世論 What Japan Thinks

[part 1] [part 2]

The Cabinet Office of Japan conducted a survey back in November and December of 2004 to discover what people thought about gender roles in society. Although slightly old, this survey, performed by proper statistical means, should have a high degree of accuracy. They chose 5,000 people for face-to-face interviews, with 3,502 of them consenting to be surveyed.

This is a rather sizeable survey, so the results will be published over two days.

It would be instructive to compare and contrast the results here with a previous report I translated on how women perceive their own roles in the workplace.

Notice that in Q3 the most important thing Japanese think should be does is to change society’s perception, rather than perhaps any legal measures. This option, I suppose, does not force men to change, and thinking back to the previous equal opportunity survey, women are perhaps acknowledging that the equal opportunities laws have not changed anything, so it must be attitudes that should be changed in order for them to see any significant benefit.
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japan.internet.com and JR Tokai Express Research recently conducted a survey to find out about 迷惑メール , meiwaku me-ru, nuisance mail literally, or unsolicited mail, or simply just spam. They interviewed 330 mobile phone owners, 60% male, from all around the country by means of an internet-based survey. The sample consisted of 25.2% in the their twenties, 43.0% in their thirties, 21.5% in their forties, 7.6% in their fifties, and 2.7% in their sixties.

Initially, mobile phones’ email address defaulted to just the telephone number; in fact, when I first came to Japan my phone had no option for even changing the mail address. Now, with the increased awareness (and increased incidence too) of spam, DoCoMo at least (presumably the other carriers do similar things) give new customers a default email address that consists of their phone number plus a few extra random characters to defeat dictionary attacks.

I personally have got zero spam, mainly as I have a user name that is in no Japanese dictionary and I don’t sign up with dodgy sites that might leak mail addresses.
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As a sort of follow-on from the survey on mobile phone handedness, japan.internet.com, in conjunction with Cross Marketing Inc, had a look at what sort of computer and monitor people used. They interview 379 internet users, 50.1% male, 16.3% in their teens, 16.1% in their twenties, 16.4% in their thirties, 16.4% in their forties, 17.2% in their fifties, and 17.7% sixty or over.

I believe this survey is looking at home computers rather than office machines, although this is not clearly stated within the report.

They did in fact look at a few other factors that seem more interesting the just screen resolution, but sadly they have not made these results public. However, the resolution information may prove useful to web designers, and seems to back up the statistics I see from my own blog: 1024 x 768 is the benchmark. However, whether or not people run their browsers fullscreen is a question for another survey!
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, looked at the perception of online DVD rental. They interviewed 1,061 people from their monitor group at the start of March by means of an internet-based questionnaire. The sample was 43.3% male, with 25.0% in their twenties, 41.5% in their thirties, 24.5% in their forties, and 9.0% in their fifties.

I haven’t rented a DVD since I got married, although perhaps before I did I might have investigated one of these companies, as I heard a bit about NetFlix from USA residents, and my local Tsutaya had a pretty thin collection of DVDs. Now, I don’t have enough time to even just catch up with what we record off cable! However, if I could find a cheap portable player – about Nintendo DS size with one face all screen, and an SD memory card slot – I’d snap one up in an instant for viewing on the train. The PSP and its UMD just look a bit too bulky and perhaps battery-hungry for my needs. I’d love to catch up on Monkey, both the original and the new versions, for instance.
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japan.internet.com, in conjuction with JR Tokai Express Research, investigated how people use television stations’ web sites; both PC-centric and mobile phone-targetted sites were included. By means of an internet-based questionnaire, they obtained the opinions of 317 employed persons from all over the country; 71.3% were male, 22.1% in their twenties, 43.5% in their thirties, 25.2% in their forties, 7.6% in their fifties, and 1.6% sixty or over.

This survey, I feel, poses more questions than it answers. Which programs’ sub-sites within each channel’s offering are people choosing to view? Getting program details covers too broad a ground from just getting a synopsis for a movie to checking out some of the factual (or not quite so factual, as the case may be) information presented by a show after the broadcast. Why did Q1SQ2 not investigate if people gave feedback to shows or played web site games? What about different usage patterns for PC-based and mobile-based access? I suspect these answers may be obtained if one is willing to part with cash, though!
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[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

I see that I attracted a few readers in a LiveJournal kimono forum, so rather than creating a LiveJournal account to reply privately to their questions, I’ll post an update here with some more detailed statistics from the same report that I translated earlier this week.

One other question they had was from the final question about the kimono’s image, as to what “Japaneseness” was. This was my translation of 日本人らしい, nihonjinrashii, which translates more literally to “looking like a Japanese person”.

On a personal note, getting picked up by these kimono wearers (as it were) is the sort of thing that makes me feel all this blogging is worthwhile. I’ve learnt about western kimono fans and they’ve learnt a bit more about how the Japanese view what is their hobby. If there are any readers out there with a pet subject that they’d like to hear more about, please don’t hesitate to ask me and I’ll see what I can find. I’m fascinated by Japanese bowel movements (yes, honestly, but not in that way) or the lack thereof, but I’m yet to find a good survey regarding it.
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with a new-to-me company Cross Marketing Inc (ugh, Flash-based survey reports!), performed a survey of 300 mobile phone users (exactly 50:50 male and female) at the start of this month to find out what habits they had regarding mobile phones. 17.3% of the respondents were in their teens (in fact, aged 18 or 19 only), and each of the four decades of age from twenties to fifties were represented by 20.7% of the sample size.

I previously presented another survey that looked at the use of extra features of a mobile phone, but the percentages are quite different between the two. More investigation may be needed to discover why this discrepency has occured, although I wonder if the sample selection method is the problem. The earlier survey was a self-selecting one that would tend to attract heavy users, I suspect, but for this one, although the respondent selection method is not described, given the small survey size and the balanced age grouping, I suspect there is a much more rigourous selection process.
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[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

DIMSDRIVE Research recently performed a survey to find out what people thought about kimonos. Over one week at the end of January, they got 7,607 people, 60.4% female, from their internet monitor group to reply to the questionnaire. 1.6% of the respondents were in their teens, 19.6% in their twenties, 36.6% in their thirties, 26.2% in their forties, 11.9% in their fifties, and 4.1% sixty and over.

This second half sees some more interesting statistics. Most people don’t buy their own kimono, but I would like to know why. Is it a coming of age present? A wedding present? Do they get them new or as hand-me-downs?

It is also interesting how the kimono’s image is foremostly positive, with the top two answers praising it, but then followed by four very negative images.
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[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

DIMSDRIVE Research recently performed a survey to find out what people thought about kimonos. Over one week at the end of January, they got 7,607 people, 60.4% female, from their internet monitor group to reply to the questionnaire. 1.6% of the respondents were in their teens, 19.6% in their twenties, 36.6% in their thirties, 26.2% in their forties, 11.9% in their fifties, and 4.1% sixty and over.

Note that I believe that the 浴衣 yukata and 甚平 jinbei, the cheap summer wear that resembles just a fancy dressing gown more than a formal item of clothing, is excluded from this survey; they are focusing on the posh ceremonial item here. I base this supposition on “fireworks display” or “summer festival” not being listed as answers to the question on the place that people last wore one, as at these two places one regularly sees many young people kitted out in cheap and colourful loose cotton garments.

Personally, I’ve never worn a kimono nor have any great urge to wear one, although I should compare the results of this survey with my views on kilts. I own a kilt, which I’ve worn to three weddings here in Japan, and it always goes down well with the natives. In deference to Japan, and betraying my heritage, I do wear Hello Kitty boxers underneath…

This survey will be split into two parts, published today and tomorrow.
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During one week towards the end of January infoPLANT carried out a survey, via their usual means of an option in the DoCoMo iMode menuing system, of 7,977 people from all over the country, 63.5% female, to find out their opinions regarding televisions.

Looking at the results, it seems that most people go to shops to get televisions sold to them; the in-store information is the most important reference for most people, and display quality and price are what makes the deal, both these factors being ones that the salespeople are more than able to convey face-to-face.
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