世論 What Japan Thinks

This is an annual ranking survey from goo Ranking, looking at what expectations people have for the future Japan. I have translated a number of other years’ surveys, including 2012, 2010 and 2008.

Demographics

The survey was conducted during the 31st of October and the 1st of November 2013, and 1,060 people completed a private web-based questionnaire. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.

Note that people were selecting options from a list, I believe, so more controversial and political topics would have been filtered out. Nevertheless, despite all the doom and gloom foreign correspondents are writing about Japan’s nationalism, etc, note that number 6 is quite outwards-looking, as is number 21. Indeed, number 21 used a generic term for people, 人々, hitobito, not an exclusive term like “citizen” or “Japanese”.

Ranking result

Q: What expectations for the future Japan do you have? (Sample size=1,060)

Rank		Score
1	A country that correctly uses tax revenues	100
2	A country that has good public safety	95.4
3	A country whose people have good manners	91.8
4	A country where one can work stress-free	83.7
5	A country that is easy to give birth in, to raise children in	83.3
6	A country that has good relations with its neighbours	82.6
7	A country where on can live on one’s pension	78.1
8	A country that has cheap medicine	74.6
9	A country that has little economic disparity	74.4
10	A country that has high-quality medicine	74.0
11	A country that has high-quality education	73.5
12	A country that has politicians, civil servants who do not lie	68.3
13	A country that has abundant public services	60.7
14	A country that is fully-prepared for natural disasters	60.5
15	A country that has a high food self-sufficiency percentage	56.8
16	A country that has stable government	55.3
17	A country that has stable living infrastructure	54.7
18	A country that leads on environmental problems	54.2
19	A country that has strong regions	51.4
20	A country that has abundant free public services	47.3
21	A country that has no discrimination between people	45.3
22	A country whose public organs, corporations provide correct information	43.4
23	A country that generates energy from green sources	40.8
24	A country that provides a safety net	36.2
25	A country that tolerates individual expression	33.2