世論 What Japan Thinks

infoseek Research and Rakuten Research (not sure of the connection between the two companies) carried out the following survey regarding people’s views on divorce. They interviewed 1,852 married or divorced people aged from 20 to 69 in April of last year. (Actually, the survey was part of a larger one on general lifestyle issues, and this report chose to highlight the divorce aspect.) The statistic of 30% of young people marrying due to a bun in the oven is rather eye-opening.

First, people were asked the reason for resolving to get married. The top answer was “No particular reason”, at 24.2%; next was worrying about getting left on the shelf and other age-related concerns at 23.4%. 14.1% said because they’d been going out for so long, and 12.5% was for some other reason. Where the other 25.8% went is not noted, but in the “other reason” category, answers like “Because I like… partner or the concept of marriage, I don’t know – Japanese is sometimes vague!” and “I want to live together with my partner” and other forward-looking statements were in the majority. Looking at individual age groups, 30.3% of those in their twenties had their hands forced by the necessity of a shotgun wedding! Note that in Japan, children born out of wedlock is still less than 10% of the total births.

Now on to divorce: the raw figures are as follows.

Q: Have you ever thought about divorcing your current partner?

Never	63.2%
Thought about it before	31.1%
Currently thinking about it	5.7%

Looking at the figures in detail, considering those who are currently and have previously thought about divorce as one, only 29.4% of men have, whilst 43.1% of women have. Looking at those currently thinking about divorce by age group for each sex, the peaks are for early thirties men, at 10.3% and late forties women at 9.2%.

Q: For those who have thought about divorce, for how long have you thought about divorcing your current partner?

	All (N=626)	Male (N=232)	Female (N=394)
Up to six months	8.9%	3.9%	11.9%
Six months to one year	11.7%	9.5%	12.9%
One to three years	17.3%	15.9%	18.0%
Three to five years	12.3%	13.8%	11.4%
Five to eight years	10.7%	12.9%	9.4%
Eight to ten years	8.5%	11.2%	6.9%
10 to 15 years	12.9%	13.8%	12.4%
15 to 20 years	7.5%	8.6%	6.9%
20 to 25 years	5.4%	6.0%	5.1%
25 to 30 years	4.2%	3.4%	4.6%
Over 30 years	0.6%	0.9%	0.5%

The above table seems to show that women have thought about divorce for a shorter time on average than for men, but the exact reason for this is not hinted at within the article.

As can be seen from the table below, the biggest reason for thinking about divorce is a personality clash, at 45.0%, followed by problems with parents or relatives at 22.0%, and living together causing mental problems at 21.1%. Amongst those aged 40 and over, the personality clash issue is especially large.

Q: For what reasons did you think about divorce? (Multiple answer)

Personality clash	45.0%
Problem with parents or relatives	22.0%
Living together causing mental problems	21.1%
Disagreements about money sense	19.3%
Disagreements about lifestyle	19.2%
Disagreements about sex	18.2%
Wanting to be alone	14.2%
Disagreements about interests	12.9%
Problem regarding children	12.0%
It was a mistake getting married	11.8%
Loans or wasteful habits	8.9%
Partner’s personality changed	8.8%
Partner’s unfaithfulness	8.6%
Domestic violence	6.5%
Others	6.5%
Changed jobs	5.8%
Cannot go out freely	5.4%
Drinking problem	5.3%
Get away from children	3.8%
Gambling	3.5%
Religion or ideology problem	3.0%
Redundancy	3.0%
Met someone else	2.2%
Didn’t receive any spending money	2.1%
Illness	2.1%
Don’t want to return home	1.6%

Looking at why people don’t get divorced, one reason that splits the sexes is the concern of the effect on a child having just a single parent. 48.3% of men versus 38.3% of women felt this to be a concern, perhaps reflecting the usual outcome of custody issues, namely that children tend to end up with the mother (my personal opinion, not mentioned in the survey analysis). Similarly, 23.3% of men would hate to be separated from their kids versus 15,5% of women.

Q: For what reasons did you suppress your desire for divorce? (Multiple answer)

	All	Male	Female
Couldn’t survive financially	22.7%	5.6%	32.7%
Living alone is lonely	8.5%	9.1%	8.1%
Pitiful for a child to have a single parent	42.0%	48.3%	38.3%
Parents or others opposed to divorce	6.4%	6.0%	6.6%
Other people think we should be together	2.1%	2.2%	2.0%
Must keep up appearances	17.4%	20.3%	15.7%
Partner couldn’t live without me	9.4%	8.6%	9.9%
Partner couldn’t live alone	12.9%	16.8%	10.7%
Would hate to be separated from children	18.4%	23.3%	15.5%
Others	15.8%	10.8%	18.8%

Thinking about how long it will be until they are divorced, 50.2% thought within a year, and 22.3% within half a year (so 27.9% are between six to twelve months). It’s not clear if the sample size are just those currently thinking of divorce, but that may be correct.

Questioning the whole sample of 1,852 people regarding bringing up the subject of divorce, 80.5% thought women should bring it up, but only 51.9% thought men should. In addition, 69.0% thought they should bring up the topic themselves, whereas 17.8% said it was their partner, and 13.2% of the time both sides brought up the topic round about the same time. This last sentence is unclear – it might refer to in cases of those who are divorced or thinking about divorce, but the question uses the present tense.

Q: For those of you divorced, what did you do with your wedding ring?

Just kept it	27.9%
Threw it away	24.9%
Others	22.3%
Returned it to partner	15.7%
Sold it	5.1%
Gave it to someone else	2.0%
Had it remade into other jewelry	2.0%

Central Research Services, Inc published a report two months ago regarding leisure activities. The format of their report differs from the usual survey results that I translate as first, they scale the figures up to reflect the whole population (the current population of Japan is somewhere around 127 million), and second, they present the data within a coherent narrative rather than just the usual data dump, so the amount of data available is rather limited. It does say, however, that they interviewed 3,000 people aged 15 and over at some point to get their data. The main data worth presenting is the ranking of participation in various activities, based on how many people from the survey group performed each activity at least once in 2004, so although the lottery, for instance, is high on the list, each participant only spends a couple of minutes per week (or even per year, as the end of year big draw is very, very popular), so if the table was sorted by the actual hours spent, it would look very, very different.

Eating out	72,400,000
Travel within Japan	60,800,000
Driving (or being driven)	55,100,000
Karaoke	49,200,000
Watching videos	48,700,000
Doing the lottery	45,900,000
Personal computing (games, etc)	44,300,000
Cinema	43,900,000
Listening to music	42,400,000
Visiting gardens, museums, zoos	40,600,000
Gardening	37,500,000
Bars, pubs, and other drinking establishments	37,300,000
Bowling	32,000,000
Amusement parks	31,900,000
Physical exercise	30,700,000
Picnic, hiking, hill walking	30,600,000
Board or card games	30,300,000
Console games	30,100,000
Jogging, marathon	26,200,000
Concerts, live music	25,600,000

I’ve often heard about how a lot of companies, Toyota in particular, employ a good number of foreign workers – Toyota is heavily into employing South American staff – but I’d never seen any figures to back up these assertions. There are also suggestions that a lot of firms in the Toyota supply chain, for instance, employ illegals, but I suspect this is purely (mainly?) rumour and speculation.

However, today I saw some data on a large American-owned multinational with manufacturing facilities in Japan (printed matter, so no web link to the article, and the company name is omitted just in case…) that said that within Japan 16% of their staff (how many people in total are employed by the company in Japan was not noted, and their web site does not say either, but I suspect it is a good few thousand) are non-Japanese; of the 16%, 20% were from the Philippines, 19% were Korean, 16% Indian, 13% from the USA, 12% Chinese and 20% from 22 other countries including Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia and Venezuela.

These numbers are interesting and surprising as the total foreign population of Japan is barely 2%, so at first glance this might boast of the company’s commitment to diversity, but the data is also worrying as I wonder how many of these workers are doing a 3K job on the rather dodgy trainee visa scheme? How representative is this company of all the firms in Japan, I know not either.

This is a slightly old survey carried out in March 2001 by the government regarding foreigners learning Japanese. Japanese language classrooms from around the country were sampled, with 581 foreigners aged 16 and above living in Japan responding to the questions. The questioning was, presumably, carried out in the native language of the respondents, but it does say that the question and answer sheet was read and completed by the respondent. Note that especially if local government classes were selected, the level of the classes would be rather low. Due to the lack of Japanese language teachers and the cost of one-to-one lessons, I think that lower-level students would be over-represented in this survey. Amongst my foreign friends and acquaintences, once we pass JLPT 3 level we tend to stop formal study.

First, Japanese language ability in various formal situations was investigated, broken down by length of study of Japanese. It doesn’t say if this means fulltime or nightschool classes, which would make a huge difference to ability, of course.

Q: In which of the following situations can you communicate in Japanese?

	All	Less than one year	One to two years	More than two years
Talking to doctor about illness	63.7%	56.2%	78.1%	88.8%
Discussions/questions with council officials, etc	50.6%	43.2%	63.5%	76.3%
Reading notices from schools or council, etc	48.9%	43.2%	56.3%	71.3%
Writing a CV	37.5%	33.5%	45.8%	47.5%
Reading work documents	28.7%	25.4%	36.5%	40.0%

Reading and writing ability seems rather too high!

Next, five situations where Japanese may be needed were rated in degrees from “absolutely essential”, “needed”, and so on down to presumably “not needed at all”. Note, this is a summary of a full survey, so a lot of detail is omitted.

Q: Do you think Japanese ability is absolutely essential in the following situations?

Exchanging greetings	60.4%
Telephoning a Japanese person	50.3%
Asking for directions	48.4%
Talking to doctor about illness	47.3%
Writing addressing in kanji	44.2%

Q: Can you do the following reading tasks?

	All	Read hiragana	Read katakana	Read romaji	Can’t read kanji but understand the meaning	Can read some kanji	Can read kanji	Can read and understand kanji	Can’t read anything	No answer
All	581	84.3%	75.2%	51.5%	15.0%	48.5%	12.9%	19.6%	1.9%	1.4%
<1 year study	370	85.4%	74.9%	54.9%	17.6%	47.0%	11.1%	16.5%	1.9%	0.5%
1-2 years study	96	88.5%	79.2%	50.0%	11.5%	47.9%	19.8%	22.9%	2.1%
>2 years study	80	86.3%	85.0%	43.8%	7.5%	66.3%	15.0%	32.5%	1.3%

I hope that table makes sense! I think if there had been some more distiction made between understanding kanji and reading (ie, knowing the Japanese pronounciation) kanji it would have been better, as Chinese (and Koreans to some extent) have a distinct advantage over other foreigners in that respect.

Q: Can you do the following writing tasks?

	All	Write hiragana	Write katakana	Write romaji	Write a few kanji	Can’t write enough kanji by hand but can when using word processor	Write sufficient kanji	Can’t write at all	No answer
All	581	84.0%	73.7%	49.1%	49.4%	9.3%	17.6%	2.9%	1.4%
<1 year study	370	84.6%	74.1%	51.9%	45.9%	7.8%	17.8%	2.4%	0.5%
1-2 years study	96	89.6%	78.1%	50.0%	57.3%	11.5%	17.7%	3.1%	1.0%
>2 years study	80	86.3%	78.8%	43.8%	68.8%	11.3%	16.3%	1.3%	1.3%

Q: What do you hope will be the outcome of your studies? (Multiple answers, top five answers only presented)

Become able to speak Japanese	59.0%
Can increase number of friends	55.9%
Be able to get to know neighbours	36.8%
Can understand TV programs better than before	32.2%
Be able to write my name	31.5%

Q: How will you use the results of your studies? (Multiple answers, top five answers only presented) Not sure on the exact difference between this and the last question!

Speak Japanese	71.1%
Study lifestyle and culture	54.2%
Increase number of friends	47.7%
Talk with everyone	43.7%
Deepen understanding of the differences in culture and viewpoint	30.8%

Uggh, that was impossible to translate! I had to skip the last couple of tables as they made very little sense to me. There looks as if there ought to have been another document describing the survey questions in more details, but I can’t see it at all.

[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

NTV did a survey on a number of hot topics in the news right now – a lot of questions, but not much detail, so the exact meaning of some of the answers is up for debate. They carries out the survey from the 14th to 16th of this month, asking 1000 people but only getting 479 sets of replies, so it’s a bit of a small sample.

Q11: The Food Safety Commission presented a report that USA beef imports were basically safe, and would want to see imports restarted. Do you support resuming USA beef imports?

Support	43.0%
Don’t support	49.3%
Don’t know, no answer	7.7%

Q12: Rakuten has been buying TBS shares, and has proposed management integration. What do you think about TBS and Rakuten’s management integration?

By combining broadcast and (internet-based) transmission, I have expectations of new growth	20.5%
TBS’s side says it’s sudden, but I want to see change in the future	28.4%
I worry whether public (free-to-air?) broadcast will continue	28.8%
Others	4.6%
Don’t know, no answer	17.8%

Q13: Yoshiaki Murakami, against the wishes of the Hanshin Railways management ranks, in order to raise the company valuation, has proposed to float the subsiduary Hanshin Tigers baseball team on the stock market. Do you support this proposal?

Support	21.7%
Oppose	55.3%
Don’t know, no answer	23.0%

This is a question that frurstrates me a bit – I know the majority seem opposed to the idea, but why? Is there a general opposition to the idea of floating sports teams on the stock market, or is there opposition to Murakami personally, or is it just reluctance in the face of rapid change?

Q14: Tatsunori Hara has been appointed the new manager of the Giants baseball team. Do you think baseball will become interesting next year?

I think it will become interesting	49.7%
I don’t think it will become interesting	34.2%
Don’t know, no answer	16.1%

There seems an implication in this question that this year’s weak Giants automatically made the season dull. Although they are the top team in terms of support in Japan, the question seems loaded to me.

Q15: Do you think the Japanese economy will continue to improve?

I think so	36.5%
I don’t think so	55.7%
Don’t know, no answer	7.7%

Finished! A bit of a mixed bag there, but interesting opinions on quite a few of the burning issues. Thanks for reading all the way through.

[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

I found a blog reporting a Yahoo! headline supplied by the Mainichi from a press release from the private railway companies of Japan’s umbrella organisation, so excuse the fourth-handedness of the whole story. 6000 people were questioned to find out their views on bad manners on board. So, without further ado, first some of the complaints that didn’t quite make the top grade:

• Not following telephone manners (20%)
• Not following the rules when getting on and off (9%)
• Sitting on the floor
• Being noisy in the train
• Leaky headphones
• Putting on makeup
• Luggage in the way
• Ciggies (what aspect?)
• Eating and drinking on board

The worst three, gathering the majority of the votes were all to do with sitting down.

• Sitting with legs akimbo
• Young or fit people in the priority seats
• Not squeezing up when the bench seat is almost full

My pet hate is similar to the last one, people who don’t move away from the doors when they board.

Since this blog, like many others, and like real life too, is littered with adverts, it might be useful to look at how the Japanese perceive advertising. This survey from goo Research attempted to address this issue. This survey was carried out amongst 2,147 people residing in Tokyo and the surrounding prefectures of Saitama, Kanagawa and Chiba. It was performed as a real time survey using mobile phones, whatever that means. I think it means they just phoned mobile numbers from their survey group at random, so people could answer about their current surroundings.
Read the rest of this entry »

We had a visit today from the census representitive for next month’s census. The questions are mostly very simple – age, place of work, size of house (Japan has a target to within 20 years get the average family living space up from the current about 50 square metres to 100 square metres. Hoever, there are very few flats available over 100 square metres, at least not without getting into funny money, and even many houses barely top that in living area), hours worked per month, etc. The one problematic one I saw was there is a nationality box, Japanese or other, with a write-in area. All children from an international marriage are dual nationality until aged 20, so what do they tick? I saw on The Community mailing list the prevailing opinion was to tick both boxes and let them sort it out. One person did phone city hall, and their advice was to select Japanese for the kids, but that just hides the issue. Many international children may have special schooling requirements, especially if they have moved back from overseas.

On a lighter note, there is no box for religion, so we cannot repeat the efforts in New Zealand and the UK where people selected Jedi-ism as they religion. Perhaps instead for country of origin we can write in Endor (but that’s the Ewok land, isn’t it? Ohh ‘eck, I’m no Staar Wars geek!)

Looking at this survey on Japanese and their language, performed last year in January and February, it seems that three out of four of the 3,000 Japanese surveyed would normally read my blog’s title as yoron rather than seron! Only 18.9% plumped for seron whilst 73.6% went for yoron, with the remaining 7.5% either use both readings equally or just don’t know. Further investigation indicates both readings are perfectly acceptable, so one is neither more or less correct than the other.

According to a survey published in the Nikkei Shimbun of 865 foreigners incarcerated in various prisons around Japan, performed in September and October of last year, the vast majority would prefer to do their time back in their home country. Note the slightly onimous (but statistically perfectly accurate) opening phrase, highlighted for your benefit, translated directly from the original article.

Amongst the continually growing foreign prisoner population, 80% answered that if they could choose where to be imprisoned, they would select their home country rather than Japan. Amongst Chinese prisoners, who make up almost half the total number, well over 80% of them hoped for their home prisons. The main reasons given was distance from their families and the differences in language and culture. The Ministry of Justice Correctional Office said that there is a possibility of introducing international prisoner transfers with some of those countries that we cannot currently transfer to.

One could read some sinister undertones into this news item, as a lot of people are wont to do these days, but I shall not. One reason the foreigner prison population is growing is that the foreigner population is also. The exact statistical correlation is difficult to discern, however.