Japanese financial egalitarianism is also, to a certain degree, a statistical mirage. At higher internal statuses inside the company, it will simply anticipate your desires and provide for them, rather than you ever needing to sully yourself with money. The IRS takes a rather dim view of this and has since the reforms in, IIRC, the 1970s, which treat perks as taxable income. The National Tax Agency theoretically disapproves of them but the actual practice in Japan is that companies get away with things that would get your entire accounting division jailed in the US.
For example, a Japanese CEO might have a salary of 4x that of his youngest salaryman. However, he also drives a $200k car. It is not "his" car, it is the company's car, but aside from the name on the title you could be excused for not knowing that. He's also homeless, if you discount the $10 million house which happens to be owned by the company's real estate arm which he happens to live in.
After he's CEO emeritus, he'll probably be provided with a board seat, a job at an affiliated company, or what have you, and the perks will continue, as befits someone of his stature.
This is true at all levels of the company, too. My salary was $30k, but there is some tangible value in having a pocket full of business cards which practically read "Attention, person who has just been handed this card: give the bearer whatever he wants. We're good for it. If you don't, we will remember." That status is very much not the same as the one you get if you combine two part-time jobs into the same level of income.
Speaking of emeritus employees: When do salarymen retire? What happens after that? Does the salaryman finally get to see that beach in Hawaii that his wife has been visiting every year, or does the pension not always stretch that far? Do the perks keep going after retirement even for the non-CEOs?
Typically, exactly at the age the company forces you to. I believe it was 65 at my company.
A company pension is typically sufficient to sustain one to a reasonable middle class standard of living, historically, and you have the option of being hired by the same company as a contract employee while receiving it. There's some grumbling about that, as of late, but my sense of it is that the material situation of salarymen who came up in the 1970s right now is pretty decent, but one might not say that about e.g. retired men who were working in the factories as contract labor during the same time.
You can pick out the retired gentlemen on the train fairly easily. The outfit is usually a Western suit a few decades out of date. Tweed is popular.
Some take up hobbies and become/remain pillars in their community. (Former salarymen are rather common among e.g. active members of my parish. The words "I left the company and joined Catholicism" might have been mentioned once, to a bit of chuckling and some scandalized looks in the direction of the parish priest.)
Some have the troubles one generally associates with aging. That is particularly difficult for salarymen who don't have a personal social network (due to never marrying, divorce, estrangement from family due to being absent for 30 years, etc).
Do the perks keep going after retirement even for the non-CEOs?
It depends. I know one guy who is clearly on The Track, and regardless of whether he makes CEO or not, I expect that he expects to be taken care of indefinitely. I'm not sure if one can expect that if you're not one of the golden boys.
For example, a Japanese CEO might have a salary of 4x that of his youngest salaryman. However, he also drives a $200k car. It is not "his" car, it is the company's car, but aside from the name on the title you could be excused for not knowing that. He's also homeless, if you discount the $10 million house which happens to be owned by the company's real estate arm which he happens to live in.
After he's CEO emeritus, he'll probably be provided with a board seat, a job at an affiliated company, or what have you, and the perks will continue, as befits someone of his stature.
This is true at all levels of the company, too. My salary was $30k, but there is some tangible value in having a pocket full of business cards which practically read "Attention, person who has just been handed this card: give the bearer whatever he wants. We're good for it. If you don't, we will remember." That status is very much not the same as the one you get if you combine two part-time jobs into the same level of income.