世論 What Japan Thinks

Today and every 5th of May is Children’s Day in Japan, and to celebrate, goo Ranking published a list of what adventure novels from one’s childhood made one’s heart beat faster.

Demographics

Over the 21st and 22nd of March 2008 1,036 people from the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.7% were male, 7.0% in their teens, 14.7% in their twenties, 30.1% in their thirties, 27.0% in their forties, 10.9% in their fifties, and 10.2% aged sixty or over. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample. Only the single people were asked today’s questions.

This is a fascinating list. First, there is but one Japanese author, then there are a good number of countries represented, although of course it will be the Japanese translation that people read as a child. Next, I must admit to never having heard of books 2, 8, 18 and 19.

For me, the book that defined my childhood would have to be The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, both of them read to me by my mother. I could only manage to read by myself the Tales of Narnia, which would probably be third on my list of memorable adventures.

Ranking results

Q: When you were a child, what adventure novel made your heart beat faster? (Sample size=1,036)

Rank	Title	Author	Score
1	The Adventures of Tom Sawyer	Mark Twain	100
2	A Captain at Fifteen	Jules Verne	86.4
3	Robinson Crusoe	Daniel Defoe	71.4
4	Treasure Island	Robert Louis Stevenson	67.9
5	20,000 League Under the Sea	Jules Verne	57.5
6	Doctor Dolittle	Hugh Lofting	50.7
7	Around the World in 80 Days	Jules Verne	45.4
8	The Wonderful Adventures of Nils	Selma Lagerlof	41.4
9	Pippi Longstockings	Astrid Lindgren	33.9
10	The Time Machine	H.G. Wells	28.2
11	The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn	Mark Twain	27.1
12	The Lost World	Arthur Conan Doyle	19.6
13	The Tale of the Koro-pok-guru	Satoru Sato	18.9
14	The Neverending Story	Michael Ende	17.1
15	The Jungle Book	Rudyard Kipling	13.2
16	Tales of Narnia	C.S. Lewis	12.9
17	Lord of the Rings	J.R.R. Tolkien	11.1
18	A Princess of Mars	Edgar Rice Burrows	7.9
19	The Lost World of Time	Edmond Moore Hamilton	7.5
20	The Tales of Earthsea	Ursula K. Le Guin	7.5