世論 What Japan Thinks

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.

This is a continuation from a previous post.

I think this summary of wartime and post-war surveys are interesting even today when we compare them with public opinion regarding Iraq and Afghanistan. Some unpopular choices were carried out, such as only 4% backing keeping Hirohito as the Emperor, but they seem to have worked out rather well in the end.

In December 1944, 88% percent of Americans were in favour of punishing the Japanese military leaders after the war. The article says “some suggested punishments went into hair-raising details”, but fortunately we are spared these details.

In June 1945, only (only?) 54% of the American people could correctly name Hirohito as the Emperor, but regardless of what he was called, a third were in favour of the death penalty for him, 11% wanted life imprisonment, 9% exile, 17% wanted the courts to decide, and 4% wanted nothing done to him – “He’s only a figurehead for the warlord” was a typical reason. 23% gave various other suggestions or had no opinion, and 3% suggested keeping him as a puppet to run Japan for the United States.

When getting onto the topic of prisoner of war treatment, in mid-1945 (post war or not is not noted, but I think this was during the war) public sentiment held the Japanese people guilty by association of breaching the Geneva Convention; when asked “To what extent do you think the Japanese people approve of the killing and starving of prisoners; entierly, partly, or not at all?”, 63% chose “entirely, 25% “partly”, and just 4% “not at all”. When asked the same question about the Germans, just 31% judged them “entirely” approving of mistreatment, 51% “partly”, and 4% “not at all”. In addition, 8% thought the German people were not aware of what was going on, and 6% had no opinion. Figures for these last two opinions in relation to the Japanese is not noted.

In August 1945, before Japan’s surrended, 53% of Americans were in favour of Japanese war crime trials, 14% wanted to hang them high with no due process or other similar summary dispatching of the bad guys, and a third advocated reeducation and democratisation. This last figure is in contrast with just 8% holding similar views in the 1944 survey published above.

In September 1945, the early days of the American occupation of Japan, 61% the American people felt they were not being tough enough on the Japanese. about a third thought it was about right, and just 1% felt they were too tough. 6% had no opinion. When viewed by education levels, the more educated people were more likely to think the treatment was about right. Older people also tended to find the treatment about right.

As a comparison, in October 1945 a similar poll was taken regarding attitudes to the German occupation, although since the occupation had started earlier, a direct comparison is difficult to make. Around half the sample thought they were not tough enough, 37% thought it was just right, and 2% that it was too tough, with 11% undecided.

Another poll in October 1945 illustrated that people thought the occupation of Japan would be a long-term affair; the median figure was 10 years, with college graduates reckoning on 15 years.

Towards the end of 1949, this question was asked: “General Douglas MacArthur says the Japanese have met the terms of surrender and are now entitled to a peace treaty. Do you think the United States should or should not take our troops out of Japan and let her govern herself?” 64% thought they should stay, 26% backed General MacArthur, and 10% didn’t know. However, the question did not say under what terms people wanted the troops to stay in Japan.

In 1946, when asked how the occupations of Japan and Germany were doing, in response to the question “Do you think we have done a good job or a poor job in handling our occupation of Japan (Germany?)”, 60% thought the USA was doing a good job in Japan versus 31% in Germany; 15% versus 24% thought it was fair, and and just 4% and 2% thought the troops were doing a poor job. The main reason given for Japan getting a good rating was the excellent leadership of General MacArthur, others included the lack of trouble in Japan, successful efforts for re-introducing democracy (eg, votes for women), and the fact that Japan had a unified command structure rather than Germany being split into four parts. By 1949, 81% approved of General MacArthur, and only 5% disapproved.

In the first half of this article, we saw the extreme hostility towards Japan in the war years. However, by 1949 attitudes had softened considerably; 34% felt friendly towards the Japanese people, 30% neutral, and 29% unfriendly. College-educated people were distictly more favourable, with half of them feeling friendly. Somewhat surprising, perhaps, was that war veterans had very similar positive attitudes to the Japanese.

In addition, when the same sample was asked “Do you think the United States should or should not do more to help Japan get back on her feet?”, 31% favoured more help, 57% opposed more, and 12% had no opinion. For those who expressed friendliness towards the Japanese people in the previous question, 49% supported more help whilst 80% of those unfriendly opposed further aid. College-level respondents voted 43% in favour and 48% opposed to more aid whilst those who only finished grammar school were at 25% and 62% respectively.

Finally, when asked what they liked most and least about the Japanese, the popular virtues identified included “industrious”, hardworking”, “cooperating with the authorities”, “great manufacturing skill”, “clever” and “smart. The key vices were “sneaky”, “treacherous”, “cruel”, “barbaric”, and “cannot understand or appreciate democracy because they are too deeply imbued with Emperor-worship”.

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.

As part of DIMSDRIVE Research’s 92nd Ranking Survey, towards the end of August they asked members of their internet monitor group which habits they want to break, but just can’t manage to. They got 5,595 responses, with 2,874, or 51.4% of the sample male.

This is a slightly higher male to female ratio than usual for DIMSDRIVE, so perhaps that suggests men have more bad habits?

I’d love to see a survey on what habits foreigners wish Japanese would quit! I’d put slurping noodles and sniffing rather than blowing one’s nose at the top of the list.
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japan.internet.com published the results of a survey carried out in the middle of September by JR Tokai Express Research into how people back up data at home. They interviewed 330 people employed in private or public enterprises; 82.4% were male, 13.0% in their twenties, 43.0% in their thirties, 27.0% in their forties, 14.5% in their fifties, and 2.4% in their sixties.

I, like almost half in this survey, back up my important stuff (mostly photos) to CD-R on a semi-regular basis. Actually, last month I almost had a back up muck-up when wifey’s install of Outlook Express suddenly lost all its address book after she tried to add a new address and I had been rather remiss about backing it up recently. It turned out, however, to be a bug in a recent Microsoft security update, which fortunately is easily resolved by following the procedure described in the linked Knowledge Base article.
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japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey by JR Tokai Express Research into how people exchange mobile phone numbers and email addresses. 330 people from their monitor group successfully completed a private online survey; 62.7% of the group was male, 15.5% in their twenties, 37.0% in their thirties, 26.1% in their forties, 14.8% in their fifties, and 6.7% in their sixties.

Although the infra-red connection is probably the surest way to exchange data, one problem is, if my experiences are anything to go by, people forget how to use the feature! There is one general “Receive infrared” menu option, but everyone seems to forget where it is; it would make more sense when you select the “Add new contact” option to have a sub-menu saying “Receive data from infra-red”. Coupled with that, there should be a semi-automated exchange. Actually, it might be better to add to the “Display own number” screen an “Exchange via infra-red”, so if both parties select that screen, the send and receive can occur at the same time.

I’ve probably now given away a patentable idea that my employers could have used!
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Last month goo Ranking published three surveys regarding digital cameras; what would you first shoot with a new digital camera, what is the most important point when selecting a digital camera, and finally what colour would you want the digital camera body to be.

As always, these rankings should be taken with a pinch of salt due to the lack of demographics and the open nature of the poll. Remember that the score listed is the percentage of votes for each choice relative to the top choice.
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japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey carried out over three days in early September by goo Research into the use of instant messenging (IM) software. 1,063 members of their internet monitor group successfully completed their private questionnaire; 46.9% of the sample was male, 22.7% in their twenties, 44.0% in their thirties, 22.7% in their forties, 8.4% in their fifties, and 2.3% in their sixties.

I’m both surprised and not surprised by how low the figure for usage at work is, namely less than 9%. Surprised because I get the impression from Slashdot that the vast majority of American workers use it, and in fact it seems to be actively encouraged in many big corporations. Not surprised, because my workplace has the network locked down pretty tight (in places…) so I expect the more common ports are blocked, although you can, of course, use most of the IM software through the HTTP port 80, but then the proxy might have blacklisted the servers. I’d better stop here before I (a) get all bitter and twisted about company policy, and (b) leak some confidential information through my bitterness and twistedness!
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Over a week in the middle of July DIMSDRIVE Research look at that Japanese staple, tofu. They interviewed 4,171 members of their internet monitor group by means of a private questionnaire; 65.0% of the respondents were female, 1.7% in their teens, 18.7% in their twenties, 33.7% in their thirties, 25.3% in their forties, 13.0% in their fifties, and 7.6% aged sixty or older.

Tofu (and soy beans in general) is just about my favourite Japanese food, and I recommend everyone to try a posh tofu restaurant at least once, even if you, like AA Gill of the Times, believe it to be no more than “congealed river scum”. Recently, I’ve not eaten it as much I usually do, although I still have some two to four days a week, it’s abura-age or Koya-dofu, not the plain block tofu.

Also, this weekend I had a wonderful tofu lunch at Seed’s Kitchen in Takarazuka (I should ask them for a discount for this free advert!). As pictured down towards the bottom of that page, it features seven different styles of tofu and rice with black soya beans for just 1200 yen.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on goo Research’s 27th regular monthly survey into blogs. The reported results this time were for the basics of blogging. Over four days at the start of September they interviewed 1,074 people from their internet monitor group. Demographically, 56.0% were female, 2.6% in their teens, 21.6% in their twenties, 41.2% in their thirties, 20.6% in their forties, 10.8% in their fifties, and 3.3% aged sixty or older.

I’d love to see how these figures compare with other countries; over half the bloggers update at least once a week, with women 8 percentage points higher than men. Blogs are now almost universally known, and with over a third of the people having blogged, blogging is becoming a standard practice for internet users.

It’s also interesting to see that men prefer the passive communication of trackbacks, whilst women much prefer actively commenting on other people’s blogs.

Finally, I’d like to see them ask how many people have their own hosted solution.
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Whith the Autumn national road safety campaign coming upon us soon, it is quite timely to look at this survey published by japan.internet.com and carried out by Cross Marketing Inc into mobile phones and hands-free equipment. They interviewed 320 car drivers who also own mobile phone from their internet monitor group, exactly 50:50 male and female as usual, and 25.0% in their twenties, 25.0% in their thirties, 25.0% in their forties, and 25.0% in their fifties. How often they actually drove cars is not noted, however.

When reading the answers in Q3, remember first that the respondents are being asked to admit if they break the law and second that the response, “Often” (my translation of やや守る, yaya mamoru) is open to interpretation; would people who refrain from calling or mailing out but answer incoming calls select “often” as their reply? My completely unscientific observations would suggest that there’s a lot more scofflaws than just the 7% this survey suggests.
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