世論 What Japan Thinks

Come examination time, many Japanese students seem keen to follow superstitions to bring them a pass; finding out the most popular was the subject of a recent survey from goo Ranking.

Demographics

Over the 20th and 21st of December 2010 1,128 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 65.4% of the sample were female, 11.9% in their teens, 17.2% in their twenties, 30.2% in their thirties, 23.2% in their forties, 10.0% in their fifties, and 7.4% 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.

Come exam time and the shops are filled with sweets with good luck-related themes. Kit-Kats are a perennial favourite as their name sounds like “Definite Win”; corn snacks called Carl become U-Carl, as it sounds like “to pass an exam”; Mr Donut this year had five-sided (sounds like “to pass an exam”) doughnuts with rather corny puns, and so on.

Picture from Fluoride’s memories on flickr.

Ranking result

Q: What examination-related superstitions have you followed? (Sample size=1,128)

Rank		Score
1	Bought a charm from a temple	100
2	Prayed at a Shinto shrine	51.1
3	Eaten a katsu-don (pork cutlet rice bowl)	48.3
4	Didn’t use the words “fall” or “slip”	38.7
5	Bought a good luck-themed sweet	26.9
6	Bowed to the family altar before going to the test	22.2
7	Used a magic incantation	16.9
8	Didn’t go somewhere I could slip (skiing, skating, etc)	14.5
9	Used a five-sided pencil	10.7
10	Brought along the lucky item from that day’s horoscope	10.3
11	Bought a good luck-themed item other than sweets	9.2
12	Used a new pencil and eraser	6.0
13=	Didn’t fold the test paper	5.6
13=	Searched for a four-leafed clover	5.6
15	Put my right shoe on first	4.7
16	Didn’t cut my fingernails the day before the test	3.6
17	Bought souvenir items for the school I wanted to go to	3.4
18	Didn’t cut my hair before the test	3.0
19	Sharpened my pencil with a knife	2.1
20	Wore red underwear	1.7