世論 What Japan Thinks

A big story over the summer was the change in the Organ Donation Law to allow family members to offer up their brain-dead relatives for harvesting even without prior agreement from the donor. To see how Japanese felt about this change, iShare took a look at expressing opinions on organ donation.

Demographics

Between the 6th and 12th of October 2010 431 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 56.6% of the sample were male, 32.9% in their twenties, 29.5% in their thirties, and 37.6% in their forties.

The news has been welcome in my household too as it’s given us an opportunity to talk about our wishes; all my bits are up for grabs, although my wife draws the line at her heart.

When the positive respondents to Q1 were asked why they had filled out their views, top reasons were that they wanted to be useful to someone after death and that they didn’t want their family members to waver over a decision. For those who hadn’t filled out a card yet, those that wanted to do expressed similar reasons to those above. Conversely, those against filling out a card wanted to leave the decision to the surviving family, or they weren’t yet sure what they wanted to do. However, others felt there was still the possibility of recovery from brain death, and if they filled out the card they could get criticised for it.
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Following up on a recent survey on hitting children, iShare looked this time at reporting suspected abuse, with an interesting breakdown by kind of residence.

Demographics

Between the 15th and 21st of September 2010 470 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 56.2% of the sample were male, 31.7% in their twenties, 31.9% in their thirties, and 36.4% in their forties.

I think I could give you a reasonable estimate of the number of kids in my 32-roomed block of flats, but I could only name one just because I often hear his name being called from the next door garden! If I suspected any abuse of kids I would discuss it with our janitor and get him to do something.
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A story this summer that started off as a tragedy when a family were found to have had their ’111 year old’ father’s bones lying around the house and turned into farce later when a 200 year old man turned up was lost old folk in Japan, the subject of a not-so-recent survey from goo Research, conducted on behalf of the Mainichi Shimbun.

Demographics

Between the 27th and 29th of August 2010 1,071 members of the goo Research online monitor group aged twenty or older completed a private internet-based questionnaire. No further demographic information was given.

I’m sure the Mainichi Shimbun must have published a fuller version of this survey.

The story had two components – first, people dying but their families not notifying anyone so that they could collect the pensions or just their general incompetence with the system for registering deaths; that is a serious social problem that needs to be addressed. Second, local governments for whatever reason not tidying up their internal paperwork, so that when people went missing such as at wartime or when they died or moved but the proper procedures were not followed, orphaned resident register entries were created but these records were never looked at until the first story broke, thus producing the flood of ancient phantoms.
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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.
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A most interesting recent survey from goo Research was a 30,000 woman breast cancer survey, the sixth time they have carried this out.

Demographics

Between the 10th and 14th of September 2010 32,830 women made up from members of the goo Research monitor panel and ordinary users of goo web services completed an internet-based questionnaire. 1.5% of the sample were in their teens, 5.3% between 20 and 24 years old, 11.7% between 25 and 29, 18.0% between 30 and 34, 20.0% between 35 and 29, 15.8% between 40 and 44, 12.5% between 45 and 49, 7.4% between 50 and 54, 4.0% between 55 and 50, and 3.7% aged sixty or older. 38.7% were housewives, 24.7% in full-time regular employment, 20.4% in short-term or part-time work, etc.

I’ve highlighted the results from how women felt about mammographies, as my wife reports them to be a very painful experience, but I believe the question is more directed towards how women feel after having had the results rather than about the details of the examination itself.
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A recent survey from the Cabinet Office Japan looked at Japan’s three large metropolitan areas, specifically at international development and preserving the green belt and other green areas.

Demographics

Between the 15th of July and 1st of August 2010 5,000 people randomly selected from resident registeries all over the country were approached for face-to-face interviews. 3,283 people, or 65.7% were available and agreed to take part. 51.9% of the sample were female, 12.3% in their twenties, 15.4% in their thirties, 16.5% in their forties, 18.1% in their fifties, 20.5% in their sixties, and 19.2% aged seventy or older.

There’s unfortunately no nice data to plot from the questions below, so instead here’s a picture of a park from ykanazawa1999 on flickr.

The amount of green space is pretty depressing – I live on the edge of the Osaka conurbation so fortunately there’s a bit of green around, but in the one hour train ride to work, barring river banks I see almost nothing but concrete by the side of the tracks. As there seems to be little evidence of green belt protection laws in Japan, it’s only the mountains that stop the builders, sadly.
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A recent survey from the Cabinet Office Japan looked at Japan’s three large metropolitan areas, specifically at international development and preserving the green belt and other green areas.

Demographics

Between the 15th of July and 1st of August 2010 5,000 people randomly selected from resident registeries all over the country were approached for face-to-face interviews. 3,283 people, or 65.7% were available and agreed to take part. 51.9% of the sample were female, 12.3% in their twenties, 15.4% in their thirties, 16.5% in their forties, 18.1% in their fifties, 20.5% in their sixties, and 19.2% aged seventy or older.

Q5SQ is interesting from my foreigner perspective and coming from a country where inward investment is a key strategy, with only one in five Japanese in favour of it. Perhaps the term is not too familiar, but from what I have heard there are a lot of barriers preventing entry by foreign corporations, so many items end up being produced under licence by local firms.
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The latest survey from iShare took a look at the matter of punches, in particular hitting children and adults, the results of which were a shock to my namby-pamby western liberal attitudes.

Research results

Between the 2nd and 7th of September 2010, 475 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.7% of the sample were male, 30.7% in their twenties, 31.4% in their thirties, and 37.9% in their forties.

Although corporal punishment is banned in Japanese schools, from what I hear teachers still occasionally dish out punishment, and in sports clubs there seems to be a lot of hazing, from over-enthusiastic cheerleading to deaths in sumo stables.

Some of the stories about memories of being hit were as follows: “My gentle father getting mad and beating me for the first time”, “I was playing with matches and nearly set something on fire, so after getting hit I remember reflecting long and hard”, “I never got hit by my parents, so it was a shock the first time my friends hit me”, “I did something that wasn’t sensible and got hit by a teacher”, and “I skived off doing a kanji drill homework and got detention until past 7 pm. I got curious about what the elementary school was like at night, so exploring around the school. I was found by my homeroom teacher who slapped my cheek and gave me a noogie. He was a good teacher.”
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Here’s a survey from goo Reseach with an interesting focus, terminals in western Japan, in particular those in Osaka, Hiroshima and Fukuoka.

Demographics

Between the 6th and 13th of August 2010 1,625 members of the goo Research monitor panel who lived either within 20 kilometres of the centre of Osaka, in Hiroshima City, or Fukuoka City completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 1,087 were from Osaka, 273 from Hiroshima, and 265 from Fukuoka, and in total 53.4% were female, 0.7% in their teens, 12.9% in their twenties, 34.2% in their thirties, 31.0% in their forties, and 21.2% aged fifty or older.

Depsite going to the Osaka area to shop once a month or so, the number of Asian tourists does not really register on me, perhaps because it’s more the Westerners that catch my eye!
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From my point of view, honeymoons are all part of getting married, so I cannot understand why this survey from iShare into honeymoons found that just a third of unmarried Japanese thought a honeymoon was essential.

Demographics

Between the 20th and 25th of August 2010 450 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.4% of the sample were male, 29.8% in their twenties, 33.8% in their thirties, and 36.4% in their forties.

On the other hand, given the lack of holidays, or at least the combination of both a reluctance to take and to grant holidays in Japan, I can understand some of the lack of enthusiasm for honeymoons. Although most of the married people I know did take honeymoons, a number of them took them a few weeks to a few months after the ceremony.

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