JAPAN’S RICH MEN

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3830, 6 November 1936, Page 2

JAPAN’S RICH MEN

PREMIER’S £5OO A YEAR. The highest income-tax payer in Japan is Baron Kichizaemon Sumitomo, who must pay a levy of about 800000 yen on an income of 3,000,000 yen (about £170,000 sterling), writes the Tokio corresspondent of the London ‘“Observer,” Baron Takakimi Mitsui is second, with an assessment of 662,3 52 yen, while Baron Hisaya Iwasaki, of the Mitsubishi interests, is third, with a payment of 522,893 yen. Practically all the taxpayers whose payments run into hundreds of thousands of yen are closely connected with the inner circle of big financial and industrial combinations which hold in their hands so much of Japan’s industry, trade, banking, and shipping—the Mistui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Yasuda, &c. The Hollywood scale of salaries is unknown in Japan. The highest in-come-tax payer among the artists of stage and screen is the famous kabuki actor. Kikogoro, who is billed for 60OOyen. But the levies on three popular cinema actresses, Misses Miura, Irie and Kurishima, are set at the modest figures of 170.68 yen, 527 yen, and 370 yen. Comparitively few Japanese pay income tax, because incomes of less than 1200 yen a year are exempt; and less than ten per cent, of the Japanese earn more than this amount. By comparison with western Europe or America, low incomes, salaries and wages are the rule In all strata of Japanese society, from industrial magnates to day laborers. No individual in Japan receives the epuivalent of 1,000,000 American dollars an annual income. The scale of Government salaries is very modest. Mr. Hirota, the Premier, receives only 9600 yen (a little over f 500). i