世論 What Japan Thinks

infoPLANT recently published the results of a survey they conducted into the use of mobile phone web sites. As usual for infoPLANT, they gained their respondents by means of a self-selecting public questionnaire, available for a week at the end of August through DoCoMo’s iMode mobile phone menuing system. 4,472 people, 62.1% female, successfully completed the survey.

Whenever I publish a translation of infoPLANT’s surveys I always add a disclaimer about the self-selecting nature of the survey. However, this survey gives a good picture of the habits of heavy iMode users, as I believe most of the infoPLANT respondents are, so this can be a good reference when trying to understand the other polls they have conducted.

Also, when I saw the results of the poll, I couldn’t resist the temptation to run the story with such a title!
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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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[part 1] [part 2]

Following on from my earlier post regarding a survey on smoking by goo Research, I now present a translation of a related opinion poll from DIMSDRIVE Research on smoking manners. In mid-June they interviewed 8,273 people from their internet monitor group. 56.8% of the sample was female, 1.2% in their teens, 17.5% in their twenties, 36.2% in their thirties, 28.1% in their forties, 12.7% in their fifties, and 4.3% aged sixty or over; average age was 42.2 years old for men, 36.6 years old for women. As further demographic information they also published the occupations of the sample; 2.1% were company director level, 37.3% were ordinary full-time employees, 6.3% self-employed, 11.9% in part-time or casual labour, 3.2% worked for local or national government, 2.4% were freelancers, 24.5% housewives, 3.6% students, 1.0% retired, 4.8% unemployed, and 2.9% in others jobs.

This part of the survey focuses on manners; one of the many things that annoys me is how Japan Tobacco get around the ban on advertising smoking products by instead having a smoking manners campaign instead; be sure to check out the full gallery there! I think any resident of Japan would tell you that it seems that far less than the percentages mentioned in Q8, for instance, actually carry out these points of etiquette. I’m also very suprised by throwing away cigarette ends being seen as bad manners by many more non-smokers than lighting up in non-smoking areas!
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[part 1] [part 2]

Following on from my earlier post regarding a survey on smoking by goo Research, I now present a translation of a related opinion poll from DIMSDRIVE Research on smoking manners. In mid-June they interviewed 8,273 people from their internet monitor group. 56.8% of the sample was female, 1.2% in their teens, 17.5% in their twenties, 36.2% in their thirties, 28.1% in their forties, 12.7% in their fifties, and 4.3% aged sixty or over; average age was 42.2 years old for men, 36.6 years old for women. As further demographic information they also published the occupations of the sample; 2.1% were company director level, 37.3% were ordinary full-time employees, 6.3% self-employed, 11.9% in part-time or casual labour, 3.2% worked for local or national government, 2.4% were freelancers, 24.5% housewives, 3.6% students, 1.0% retired, 4.8% unemployed, and 2.9% in others jobs.

One important thing to note when reading these figures is that men tend to be much more likely (almost twice as likely) to smoke, and tend to smoke more, so be wary of quoting these figures directly. If you are interested in that breakdown, either refer to the original survey or ask me and I’ll do a translation of every last statistic.
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japan.internet.com recently published the results of a poll by goo Research into awareness about domains. 1,081 members of their internet monitor group successfully completed a private internet questionnaire at the start of September. The demographic breakdown was 55.8% female, 2.4% in their teens, 21.9% in their twenties, 39.9% in their thirties, 26.2% in their forties, 9.3% in their fifties and 2.7% in their sixties.

I find it quite frankly hard to believe; no, make that impossible to believe that over a quarter (or three in ten if you include those who used to have one) have their own paid-for (or free from AOL) top-level domain. I strongly suspect that this figure includes ISP sub-domain owners; I don’t know about in Japan, but when I was a Demon customer you got a whole sub-domain to yourself, @foobar.demon.co.uk, to do whatever you wanted with. Also included must be free mail vanity addresses; Plala lets you use domains like foobar@wonder-boy.jp, foobar@surfer-wave.com to create extra accounts. Finally, blogging services might also be mistakenly included, counting http://foobar.bloggingservice.com subdomain as a domain. Note how email counts as the most popular use of these domains, which backs up my suspicions. Also note that registering a .jp address costs 20,989 yen for two years, and a .co.jp costs 42,000 yen for two years, and requires you to be a registered company; my two years of hosting for this place, including two .com domains, costs me less than than!

I’ve never heard of the .mobi mobile phone domain until this survey, though.
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goo Ranking recently looked at who is Japan’s favourite Ken. Unless you are some sort of expert on the Japanese entertainment scene, I’m sure most of these names will mean nothing to you, so feel free to look them up on Google. However, I cannot understand how they came to omit me from the rankings. I’m shocked and heartbroken!

I’ve never tried this before, so here’s a good excuse to include a YouTube video of my favourite Japanese Ken, the macho samurai warrior Matsuken Samba.

japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey conducted over three days at the end of August and the start of September by Cross Marketing into mobile phone applications. They interviewed 300 mobile phone users from their monitor group by means of a private internet poll; the group was split 50:50 male and female, and 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties and 20.0% in their fifties.

Note that here “application” refers to, in the DoCoMo world, the iAppli, Java-based applications, some of which come preinstalled, and others can be downloaded that provide functionality (or fun) in addition to the basic set of tools. My phone, for instance, came with a shoot’em up game, a dog simulator, TV remote control, a graphical mail application (I think, I can’t work it!) and some sort of IM chat application (but I can’t figure that one out either, though!).
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goo Research recently published the results of a survey of their internet monitor pool on the subject of tobacco. They interviewed 1,076 people by means of a private internet-based questionnaire towards the end of July, but the survey report does not include any demographic breakdown.

Note that although there is no age, occupation or sex breakdown, given goo Research’s monitor pool there should be slightly less than average manual workers, the sort of demographic that has a higher smoking rate, I believe, so the 23.1% of regular smokers should not be extrapolated to the general population. Similarly, most goo surveys have about 55% to 60% women respondents, and women are significantly less likely to smoke (about 15% versus 50%) than men.

One strange thing about cigarettes in Japan is the uniformity of price; prices for a particular brand are the same across all vendors, from cigarette machines to big supermarkets via corner shops. In addition, the price for a case of 10 boxes is not discounted at all, except for them occasionally throwing in a small gift like a lighter or similar trinket. Beer is similar, although you do get discounts for six-packs, but soft drinks often vary in price as one might expect. Is there some law on price-setting?
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goo Ranking released the results of their latest ranking questionnaire, conducted over two days towards the end of August. An unspecified number of goo users replied to the question of what is your lasting impression of the Junichiro Koizumi premiership.

This departs from the usual fluff of these ranking surveys, but I cannot give any guarantee about how accurately the figures reflect true public opinion. As always, the score for each option is the percentage of the votes for the top answer. I’m impressed by Jun-chan’s Elvis impressions making ninth on the list, but disappointed that him dancing with his doppelganger Richard Gere didn’t get anywhere!

Additionally, I suspect that anything directly related to him backing Horiemon’s election campaigning was disallowed due to the ongoing court case.
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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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