There's this image that the Japanese are drop-dead, go-all-out kaimono-chūdokusho (買い物中毒症, shopaholics), despite whatever the latest dreary news bulletin on the global recession says. While that may be true, it's also a fact of our collective lives that the Japanese hate spending, with every fiber of our being.

Call it the Japan paradox, or just plain perverse, but while many of us won't blink twice at buying some luxury-brand handbag — or blowing ¥10,000 on an Italian dinner, even though we're on extremely modest incomes — we're also adept at keeping our wallets tightly shut come flood or tsunami, or even the whirlwind that was Julia Roberts' first visit to Japan last month. The truth is that the Japanese are better at saving than spending — we have about 1,000 years of poverty and deprivation behind us, while the hankering to buy La Perla lingerie is less than three decades old.

There's also a notion that wealth in itself isn't necessarily bad, but flinging one's money about is tacky and unchic. "Seihin" (「清貧」) has always been a revered term, meaning "clean poverty," and alludes to a spirit strong enough to resist the triple corruptions of kane (金, money), onna (女, women, but in this case it refers to sex) and sake (酒, alcohol, but in this case it refers to rich foods and excessive drinking).