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From what I've been able to glean by reading, smaller cities and especially villages in Japan have vicious social ostracism, a lack of good jobs, and no remarkable educational institutions.

True all of the above. Live in a rural city.

The sad part is really the social ostracism. Other factors can be fixed or bypassed, but culture is always the hardest bit.

In 1995 I showed my co-workers in Japan the listing for my Grandma's house: a beautiful house on a double corner lot for $20k in rural Saskatchewan Canada. They were dumb founded. That a similar situation would occur in Japan twenty four years later seems unbelievable.

There is no free lunch, they take you the money through high taxes.

I've looked into regional houses there and property taxes looked very mild. Perhaps Australia has warped my perception of what is excessive.