Following last year's brouhaha over executive compensation in Japan – which revealed the outsized salaries of many foreign chief executives versus their Japanese peers – the first numbers for this year have trickled in and so far, seem to continue the gaijin vs. domestic employee pay gap.

At Shiseido Co., Japan's leading cosmetics company, Carsten Fischer, the head of its international business, was paid a total of ¥443 million ($5.5 million) in the year ended March 31 – more than four times what president and CEO...