I am trying to find some <$1000 airfare to Japan for a leisure trip, and I have noticed over many months looking that Japan airfares (from West Coast USA) are rare to fall below $800 rt. You can even find itineraries to the rest of Asia transiting through Japan on JAL and ANA that are ~$500-600 by contrast. It almost begs for throwaway ticketing, but it's not ideal.

Clearly this is a market pricing issue and I am no stranger to odd things like this. What drives it?

Lucrative business travelers? Higher disposable income / price tolerance of people traveling to / from Japan in general? I do not see that capacity is tight -- there are plenty of flights.