世論 What Japan Thinks

One of the last great acts of the ex-Prime Minister Taro Aso was to propose a palace to celebrate his favourite hobby, manga. The new government cancelled the plans, but Meiji University has proposed its own library of manga, anime and doujinshi, basically self-published manga, often based on professional works, and often rather adult-themed. To see what their rather geeky members thought, iShare conducted this survey into manga and anime sub-culture.

Demographics

Between the 26th and 28th of October 2009 456 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 55.3% of the sample were male, 31.8% in their twenties, 33.8% in their thirties, and 34.4% in their forties.

I thought Aso’s Anime Palace was a collosal waste, but I support to some extent the effort by Meiji University to collect together this significant sub-culture, even though most of the figurine and doujinshi gives me the willies.

Research results

Q1: Do you like to read manga? (Sample size=456)

	All	Male N=252	Female N=204
Love it	37.3%	31.7%	44.1%
Like it	41.4%	43.3%	39.2%
Dislike it	14.3%	16.7%	11.3%
Hate it	7.0%	8.3%	5.4%

Q2: Do you like console gaming? (Sample size=456)

	All	Male N=252	Female N=204
Love it	20.0%	17.9%	22.5%
Like it	43.2%	46.0%	39.7%
Dislike it	24.6%	26.2%	22.5%
Hate it	12.3%	9.9%	15.2%

Q3: Have you ever read doujinshi? (Sample size=456)

	All	Male N=252	Female N=204
Yes	54.4%	46.8%	63.7%
No	45.6%	53.2%	36.3%

Q4: For a while, the government set aside a budget of 11.7 billion yen towards building an “Anime Palace” (National Media Arts Centre) for manga, anime, games, etc. Did you agree with this plan? (Sample size=456)

	All	Male N=252	Female N=204
Completely agreed	3.9%	4.0%	3.9%
Agreed to some extent	23.0%	22.6%	23.5%
Opposed to some extent	33.8%	32.5%	35.3%
Completely opposed	39.3%	40.9%	37.3%

Q5: Meiji University have announced that they are collecting manga, anime, games, etc for the “Tokyo International Manga Library”, which they plan to open by 2014. One aim is to preserve this large sub-culture and keep it for future generations. As well as paper publications, they also plan to acquire doujinshi, figurines, etc. What do you think of this plan? (Sample size=456)

	All	Male N=252	Female N=204
Completely agree	14.7%	17.9%	10.8%
Agree to some extent	42.5%	43.3%	41.7%
Oppose to some extent	25.9%	23.0%	29.4%
Completely oppose	16.9%	15.9%	18.1%

Not surprisingly, the manga, game, and anime palace haters were much less in favour than the fans.