Hey, big spender.(Luxury brands in Japan)

At first glance, Yukina Abo, 22, is one of many million reasons why Japan consumes 41% of the world's luxury goods, according to JETRO. Her impressive collection of luxury accessories includes Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Prada and Coach. Aspirational consumers in Japan like Abo have been willing to skimp and save to buy a must-have item, even if it means getting into debt to do so.

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Dominic Carter, president of marketing research firm Carter Associates, says that in Japan's group-oriented culture, the pressure to own iconic brands has meant that for successful brands in Japan like Louis Vuitton. the luxury market has in effect been the mass market.

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But this year, at the The Financial Times 'Business of Luxury' summit in Tokyo, one panel discussion focused on the question of why sales of many luxury goods are flat in Japan. One reason is that incomes have not risen very much for the past 15 years: relatively speaking, people are less wealthy.

"I'm not for a second suggesting that luxury is going to go into decline in Japan, but there's not money to burn any more, not in the mass-market," Carter says.

At the time of the summit, an expert on Asian consumers, Radha Chadha, wrote an article for the FT expressing the opinion that Japan has already passed through what he calls the 'Show off' and 'Fit in' stages of luxury culture. For Tokyoites. Chadha's 'Fit in' stage virtually equates with brands like Louis Vuitton: he reports that as many as 94% of Tokyo women in their twenties own a Vuitton piece. True or not, for Japanese women iconic brands like this one have achieved an astonishing degree of mass acceptance because they symbolize making it into the acceptable group of society.