世論 What Japan Thinks

A new-to-me research company called realworld realresearch, which from a quick look at their site seems to be more in the business of being a shopping and stuff portal than a research agency, recently performed a survey into local authorities and IT, as reported by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

On the 13th of October 2008 1,199 people selected by some undescribed means completed a presumably online questionnaire. 52.0% of the sample were female, 15.0% were in their twenties, 16.0% in their thirties, 18.0% in their forties, 21.0% in their fifties, and 30.0% in their sixties. Given the round percentages, don’t ask why they couldn’t find one more person to round the sample up to 1,200! It’s also a curiously top-heavy sample, with the majority of the sample being over fifty.

I’m surprised that (as far as I know) no local authority has tried moving more services online, as one still needs to get a paper print-out of one’s residency certificate for such things as mortgages and other large loans, or at least why there cannot be vending machines that will spew out the documents 24-7 instead of requiring people to attend during working hours.

Here’s my town’s application form download service.
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Official online party political activity is banned in Japan during election periods due to legal restrictions that I am not quite sure about, but that doesn’t stop people feeling the internet has a big effect on outcomes. Given that this survey from Marsh Inc and reported on japan.internet.com was conducted just after the US elections, I wonder how much thinking of America instead of Japan affected the outcome of this look at searching for election information.

Demographics

Between the 6th and 10th of November 2008 300 members of the Marsh monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.0% of the sample were male, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 20.0% in their fifties, and 20.0% aged sixty or older.

I don’t know how Japanese discussion works on the internet, but I was again extremely disappointed at the US coverage on the various social news sites, as the arguments focus around why one shouldn’t vote for the other guy rather than actually dealing with the issues. I still have little idea what Mr Obama plans to do, and given the state of the world economy these days, and given that I don’t believe he will keep all his promises, and given the size of the USA, I feel he cannot do much more than tinker at the controls for his first term.
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I’ve covered similar surveys to this one in the past, which found an unbelievably high three in ten claimed to currently own or have owned a domain (I’ve just now double-checked the source, and my translation is accurate), but this time goo Research found a much more acceptable figure in this survey on one’s own home page, as reported by japan.internet.com.

Research results

Over the 22nd and 23rd of October 2008 1,090 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.8% of the sample were male, 16.7% in their teens, 18.2% in their twenties, 21.0% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, 16.0% in their fifties, and 12.0% in their sixties.

Even though .jp is the most popular domain name below, according to GoDaddy it costs $99 per year to register one, but for some reason whatjapanthinks.jp seems to be not for sale, although I cannot find any information why, as whois lookups are failing!

As I said on the previous survey, I think there is a degree of confusion in thinking that http://whatjapanthinks.blogspot.com/ is actually a top-level domain.
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This is quite a surprising set of results for me, but perhaps one factor is a relative reluctance to using credit cards online, although I would have thought banks would be more of a worry? Have a look at these results published on japan.internet.com from a survey conducted by Marsh Inc into online banking.

Demographics

Between the 23rd and 28th of October 2008 300 members of the Marsh monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. Exactly 50.0% of the sample were male, 20.0% were in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 20.0% in their fifties, and 20.0% aged sixty or older.

I’ve always meant to look into online banking – actually, all my UK money is in a bank that is online (talking of HSBC, they finally opened branches in Japan, but the one in Kobe, at least, is after the top end, people with 10 million yen or more to invest – in Japan, but never quite got round to it. I once checked my SMBC balance online, but that’s the extent of it!
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Today, 3rd November, is Culture Day in Japan, so I present some modern otaku culture for your enjoyment. This is a survey from iShare on the awareness of Hatsune Miku. If you are not aware who she is, keep reading, or search for her on the internet, or just visit this fan site.

Demographics

Over the 6th and 7th of October 2008 540 members of the free email forwarding service CLUB BBQ completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 55.2% of the sample were male, and 19.8% in their twenties, and 80.2% in their thirties. Why there was such a narrow age band, I don’t know.

Hatsune Miku picture grabbed from Mika-tan’s blog via Danny Choo.
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Previous surveys have shown that Yahoo! is the top search engine (just) and the top start page, but what else do people use there? This survey reported on japan.internet.com and conducted by another new-to-me research company, Point On, and looked at the topic of Yahoo! JAPAN service awareness.

Demographics

On the 16th of October 2008 exactly 1,000 mobile phone users completed a web-based (mobile or PC?) survey.The sample was split exactly 50:50 male and female, 20.0% were in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, and 20.0% in their fifties.

The only service I use on either English or Japanese Yahoo! is their Japanese train route finding service. I have once or twice in the past used their greeting cards, but I found that service dissatisfying.

Note that I’ve linked through to all the services mentioned, in Japanese of course.
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With the recent news about a ring tunes site being busted for offering illegal downloads, a site that apparently almost all middle and high-school children know, this survey from the Cabinet Office Japan looking into intellectual property is well-timed. Suspiciously well-timed.

Demographics

3,000 members of the public were randomly selected from resident registers, and face-to-face interviews took place between the 11th and 21st of September 2008. 1,770 people, or 59.0%, were available and agreed to be interviewed. The demographic information has not been made public yet, but as these Cabinet Office surveys are usually face-to-face interviews they tend to catch an older demographic, as can be seen in Q4 where over half the sample never or almost never access the internet.

This is quite a relevant survey in other ways too as I read just today an article on Global Voices Online about new copyright protection laws being proposed in Japan, where I read much to my surprise that it is not actually illegal to download copyright-infringing material, even if one is aware that the contents are not correctly licensed!

There is also no attempt to differentiate between legal and illegal free contents, just anything privately shared must be bad.
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I’ve not used an instant messenger for years and years, but my excuse is being an anti-social git. Sadly, this recent survey from the new-to-me survey organisation iBridge and published by japan.internet.com into instant messengers (IM) didn’t report on why Japanese seem to be fleeing instant messaging.

Demographics

On the 3rd of October 2008 300 members of the iBridge monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 51.0% of the sample were male, 15.3% in their twenties, 40.7% in their thirties, 29.0% in their forties, 12.7% in their fifties, and 2.3% in their sixties.

By way of comparision, just over two years ago a similar survey on instant messaging in Japan found that nearly one in three were active users.
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A few months ago there was a couple of articles in the US press with suspect (or just poorly-reported) statistics on cellphone literature in Japan, but at the time I didn’t have any good data to refute the stories with. However, this weekend not one, but two surveys come along, one from goo Research and one from Marsh, both reported on by japan.internet.com, on this very topic of cellphone novels.

Demographics

For the goo Research sample, between the 22nd and 25th of September 2008 1,074 people from their online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.3% in their teens, 17.5% in their twenties, 21.9% in their thirties, 16.3% in their forties, 16.2% in their fifties, and 11.8% aged sixty or older.

For the Marsh sample, on the 26th of September 2008 they interviewed 300 females from their monitor panel by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. 21.7% were in their twenties, 51.3% in their thirties, and 27.0% in their forties.

Very surprising for me is that goo Research’s mixed sample showed a higher percentage of readership than Marsh’s young female group, although the level of enjoyment was relatively similar for both groups. The reasons for this would be interesting to investigate.
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As usual, a Yahoo! service dominates the rankings, this time when JR Tokai Express Research Inc looked at PC-targeted free email services in a report published by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

On the 22nd of August 2008 333 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor panel employed in the public or private sector completed an online members-only questionnaire. 86.8% of the sample were male, 3.3% in their twenties, 34.5% in their thirties, 53.2% in their forties, and 9.0% in their fifties.

In Q2, I wonder why almost half of the sample use free mail services to subscribe to newsletters. Is it to protect privacy or anonymity, to keep one’s main mailbox clean, to take advantage of high-quality spam filters, to allow access from multiple locations, or what reason? Sadly, this issue is not addressed in this report.
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