That $50K* isn't much cheaper than a Cabbed MX5400.
*$50K for a "new 50hp Yanmar with a cab and every bell and whistle."
I'm surprised that the Yanmar isn't more expensive. Yanmars were traditionally priced higher than the competiiton. They are like JD that way. Maybe that has changed, but I wouldn't count of them always being less expensive.
It's difficult to compare some US business with some businesses styles in other countries. Kubota is a corporation like so many USA corps, but Yanmar is not. I'm not sure how it is structured today, but traditionally Yanmar was not a public company. When they first came to the US, it was as a privately owned business run a a group of extended families. Perhaps it still is.
The USA has similar businesses involved in media, but I can't think of any that are so much into large scale manufacturing.
Having a couple of acres as a hobby farm terraced into the side of a mountain is a goal for many Japanese living in a city. It's sort of similar to having a vacation house on a lake is here but with an aspect of patriotic public service in food production thrown in. Hence they have developed little tractors for little plots - but little tractors with many big tractor features.
Kubota seems more familiar to us because it is more like a publically owned US business - Kubota is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. They sell stock in their public corporation and manufacture agriculture and industrial machinery for profit. All very understandable to business people here.
While Yanmar is more generally involved with food supply for Japan. They make a profit by being involved in providing food for a country with a third the US population but only 4% of the land area.
That explains why Yanmar is unequally divided into ocean shipping, fishing, aquaculture, and agriculture. They do make their own products in each of these areas and they also manufacture those products for profit as well. It's just a different way of doing the same thing.
rScotty