Without reference to this particular CEO, since I don't know him from Adam, much has been made of Japanese CEOs being compensated modestly and it is mostly an accounting fiction. For example, the CEO at a particular Japanese company might not be able to afford a dhh-style automobile, but if he desires to drive one, one will be made available for him from the corporate fleet. He lives, like many of his employees, in company housing, but his company-provided housing is decidedly not in the dorms with the 22 year old trainees. He will, like many of his employees, spend the majority of his meals working officially or unofficially on company business, and most of these will end up on the expense account of either his firm or one of his business partners'. etc, etc

Compare it to being President: you may be cash-poor by the standards of the rich, but that is not a meaningful barrier to desired consumption.

Speaking of which: I recently filed my taxes in Japan. The Japanese equivalent of the Schedule C (small business tax return form) has, like the Schedule C, an entry for meals & entertainment. Mine read 0 yen. A helpful person informed me that that was anomalously low, and that, wink wink, the routine practice is to claim that the company paid for every meal because, wink wink, we all know how being a salaryman works.