世論 What Japan Thinks

Today’s quickie is from Research Panel’s Day Research, looking at going to the book store or convenience store and reading books on display, called 立ち読み, tachiyomi, literally “reading standing up”, as the photo below illustrates.

137,793 of the Research Panel monitors answered the question “Have you ever gone to a book store, convenience store, etc, read books standing up, then left without buying anything?” on the 2nd and 3rd of May 2013. 29.5% admitted to often leaving without buying, 41.8% to sometimes leaving without buying, 12.1% had never left without buying, 14.8% had never done reading standing up with or without buying, and finally 1.9% didn’t go to book stores or convenience stores.

This week’s new survey series is into electronic books, conducted by goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com as usual.

Demographics

Between the 26th and 28th of September 2011 1,078 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.5% of the sample were male, 16.3% in their teens, 18.1% in their twenties, 21.3% in their thirties, 16.3% in their forties, and 27.9% aged fifty or older.

If I exclude online manuals, I’ve read exactly one electronic book, on a iPaq PDA. Actually, make that two, as I had the very dubious pleasure of reading this on a PC and had almost succeeded in forgetting about it until now.

As the price of a basic e-ink Kindle has seriously dropped, if it’s offered for a similar price in Japan I could very well pick it up myself. I wouldn’t even consider picking up an e-bookified Android tablet, not without some major subsidies to soften the blow of the loss of functionality.
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This survey into electronic book readers by iBridge Research Plus and reported on by japan.internet.com found that the iPad seemed an attractive choice to many electronic book readers.

Demographics

On the 24th of May 2010 300 members of the iBridge monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.7% of the sample were male, 15.3% in their twenties, 30.0% in their thirties, 28.0% in their forties, 19.7% in their fifties, and 7.0% in their sixties.

There must have been a corresponding question to Q1SQ2 for Amazon’s Kindle, as although it wasn’t reported the text implied that many fewer people were interested in reading on a specialised device.

Despite good reviews of Sony’s e-readers, they don’t seem to be on sale in Japan for some reason and their Japanese web site stopped updating at the end of 2008, although if I were to hazard a guess it would be due to the difficulty in making a deal with the rather old-fashioned mindsets that seem to present in Japanese publishing houses.
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A recent survey from Marsh Inc, reported on by japan.internet.com, took an interesting look at books, and in particular how the internet has changed people’s habits.

Demographics

Between the 31st of March and the 2nd of April 2010 300 members of the Marsh monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was 50:50 male and feamle, 1.0% in their teens, 19.0 in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 20.0% in their fifties, and 20.0% aged sixty or older.

I probably read slightly more in books than on-screen, especially if printed-out technical documentation and papers are taken into consideration. Since starting using the internet, however, spare time is much more likely to be filled with surfing than with reading, and now with a netbook, it will get stuffed into a rucksack with much more frequency than a book.
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Here’s something quite strange and a bit off-topic, but given my love for emoji and Japanese emoticons in general, I thought I’d post about it.

There seems to be a project starting up to translate Moby Dick into Japanese email icons, or emoji.

I don’t really think I can say much more, except that I’ve pledged $10, and please visit the site yourself!

No, I’ve not decided to go into publishing, but instead I’ve just noticed that Google have digitised a book entitled “What Japan Thinks”, written by Kiyoshi Karl Kawakami in 1921 and are offering it in various formats on the Internet Archive for free.

The book is a collection of essays from various authors of various backgrounds written in the years just after the Great War, and provide a fascinating insight into thoughts on socialism, militarism, anti-racism and Christianity at that point in time.

I’m not sure if the phrasing in the story title is familiar to many, but in the UK where Harlequin novels are called Mills and Boon, the popular generic term for such style of romantic novels is the bodice-ripper. Anyway, that title serves to give away the results of a survey conducted by iBridge Research Plus and reported on by japan.internet.com into mobile phone novels.

Demographics

On the 2nd of March 2008 300 female members of the Research Plus monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 25.0% of the sample were in their twenties, 49.0% in their thirties, and 26.0% in their forties.

I’ve never read a mobile phone novel or even a novel on a mobile phone for that matter, although when I last translated a similar survey I mentioned that there are many readers for reading books on most types of mobiles, but like many other things I talk about I’ve never quite had time to try it out!
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Here’s a survey I translated last month but it fell through a crack and I forgot to publish it! It was performed by DIMSDRIVE Research, and looked at book purchasing.

Demographics

Between the 29th of October and the 13 of November 2008 9,566 members of the DIMSDRIVE monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.2% of the sample were male, 1.1% in their teens, 12.8% in their twenties, 31.3% in their thirties, 31.4% in their forties, 16.1% in their fifties, and 7.3% aged sixty or older.

This was one of these surveys that I really liked the idea of, but as I started translating it I realised it wasn’t living up to my expectations, thus I ended up laying it aside and forgetting about its existance!

Note that books here include manga comics in book form, I believe. I’d have loved to have seen the average spend per person per month on books, how many of their monthly book purchases are from second-hand stores, and how often people swap or borrow books with friends or from libraries.
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I remember last time I was looking for an electronic book survey two came along at once, and this time too I have seen a couple in quick succession, so I’ll again double them up. Both surveys were reported on by japan.internet.com, and the first was on electronic books and conducted by iBridge Research Plus, and the second on book purchasing online and conducted by Marsh Inc.

Demographics

For the iBridge survey, between the 30th of October and the 1st of November 2008 300 members of the iBridge monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 51.3% of the sample were female, 16.0% in their twenties, 39.7% in their thirties, 27.3% in their forties, 11.3% in their fifties, and 5.7% aged sixty or older. For the Marsh survey, between the 31st of October and the 4th of November 2008 300 members of the Marsh monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.0% of the sample were male, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 20.0% in their fifties, and 20.0% aged sixty or older.

In Q2 from iBridge, 青空文庫, Aozora Bunko, Blue Sky Library, is a great place to find stuff to read, although the formatting could do with some work to be more friendly to modern browsers that can display readings of kanji over the characters rather than inline after them. However, this is a list of viewers for Aozora Bunko. The last book I read from there was Kenji Miyazawa’s Night on the Galactic Railroad, which is a nice short story for intermediate-level students. I also don’t understand why they restricted the question to PC users, since as can be seen from the viewer page, there are suitable readers for almost everything including an iPhone. Do any of my iPhone using readers want to do a road test of these packages?
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A few months ago there was a couple of articles in the US press with suspect (or just poorly-reported) statistics on cellphone literature in Japan, but at the time I didn’t have any good data to refute the stories with. However, this weekend not one, but two surveys come along, one from goo Research and one from Marsh, both reported on by japan.internet.com, on this very topic of cellphone novels.

Demographics

For the goo Research sample, between the 22nd and 25th of September 2008 1,074 people from their online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.3% in their teens, 17.5% in their twenties, 21.9% in their thirties, 16.3% in their forties, 16.2% in their fifties, and 11.8% aged sixty or older.

For the Marsh sample, on the 26th of September 2008 they interviewed 300 females from their monitor panel by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. 21.7% were in their twenties, 51.3% in their thirties, and 27.0% in their forties.

Very surprising for me is that goo Research’s mixed sample showed a higher percentage of readership than Marsh’s young female group, although the level of enjoyment was relatively similar for both groups. The reasons for this would be interesting to investigate.
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