Average value of Japanese lawmakers' assets grows to ¥29 mil

Former Prime Minister Taro Aso, who serves as vice president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, topped the ranking with 614.17 million yen in assets, mainly thanks to real estate he owns in Tokyo's Shibuya Ward, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the country, as well as in Karuizawa, a resort town in central Japan.

Worldwide; "democratically elected" , with the scare quotes, politicians are rentiers and protect rentier interests.

That sums up our modern political economy.

These numbers are grossly deflated. Does anyone really believe our boy Taro Aso only has a paltry JPY600m?? Abe-chan 100m?

Add at least a zero to all these numbers!

29 million I bet. Being modest is a virtue here, as well as help you pay lower taxes. But I'm sure they have other intangible assets like favors they call on. Not to mention those other bank accounts offshore or property under other peoples names. I would say add one zero to be closer to the truth.

These numbers are grossly deflated. Does anyone really believe our boy Taro Aso only has a paltry JPY600m?? Abe-chan 100m?

in Japan, normally the wife holds and controls all the money.

Rodney - you’ve got me there! According to Wikipedia Taro “Francisco” Aso has an estimated net worth of US$5 billion.

So in his case we need to add three zeros to the reported number… indeed unless it is all his wife’s!

Just a thought - maybe they just mixed up the definition of “assets” and rather than financial assets etc., it was just a survey of amounts stuffed in envelopes scattered around the lawmakers office on an average Tuesday afternoon??

This seems way too low, must be missing several of zeros as politicians are known to regularly drop 5M+ in ginza hostess clubs etc.

I guess most of their wealth is not public.

Complete nonsense. This is declared assets. The rest is all tucked away offshore or in entities which are undeclared. Who’s going to investigate them?

These assets are only personal property, land and bank deposits in the politicians name. Excluded are any joint assets, wife/husbands assets and most important of all INVESTMENTS and anything owned through a corporation.

They are quite meaningless

Complete nonsense. This is declared assets. The rest is all tucked away offshore or in entities which are undeclared. Who’s going to investigate them?

Somebody should make an allegation. Have them arrested, hold the for 104 days, deny them bail, intimidate their spouses, indict them and have the tried two years later, deny them bail of course. Ooops, I forgot, it won't happen, they are Japanese.

April Fool level numbers. No-one with that little money and influence would be selected as candidates to begin with. Add zeroes to get the real picture.

Dont be fooled by the numbers, particularly for Aso. His family run businesses are stupid rich!

https://www.aso-group.jp/en/history/history_record.html

So my humble, retired school teacher parents are worth more than the prime minister of Japan, simply because they bought an ordinary UK house in the 1980s? That doesn't sound fishy at all.

Why???

Of course the numbers in the article are probably way understated, but people saying that Aso and Abe have 4 or $5 billion is laughable. Somebody wrote that in Wikipedia and there is no source. According to Forbes etc. it’s in the tens of millions of dollars. Nowhere near billions

It would be beyond interesting to see a breakdown of corporate stocks and bonds ownership by lawmakers, along with their immediate family. Don't forget to include sale and purchase data alongside their voting record on any measure that directly (not indirectly, mind you) affected the equity's value.

I love Japan, but cannot understand why the voting populus stands for being ripped off like this!

That is peanuts compared to the assets of US, EU, South American, not to mention Middle Eastern lawmakers and their families and offspring are commending.

For the sake of proportion the median sale price of a home in the US for the 4th quarter of 2021 $408,100, down from $411,200 in the 3rd quarter. Depending on one's age average home equity runs from $100,000 to $150,000 with savings of $30,000 to $50,000. These figures are for US homeowners age 45 and older. That 29 million Yen works out to something around $233,300. To me that doesn't seem like an excessive amount of personal wealth for someone in the position of a national legislator. Both the US Congress and the Chinese Communist Party are millionaires clubs and those millions are in US Dollars, not Yen. Really the CCP is a billionaires club. Japan's politicians have to me unusually modest wealth by global standards. Someone in the US who owns their own home, yes we exist and we are not all wealthy, has more personal wealth than a Japanese politician.

Politicians = Poly =many tic=blood suckers ians =magicians Now you see it now you don't they are nothing but a group of blood suckers tricking the people with their magical make belief ideas. They fool the people and fill their pockets on the poor working class.

let's divert their summer and winter bonuses this year to use for meaningful things seeing that Japan is in the red and the fault should be "rentai sekinin".

29 million yen isn't even a particularly nice house. I'm not sure how people think Japanese politicians are ripping off the people.

I am not against that. They can grab whatever they think they need for their work. But of course that has to be defined afterwards, connected with the outcome of their work. More money for the people, then they get more. Less money distributed to the people, they also get less or nothing. That’s how to do it, not on that quasi unlimited self-service base, where they grab more while the people can’t make ends meet anymore due to corona, inflation, war sanctions consequences etc.