Given the choice between “more money” (it’s really about buying power) and a country that’s environmentally healthy, where you can afford a home and what you need, where public services are less taxed, the subway is less crowded, more free time, and your kids don’t need to compete every second?
Japanese home prices are already very low. And “public services are less taxed” and “subways less crowded” are sorta contradictory as you need a much higher tax burden per person if fewer people are on the trains if you want the same level of service quality.
In fact there’s very little evidence public services get worse with more people but decent evidence they get worse with fewer as areas become unable to reap the rewards of specialization and scale that come with more people.
Japan shot past that point about a century ago, and is in no danger of returning to it.
I mean some services seem to keep getting better with size. Certainly the train network of Tokyo is considered better than Osaka’s which is better than Nagoya’s which is better than Sapporo’s a lot of that is probably due to returns to scale.
And not to make this specific to Japan, but I think a lot of Japanese folks would love to spend less time at the office and more time doing the things that bring them a sense of accomplishment.
Japan has very low productivity per hour worked (some of the lowest in the developed world) reforming their office culture to prioritize fewer hours probably would have very little negative effect on business.