世論 What Japan Thinks

This survey from iShare was educational for me, and I hope it will be educational for some of my readers who may be unaware of the Japanese names in this look at month names, in both English and classical Japanese.

Demographics

Between the 24th and 29th of September 2010 461 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.5% of the sample were male, 28.6% in their twenties, 30.6% in their thirties, and 40.8% in their forties.

In modern Japanese, the months are ridiculously easy to remember, being basically “Month 1″, “Month 2″, and so on up to “Month 12″, but before they adopted the Gregorian calendar there was a completely different set of names which I rarely see and could not name any of them at all. Note that although in Q1SQ I mention the English month, there’s not really a direct one-to-one correspondence as the old Japanese calendar was lunar-based, so they tended to repeat months here and there to stop things getting horrendously out of sync.

Research results

Q1: Without any prompting, could you recite the traditional Japanese names for the months of the year? (Sample size=461)

	All	Male N=242	Female N=219
Yes	36.9%	30.2%	44.3%
No (to SQ)	63.1%	69.8%	55.7%

Q1SQ: Which of the traditional Japanese names for the months of the year could you not recite without prompting? (Sample size=291, multiple answer)

Kanji	Reading	Month	All	Male N=169	Female N=122
文月	Fumizuki	July	65.3%	64.5%	66.4%
長月	Nagatsuki	September	62.5%	57.4%	69.7%
霜月	Shimotsuki	November	59.5%	58.0%	61.5%
卯月	Uzuki	April	57.4%	55.6%	59.8%
葉月	Hazuki	August	51.2%	56.8%	43.4%
如月	Kisaragi (Kinusaragi)	February	44.0%	45.0%	42.6%
皐月	Satsuki	May	40.9%	43.2%	37.7%
睦月	Mutsuki	January	39.5%	43.8%	33.6%
水無月	Minatsuki	June	34.7%	33.7%	36.1%
神無月	Kaminazuki	October	30.6%	32.0%	28.7%
弥生	Yayoi	March	26.5%	31.4%	19.7%
師走	Shiwasu	December	19.9%	23.7%	14.8%

Q2: Without any prompting, could you recite the English names for the months of the year? (Sample size=461)

	All	Male N=242	Female N=219
Yes	83.7%	82.6%	84.9%
No (to SQ)	16.3%	17.4%	15.1%

Q2SQ: Which of the English names for the months of the year could you not recite without prompting? (Sample size=75, multiple answer)

	All	Male N=42	Female N=33
November	48.0%	54.8%	39.4%
August	37.3%	33.3%	42.4%
February	37.3%	33.3%	42.4%
January	37.3%	40.5%	33.3%
December	36.0%	33.3%	39.4%
July	36.0%	38.1%	33.3%
September	34.7%	31.0%	39.4%
October	32.0%	31.0%	33.3%
June	24.0%	28.6%	18.2%
May	21.3%	28.6%	12.1%
March	17.3%	21.4%	12.1%
April	14.7%	21.4%	6.1%

Q3: Do you have opportunities to read or write the traditional Japanese names for the months of the year? (Sample size=461)

	All	Male N=242	Female N=219
Frequently	0.9%	0.8%	0.9%
Sometimes	26.9%	20.7%	33.8%
Never	72.2%	78.5%	65.3%

Q4: Do you have opportunities to read or write the English names for the months of the year? (Sample size=461)

	All	Male N=242	Female N=219
Frequently	13.0%	13.6%	12.3%
Sometimes	47.3%	45.0%	49.8%
Never	39.7%	41.3%	37.9%