世論 What Japan Thinks

If you want to find a reason to dislike Japan, visiting 2 channel is probably the best place to start. This recent survey from JR Tokai Express Research Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com into the 2 channel bulletin board system found an awful lot of people use the place.

Demographics

On the 10th of July 2008 331 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor group employed in either the private or public sector completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 74.9% of the sample were male, 7.3% in their twenties, 40.2% in their thirties, 38.1% in their forties, and 14.5% in their fifties.

The popular image of 2 channel amongst the portion of the gaijin internet users that I am familiar with is of it as a place of unfettered right-wing strongly-nationalistic hate-mongerers. A standing joke, based very much on fact, is that whenever a Japanese person commits a headline-worthy crime, the 2 channelers will dig up a Korean ancestor for them so as to deny the wrong-doer is one of “us”.

Having said that, I don’t really know what percentage of 2 channel (by volume or by frequency of access) is of that reprehensible kind. Do any of my readers have a feel for this?

Oh, and 2 channel is blocked at work by our firewall proxy, I think. I can’t check as they’ve just recently started asking people about why they accessed blocked sites, and I don’t fancy trying to explain that away!
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2 Channel is the bulletin board system that mkes all the news in Japan, usually for all the wrong reasons! It is a cess-it, albeit an extremely popular cess-pit, always ready to pounce on the latest scandal and spread much muck, along with the all to rare smidgeon of truth. To learn more about what people get out of these boards, japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey by JR Tokai Express Research on the very topic of internet bulletin board usage.

Demographics

On the 16th of May 2007 JR Tokai Express Research interviewed 330 people by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.5% of the sample was female, 22.4% in their twenties, 36.7% in their forties, 23.9% in their forties, 10.9% in their fifties, and 6.1% in their sixties.

About the only bulletin board I’m active on these days is the Digital Point forums.
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With the recent kerfuffle in the news about the impending closure of 2 channel, or at least the threat of a forced seizure of the domain name, or perhaps just business as usual, japan.internet.com reported on goo Research’s survey into what people thought about the rumoured closing down. Between the 19th and 21st of January they interviewed 1,059 people from their monitor group. 51.9% were male, 26.9% in their twenties, 25.1% in their thirties, 24.6% in their forties, and 23.4% in their fifties.

Note that a previous survey showed that 56% of a sample of mainly business professionals have visited there, so I would have through that there might have been a stronger showing of people with definite opinions about the news, especially considering that over three quarters of the total population have visited the site, and just 4% have not heard anything about it. Also note that as far as I can see, neither my blog nor my name appears on that site, but I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad sign!
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japan.internet.com reported that in the middle of October JR Tokai Express Research interviewed 330 people from its monitor panel on the matter of usage of bulletin board sites. Of the sample, 74.8% were male, 14.8% in their twenties, 41.2% in their thirties, 30.3% in their forties, 12.1% in their fifties, and 1.5% in their sixties. Note that one of the features of JR Tokai’s monitor pool is that they have a large percentage of business men, due in part to the fact that completing these surveys awards points for discounts on the Bullet Train.

2 Channel is a cess pit, quite frankly. I’ve visited there a few times myself, but the combination of heavy slang, both ordinary slang and 2-chan specifics, the general level of vitreol that anonymity promotes, and the utter ugliness of the layout makes me soon give up in disgust.
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