世論 What Japan Thinks

At the start of December last year, MyVoice surveyed its internet community on the subject of train manners. 13,586 people successfully completed an internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 3% in their teens, 21% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 24% in their forties, and 13% aged fifty or older.

Interestingly enough, the most common gripe I hear from other foreigners about the trains in Japan, that of people reading porno manga openly, irritates just 6.6% of the sample, and is seen as bad manners by barely three in ten, less than the number who consider putting on make up as a sign of poor breeding.

For me, snuffling without blowing one’s nose is the most boorish activity on trains, but that’s just my westernness showing! Not bothering to turn one’s phone to manner mode would come second, and it is mostly people who seem old enough to know better who do this, sadly.
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DIMSDRIVE Research recently published as part of their 103rd Ranking Research the results of a questionnaire to discover what people envied about the opposite sex. Over a week in mid-November 2,373 men and 2,334 women from their monitor group supplied their answers.

This appears to be just a fun, perhaps even silly, question, but when you look at the answers you see a lot of honest, even bitter, opinions on how people view the opposite sex. It’s also interesting how women envy men because men don’t need to do the things the men envy in women. (I don’t think that makes much sense…)
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As part of their 104th Ranking Research, DIMSDRIVE Research asked 5,003 members of its monitor group why it was good that they were born Japanese. This poll was conducted towards the end of November.

When I first read this I laughed out loud at the item ranked second, and I think everyone else who has lived in Japan will raise at least a wry smile when they see probably the most groan-worthy stereotypical nihonjinron-like answer.

If I had to choose the top reasons why I’m happy that I was born Scottish, I’d probably choose the Scottish socialistic (with a small ‘s’) character, the great outdoors, our football team that can inspire both laughter and tears, something to do with our culture and heritage, and, of course, that I wasn’t born English.
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On the first of December Japan’s biggest correspondence course company, U-CAN, and Jiyu Kokumin Sha (a book publishing company) released the results of a survey into the top words or expressions to come into vogue this year. The voting was conducted, I believe, by means of a public web poll though both of their web sites, but no demographic information is available. On the web site linked above you can find all sixty candidate words that the winners were selected from.

The handkerchief prince meme became one of the most irritating ones for me; it seemed that almost ever comedian picked up on it, and the merest dab of their foreheads with a blue hanky was enough to send the studio audience into paroxisms of mirth.

Regarding Metabolic Syndrome or middle-age spread, and to stray rather far away from the topic, I had an intersting discussion at work this afternoon regarding the best way to tackle this issue. This year’s winter bonus seems to have been spent in one of two ways; first, on the Panasonic Joba, a decidedly non-bucking bronco for your living room. One colleague recounted a story how one of the old guys in her English class is a cowboy freak, so at home indulges in cosplay by dressing up in a cowboy outfit, saddling up and watching John Wayne movies. As a result, his English is rather advanced but contains many expressions that died in the Wild West. Second, the Wii. Quite a lot of people old enough to know better queued overnight for the release and spent the weekend working out to Wii Sports.
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Here’s one of these goo Ranking surveys that leaves me scratching my head rather a lot. This time it’s on fire prevention, a pertinent question as this month is fire prevention month – apparently this is the driest month of the year. As usual, no demographics, just a ranking for the relative votes in each category. Note that many people in Japan use either paraffin or gas heaters with naked flames.

If I were asked about this, the top answers I would give would be perhaps ensuring smoke detector batteries were fresh, or not smoking in bed if I were a smoker, but here in Japan, the second-top answer is not putting out rubbish the night before so as not to tempt arsonists. I can’t say I’ve ever given a thought to the subject,and in Japan is there really a significant amount of it or is it the result of the media focusing on the topic? There are posters everywhere about being aware of it, and the news often has reports of serial arsonists, but… I must check out the relevant statistics some time.
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In the middle of September, DIMSDRIVE Research surveyed its monitor pool to find out what they thought regarding the falling birth rate. 7,656 people successfully completed the survey. 42.6% were male, 1.0% in their teens, 16.0% in their twenties, 37.1% in their thirties, 27.8% in their forties, 12.9% in their fifties, and 5.2% aged sixty or older. Sadly there is no information regarding marital status.

I think that the lack of children is the biggest problem facing Japan, and one that needs to be tackled soon before it is too late. While of course Japan is overcrowded and in theory there is nothing wrong with a few less people around, the problem is that the whole population is aging and soon tax from full-time workers will be insufficient to cover pensions.

My own workplace does have decent support for both men and women; both can have up to three years (if I remember correctly) sabbatical for child-raising, and I know of a few women who have taken advantage of this, but as for men, well, for example a colleague’s wife gave birth and he took one whole day off for the day she got out of hospital. “Luckily” the baby was born on a public holiday, but I don’t think he has even decreased his usual working hours (by that I mean four hours overtime a night) since she got out of hospital.
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Searching through Google for nothing in particular, I came across this page from Public Opinion Polls on Japan by Arthur N. Feraru, Far Eastern Survey, Vol. 19, No. 10 (May 17, 1950), pp. 101-103. This is part of a summary of surveys into views of Americans regarding Japanese and their internment during World War Two.

UPDATE: Thanks to Peter at Friendly Noises for providing me with the text of the rest of the article regarding American attitudes towards Japan during and in the aftermath of World War Two. The story continues in my next post.

In December 1942, according to a poll by Gallop, 97% of those from California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and Arizona approved of the relocation of them to camps, 2% opposed, and 1% were undecided. Only 29% approved of their free return to the West Coast after the war, 24% would allow US citizens only to return, 31% would allow none, and 16% were undecided. In addition, 69% would be unwilling to hire Japanese servants after the war, and 58% would boycott Japanese stores.

On a nationwide basis, 35% approved of their free return to the West Coast after the war, 26% would allow US citizens only to return, 17% would allow none, and 22% were undecided.

In another survey conducted in December 1944, when asked what they thought should be done about Japan after the war, 13% favoured killing everyone, 33% favoured the breaking up or dissolution of Japan as a political entity, 28% supported supervision and control, and only 8% favoured re-education and rehabilitation.

Talking of history, it seems there is also a book What Japan Thinks from way back in 1921, which might be interesting to try to get my hands on.

This slightly old survey by goo Research into Japanese dignity and morals was conducted over the last weekend in May this year. 2,114 people from their internet monitor group successfully completed a private questionnaire: 51.2% of the sample was female, 17.9% in their teens, 16.7% in their twenties, 19.0% in their thierties, 22.2% in their forties, 18.1% in their fifties, 4.6% in their sixties, and 1.5% seventy or older. By occupation, 3.2% were board-level management, 32.8% regular employees, 5.2% contract employees, 7.4% self-employed, freelancing or working from home, 5.8% part-timers or casual workers, 18.4% housewives (no househusbands!), 18.9% students and 8.3% otherwise, or not at all, employed.

This survey is in response, I presume, to a recent best-selling (2 million at the last count) 日本人論, nihonjinron book, 「国家の品格」, “kokka no hinkaku”, “Dignity of a Nation” (please visit this link to marxy’s translation and analysis of the book) by an apparently bonkers right-wing author, Masahiko Fujiwara.

As this was a difficult translation, and perhaps subject to personal bias, I’ll also note the Japanese term that I translated, so that others can either check or apply their own personal biases instead! First, the two basic terms: 道徳観, doutokukan, I have translated as morality; 品格, hinkaku, as dignity.

In addition, the font used in the graphs in the orginal is too small, so some of the kanji were very difficult to read, so I may very well have a mistake or two there.
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Recently goo Research carried out research into awareness of product and service safety issues. They interviewed 1,064 consumers by means of a web-based questionnaire, but details of the demographics of this sample were not reported.

Product and service safety has recently become a big issue in Japan, but quite frankly blown out of all proportion by the media. First of all there was the truely problematic Aneha scandal of blocks of flats and hotels not being built according to the building codes, thus liable to collapse even in moderately strong earthquakes. Next up was US beef, blown up out of all proportion, especially considering that not many people in Japan worry about (or even know about) the human growth hormones and antibiotics that are far more likely to aversely affect your health compared to BSE or vCGD, let alone the heavy metals in Japanese fish or the second-hand smoke in the average Japanese restaurant. Later was Schindler’s Lifts, which, as the linked story suggests, the brouhaha was caused as much by the company’s failure to appear sorry enough as by the death from the hardware failure itself. Note that at the end of August a man died after falling into an empty lift shaft, but this got very little press coverage and no mention of the make of the faulty equipment, at least in the linked story, so I would put good money on it not being one of Schindler’s.

I have also omitted mention of bits falling off planes or trains crashing or poison fan heaters or…

Oh, and the title of this story, “Safety Japan” comes from a common Japanese English mistake of using “safety” instead of “safe”, as in the other stereotypical “I am safety driver” expression.
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The big news in Japan right now is, of course, the birth of a potential future Emperor. This story will spawn a million conspiracy theories, no doubt, from was it a natural conception, to, well, I don’t know how far these wild tales will go! The exclusively male lineage of the Japanese royal family is also causing the Western press to have a look at the role of women in Japanese society as a whole, so as a service to my newer readers, or those discovering the blog through search engines, I’d like to point out I have translated a number of surveys on gender issues, covering many aspects of society from women in the workplace to domestic violence.