世論 What Japan Thinks

In the middle of March this year iShare surveyed the users of their CLUB BBQ mail forwarding service to see what they thought about file-sharing (or P2P) software. They got replies from 783 people, 74% male, but no age breakdown is available.

The most (in)famous P2P program in Japan is Winny, which has been responsible for rather a few data leaks. To be strictly correct, however, the software is not responsible, it’s the user for not knowing how to set it up correctly that’s the problem, along with lax security that allows people to install dodgy software on work computers, or to place confidential information on their home PCs. See also my other recent article that ranks it as the second greatest threat of 2005!

Note that since people are being asked to describe how they may be breaking the law, there might be some degree of reluctance for people to answer truthfully, so perhaps the true rate of file-sharing within this survey group is higher than reported. Note also that the population that has been surveyed here is perhaps a bit heavy on otaku.

Finally, BitTorrent is P2P but has a decent number of legitimate uses – how did that affect the results obtained? Is it even well-known in Japan?

UPDATE: translated and published another file sharing software use poll.
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The Information-Technology Promotion Agency, Japan, or IPA for short, or even 情報処理推進機構, jouhoushorisuishinkikou in Japanese, just published their lists of the top ten threats to information security in Japan in 2005 (Japanese PDF).

Please follow the linked articles to find out more information about each vulnerability. Please also read my recently-translated survey on the use of Winny and other P2P software.
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DIMSDRIVE Research recently published the results of one of their ranking surveys, carried out in the middle of January amongst 5,782 members of their internet monitor group, 2,752 male, 3,030 female, to find out what kind of cat they’d like to keep as a pet.

This is a great excuse to publish a photo of the top-ranked and third-ranked breeds, Aria and Andy respectively, captured in a rare moment when they weren’t knocking lumps out of each other or aggravating my allergy with their hair!

The number who don’t want to keep cats is not recorded. Note that a Japanese cat most likely mean a mixed breed with a stubby tail, the most common wild and semi-wild cats you see around the streets here.
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MyVoice carried out another of their quirky surveys at the start of March, asking 15,608 members of their MyVoice internet community about their blissful alcohol moments. 46% of the respondents to their internet questionnaire were male, with 24% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, and 12% in their fifties.

The average Japanese person’s moment of alcoholic bliss is a standard beer whilst eating a meal with the spouse in the living room.

My all too rare, sadly, moments of bliss with alcohol are a cool evening sitting with wifey outside a European bar or cafe sipping a cool continental lager or weissbier.

Oh, and this is my 200th post – if I had some beer in the house I’d raise a glass in celebration!
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Jan Kuczynski let me know about a survey he translated on the colour and ‘feel’ of handsets that people in Japan want. A rather interesting survey that I wish I’d found first. I can’t imagine what a plant-like feel phone would be though!

I also hope that it’s just mobiles that these three women in his logo are holding…

[part 1] [part 2]

The Cabinet Office of Japan conducted a survey back in November and December of 2004 to discover what people thought about gender roles in society. Although slightly old, this survey, performed by proper statistical means, should have a high degree of accuracy. They chose 5,000 people for face-to-face interviews, with 3,502 of them consenting to be surveyed.

This is a rather sizeable survey, so the results will be published over two days.

This second half contains a number of rather interesting figures, showing that women seem to be accepting of their fate as housewives.

This was a rather difficult translation job – most of the other surveys just have short and snappy questions and answer options; here there were a few rather tricky sentences that I may have made a mistake or two with…
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[part 1] [part 2]

The Cabinet Office of Japan conducted a survey back in November and December of 2004 to discover what people thought about gender roles in society. Although slightly old, this survey, performed by proper statistical means, should have a high degree of accuracy. They chose 5,000 people for face-to-face interviews, with 3,502 of them consenting to be surveyed.

This is a rather sizeable survey, so the results will be published over two days.

It would be instructive to compare and contrast the results here with a previous report I translated on how women perceive their own roles in the workplace.

Notice that in Q3 the most important thing Japanese think should be does is to change society’s perception, rather than perhaps any legal measures. This option, I suppose, does not force men to change, and thinking back to the previous equal opportunity survey, women are perhaps acknowledging that the equal opportunities laws have not changed anything, so it must be attitudes that should be changed in order for them to see any significant benefit.
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japan.internet.com and JR Tokai Express Research recently conducted a survey to find out about 迷惑メール , meiwaku me-ru, nuisance mail literally, or unsolicited mail, or simply just spam. They interviewed 330 mobile phone owners, 60% male, from all around the country by means of an internet-based survey. The sample consisted of 25.2% in the their twenties, 43.0% in their thirties, 21.5% in their forties, 7.6% in their fifties, and 2.7% in their sixties.

Initially, mobile phones’ email address defaulted to just the telephone number; in fact, when I first came to Japan my phone had no option for even changing the mail address. Now, with the increased awareness (and increased incidence too) of spam, DoCoMo at least (presumably the other carriers do similar things) give new customers a default email address that consists of their phone number plus a few extra random characters to defeat dictionary attacks.

I personally have got zero spam, mainly as I have a user name that is in no Japanese dictionary and I don’t sign up with dodgy sites that might leak mail addresses.
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As a sort of follow-on from the survey on mobile phone handedness, japan.internet.com, in conjunction with Cross Marketing Inc, had a look at what sort of computer and monitor people used. They interview 379 internet users, 50.1% male, 16.3% in their teens, 16.1% in their twenties, 16.4% in their thirties, 16.4% in their forties, 17.2% in their fifties, and 17.7% sixty or over.

I believe this survey is looking at home computers rather than office machines, although this is not clearly stated within the report.

They did in fact look at a few other factors that seem more interesting the just screen resolution, but sadly they have not made these results public. However, the resolution information may prove useful to web designers, and seems to back up the statistics I see from my own blog: 1024 x 768 is the benchmark. However, whether or not people run their browsers fullscreen is a question for another survey!
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, looked at the perception of online DVD rental. They interviewed 1,061 people from their monitor group at the start of March by means of an internet-based questionnaire. The sample was 43.3% male, with 25.0% in their twenties, 41.5% in their thirties, 24.5% in their forties, and 9.0% in their fifties.

I haven’t rented a DVD since I got married, although perhaps before I did I might have investigated one of these companies, as I heard a bit about NetFlix from USA residents, and my local Tsutaya had a pretty thin collection of DVDs. Now, I don’t have enough time to even just catch up with what we record off cable! However, if I could find a cheap portable player – about Nintendo DS size with one face all screen, and an SD memory card slot – I’d snap one up in an instant for viewing on the train. The PSP and its UMD just look a bit too bulky and perhaps battery-hungry for my needs. I’d love to catch up on Monkey, both the original and the new versions, for instance.
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