I lived in Germany for some time David and there is a kind of a thing that German who lived in East Germany before the wall came down are now hoarders . This is because things weren’t freely available in the Communist system so they never threw out anything as it could come in handy later on. The East Germans freely admit this. So there is a big difference between a house in west Germany and East Germany. I wonder if the same had happened in Japan where there was a divide and one section of society experienced more hardship ?