! Japan. On the 51st floor of this same tower is the Roppongi Hills Club, a members-only (initiation fee and deposit: $20,000) oasis of fine restaurants and spectacular views where authors, artists, celebrities and executives can gather in peace high above the masses. Every third Thursday of every month, Fujimoto convenes a meeting here of the Young Entrepreneur Organization, an association of 125 businesspeople under 40 who are the founders and CEOs of companies with at least $1 million in annual sales. The group gets together for a lecture from a corporate luminary such as ex-Sony CEO Nobuyuki Idei or Matsui Securities CEO Michio Matsui, discussion about the hot business topics of the day, and a round of networking over cocktails at the club's bar. For Fujimoto, this is the new business as usual. "The old Japanese system of socialistic capitalism is no longer applicable to the current global economy," he says.
He's probably right, and that means Japan may have to learn to live with the income disparity common throughout the rest of the world. Add to that growing anxiety over issues like Japan's rapidly aging (and soon to be declining) population and China's challenge to Japan for Asian hegemony, and there's plenty of cause for national concern. Roppongi Hills may be ready for the future, but Ijiri and the kids hanging out in the Job Cafe Osaka are not. Sociology professor Yamada says the real problem crippling Japan is not the wealth gap between rich and poor but the "hope disparity"a widening gulf between those who see a brighter future ahead and those who do not. In Osaka, Ijiri can relate. His father's generation, he says, believed that tomorrow will be better than today. Ijiri's judgment: "I don't know if I'll ever make enough to support a family. We're most definitely headed the wrong way."