The japanese like to buy Japanese made tools, and they are willing to pay high dollar for them. And they do a very particular type of woodworking there- nowhere near as much particle board case goods as we do- instead, much more timber framing. The three joint cutting machines above are all more what we would call timber framing machines- and there are probably not more than a dozen shops in the whole USA that could see spending 20 or 30 grand for one of those, and my guess is that they cost in that price range.
So, the Japanese make expensive specialized machines that do certain jobs very well, and they are mostly jobs we dont do.
When you see japanese machine tools here, they are both more generic, and the result of a specific export oriented marketing campaign. Same thing with those little jointers and planers that Makita and Ryobi do sell here- more generic, and export engineered.
In japan, you can still buy a new manual mill that is more like a K&T number 2 than a Bridgeport- but you will pay maybe fifty grand for it. And you can still buy a nice manual drill press that is much better made than a chinese import- for 2 to 4 thousand dollars. The japanese routinely pay these kinds of prices. We wont. We have been spoiled by low end chinese stuff, and the market here has either very inexpensive stuff, or full on CNC, and not much in between.
Also, many japanese companies are quite small, and dont even think about export or marketing internationally. In Japan, where almost everything is a one day drive or less, a small company making, say, a really great timber notcher and miter cutting saw, can sell to every contractor in the entire country, with maybe ONE salesman. For them to ramp up and try to sell in the USA would be very expensive, with no real guarantee that a lot of their specialized stuff would appeal to our market.
If you walk around the more industrial areas of Tokyo, you see lots of specialized woodworking shops, making shoji screens, or picture frames, or doorways, or wooden gravestone markers, or furniture, and all of them are tiny, with all japanese made little machines that are very nice, and very expensive.