世論 What Japan Thinks

With tomorrow being April Fools’ Day, what would be more appropriate than a look with iShare at virtual April Fools.

Demographics

Between the 10th and 13th of March 2009 380 mobile phone-owning members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.4% of the sample were male, 37.4% in their twenties, 27.4% in their thirties, and 35.3% in their forties.

April Fools’ Day is I feel not widely known in Japan, although that wasn’t one of the questions asked in this survey. I always keep thinking I ought to do an April Fool here, but I never come up with a good idea. Or am I just saying that to try to catch you off your guard? Or did I just state that in order to confuse you? You’ll just have to wait until tomorrow!

For reference, the JIAFA, Japan Internet April Fool Association, mentioned in Q3 has its website here, although it is rather a barren place. It might be a bit more lively tomorrow, however.

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Following my recent article on the Japanese view of April Fools (which, incidentally, has had rather a lot of hits mainly due to people reading the title as being about a certain Ms April fooling around in Japan), I discovered a survey reported by japan.internet.com, performed in conjuction with JR Tokai Express Research, on what people thought about April Fools. They interviewed 331 people in public or private employment by means of an internet questionnaire. The group was 81.6% male, and the participants were 15.7% in their twenties, 39.9% in their thirties, 36.9% in their forties, 6.9% in their fifties, and just 0.6% aged sixty or older.

Apparently there is an organisation called JIAFA, or the Japan Internet April Fool Association, that has, well, I haven’t read it yet, so I don’t know!

This article finished with a wee opinion bit that said that the reason for the decrease may be either just a loss of interest, or that since news spreads like wildfire on the internet, publishing even just one wee white lie may be becoming dangerous.
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I saw on CrissCross News (ex Japan Today) an article on a survey regarding Japanese and April Fools. Basically, it doesn’t seem very popular, with just 20% expressing a positive view of it. Almost two fifth of those who expressed a negative opinion said that their reason for disliking it was because “this kind of thing is difficult to understand in Japan” versus, for example, less a fifth taking the “bah, humbug” option. This “ware ware nihonjin” attitude (see section 9) is one of my pet annoyances in Japan! However, the main anecdote in the story:

“The driver of the bus I was riding announced there was a bomb on board. After everybody disembarked in a big panic, he exclaimed, ‘April Fool! Now wasn’t that fun?’ And all of the other passengers laughed!”

smells a bit fishy to me, and not of the Poisson D’Avril type.

In addition, Mari’s Diary also covered a few April Fools (and non-Fool) news items.

You may notice that I’ve added a Related Posts option that hopefully can point you towards related stories. The whole thing works automatically, so if you get diverted to a seemingly unrelated post, don’t blame me!

As I mentioned before, I’ve got the Performancing Metrics up and running, and finally my public stats are available. No laughing at the back please! Clicking the Performancing button at the bottom left achieves the same effect.

No April Fools from me this year, as I had a complete lack of inspiration! Did anyone find some interesting ones?