It's pretty much impossible to overstate how important rice is in the East Asian diet: for a comparison to the west, think something like bread, potatoes, and pasta combined.
Home chefs aren't necessarily going to want or need a top-of-the-line rice cooker, true - but considering how much rice the average Japanese home chef makes, they wouldn't necessarily not want one. $1100 at the high-end is nothing compared to the price at the high-end of virtually any other kitchen appliance; if you can afford it, why cheap out on something you're going to use almost every day, for almost every single meal?
But maybe more importantly, think about restaurants! Although the stereotypes are somewhat overstated, Japanese apartments are often too small to cook in comfortably, and people often work long hours and need quick bites at all hours of the day, so people eat out a lot. And Japanese building codes are far more liberal than western ones, so restaurants can be tiny and individual buildings in Tokyo can have twice as many restaurants as entire city blocks in the west. Net result: Tokyo has among the most restaurants per capita of any city in the world - and considering the population of Tokyo, that's a huge number of restaurants. And almost all of those restaurants are going to need at least one or two (and some a whole fleet); if you're making rice on an industrial scale, it absolutely doesn't make sense to cheap out.
Much of the above is true in many other places in East Asia too - most notably, China. That's a big market for high-end rice cookers!
I have a lower-end Zojirushi and love it. I've used it at least a couple times a week for years. I've periodically debated getting one of the stupid-expensive ones, like https://www.zojirushi.com/app/product/nwjec, but realistically the one I have is fine. If I were going to live longer, one day I'd get one!
Not big but Zojirushi is a big brand and not making a top-of-the-line rice cooker will slowly diminish its reputation from the likes of Cuckoo, Tiger, Aroma, or Midea.
I bet margins are getting razor thin and Zojirushi only has their brand name and reputation to bank on.
Fortunately for the Elephant-brand, their recipe for quality and name value is still strong.
The Walmart listing appears to be a "marketplace" listing, and is apparently shipped from Japan. Presumably these cost a bit less in Japan, since shipping isn't an issue. Perhaps one of our fellow HNers who lives there can enlighten us?
Don't live in JP but was looking to bring one back a few years ago, top of line Zojirushi _were_ ~$1000 USD, but with Yen depreciation are around $800 now. +200-300 for delivery/fees and 1100 looks around right.
That’s why there’s so much hands and fingers involved. Low volume, high price items usually involve lots of short but concentrated spurts of human labor.
I bet more mainstream rice cookers are built with more machines.
Home chefs aren't necessarily going to want or need a top-of-the-line rice cooker, true - but considering how much rice the average Japanese home chef makes, they wouldn't necessarily not want one. $1100 at the high-end is nothing compared to the price at the high-end of virtually any other kitchen appliance; if you can afford it, why cheap out on something you're going to use almost every day, for almost every single meal?
But maybe more importantly, think about restaurants! Although the stereotypes are somewhat overstated, Japanese apartments are often too small to cook in comfortably, and people often work long hours and need quick bites at all hours of the day, so people eat out a lot. And Japanese building codes are far more liberal than western ones, so restaurants can be tiny and individual buildings in Tokyo can have twice as many restaurants as entire city blocks in the west. Net result: Tokyo has among the most restaurants per capita of any city in the world - and considering the population of Tokyo, that's a huge number of restaurants. And almost all of those restaurants are going to need at least one or two (and some a whole fleet); if you're making rice on an industrial scale, it absolutely doesn't make sense to cheap out.
Much of the above is true in many other places in East Asia too - most notably, China. That's a big market for high-end rice cookers!