Twenty reasons why Japan and Japanese are great
Here’s a look with goo Ranking at what the top reasons the Japanese think is great about Japan and their fellow Japanese.
Demographics
Between the 21st and 23th of May 2008 1,072 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. Exactly 50% of the sample were male, 5.7% in their teens, 12.9% in their twenties, 31.8% in their thirties, 27.5% in their forties, 11.3% in their fifties, and 10.8% aged sixty or older. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.
I’ve previously presented another survey on why the Japanese like being Japanese, and this one too will no doubt induce groans and eye-rolling within my readership!
Surprisingly but thankfully, most of the feedback from Japanese reading the survey seems to have been pretty negative.
Ranking results
Q: What do you think is great about Japan or the Japanese? (Sample size=1,072)
Rank Score 1 Feeling the four seasons 100 2 Diligent 91.3 3 Kind 75.8 4 Rich food culture 70.1 5 Creating leading-edge techniques 62.2 6 Courteous 61.1 7 Strong sense of duty 59.8 8 Considerate 45.4 9 Flexibly adopting new cultures 55.2 10 Good with hands 49.3 11 Awareness of wastefulness 48.2 12 Conservative 45.8 13 Subtle 40.6 14 Express things vaguely 34.9 15 Reliable 34.7 16 Look young 32.5 17 Can distinguish subtle differences in taste 27.3 18 Nice hair 24.4 19 Ladylike 23.6 20 Table manners 23.2
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phauna said,
July 6, 2008 @ 11:36
The four seasons, ahh! I can never escape it. Surely any country with the same latitude has these same seasons? Discern subtle differences in taste in Japanese food, maybe, any other food, they suck. Flexibly adopting new cultures should maybe be altered to ‘change said cultural product beyond recognition to suit Japanese tastes then promptly forget where it came from and call it Japanese.’
Deas said,
July 6, 2008 @ 12:51
Ha ha - Phauna nailed the “flexibly adopting new cultures” bit. And so far as the taste goes, it’s all well and good to have a delicate palette when you’re eating food that tastes nearly the same. Is the burden on the people to adjust to the food, or is the burden on the chefs to come up with more flavorful fare? I’m all about taste, so I side with the latter idea.
Julian said,
July 6, 2008 @ 13:48
This is so funny! If this really represents the “Japanese view” of things then Japan will never change. Why do they feel superior table manner-wise and when are Japanese considerate outside of their own country? - personally I think their “considerate” (we’d call it dishonest) behaviour is what can hurt the most. (Sorry, this topic ticks me off…I’m gonna stop before it gets ugly.)
FuzzLinks.com » Twenty reasons why Japan and Japanese are great » 世論 What Japan Thinks said,
July 6, 2008 @ 17:05
[…] http://whatjapanthinks.com/2008/07/06/twenty-reasons-why-japan-and-japanese-are-great/ […]
moby said,
July 6, 2008 @ 17:33
Please could you shed a little light on this research methodology?
– “Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.”
It seems that the most popular choice in any Goo survey automatically qualifies for 100 points.
Does Goo ever tell us how many people actually selected the top option? Does Goo ever give it’s respondents the chance to write in an option or choose “none of the above”.
_kovert said,
July 6, 2008 @ 17:41
I think number 14 is my favorite “Express things vaguely”.
The fact that Japanese think this is a good quality says a lot.
Not sure about the food thing either.
Sure there are some interesting foods here but when I try some things of a non Japanese origin here it seems very watered down from what it should be.
It think it might be more correct to say the Japanese have a sensitive palette (not exactly a in a good way).
Ken Y-N said,
July 6, 2008 @ 22:59
moby, yes, that’s basically it, goo’s Ranking results are always normalised to 100 for the top selection.
I’m sure if you talked to goo Research and passed them a wad of cash you could get the exact number of votes for each category! I think the ranking surveys are a combination of select one from the list and write-in - I’ve not actually taken part in one, so I don’t know the exact methodology, sorry.
We Japanese. . . said,
July 8, 2008 @ 00:00
[…] What Japan Thinks has a report on an Internet survey on what Japanese people think are the greatest attributes of Japan and the Japanese people. […]
We Japanese. . . said,
July 8, 2008 @ 00:00
[…] What Japan Thinks has a report on an Internet survey on what Japanese people think are the greatest attributes of Japan and the Japanese people. […]
Paul said,
July 8, 2008 @ 23:12
Notice that there is no mention of freedom anywhere on this list.
Dave R said,
July 11, 2008 @ 06:35
Item 9 - Flexible to adopting to new cultures? Is that a joke?!!! Someone has to be kidding me
Mutantfrog Travelogue » Blog Archive » Mount Fuji revisited said,
July 13, 2008 @ 19:01
[…] Japanese people are proud of their seasons, and rightly so. Even from afar, the seasonal changes here are quite dramatic and beautiful, if sometimes painful for subway commuters like me. […]