>>11617279It's not so much that "Japan needs to make everything" , moreso that Japan hits the best quality to price ratio.
You don't get the QC crapshoot of chinese factories and overhead with the low proces that go with it, you also get significantly lower prices than you'd get on fully US-made products.
You can't go too high on prices with a lot of toys, hence why only a few niches have not completely moved their production to China. Scale models and train sets are a good example : customers accept high prices and that helps Italleri or Hornby/Jouef keep their production (mostly) in Europe.