世論 What Japan Thinks

Just in time for the start of the real summer season (two months or more of 30°C and more days and nights), at the start of July MyVoice looked at the use of deodorants. They got 12,473 valid responses from their private internet-based questionnaire to their monitor group. 54% of the responses were from women, 3% were in their teens, 21% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, and 12% in their fifties.

If anyone asks me what to buy before they come to Japan, my first recommendation is always anti-perspirant; it is, in fact, the only product I get shipped from abroad. Other foreigners suggest that Japanese brands are not so strong, but I suspect it might just be a combination of unfamiliarity with brands ,and that stick or gel type deodorants are almost non-existant here. I have personally only seen tiny almost lipstick-sized tubes that I presume would be pretty useless for any serious application; most of the sales here are, as you can see, of sprays.

There is a belief (or is it a meme? Or nihonjinron) that the Japanese don’t sweat much; whilst I can’t point you to any international surveys or literature to confirm or dismiss that idea, my personal experience is that they do sweat, and often profusely, as on the rush hour train I will often see people with huge beads of sweat even though they have done nothing more than a light stroll to the station. I suspect one contributor to this is the stupidly over-cooled trains (and buildings, etc), as the constant changing from cold to hot to cold mustn’t be kind to the body’s internal temperature regulators. The headline figure indicates that regardless of quantity of sweat produced, the smell of it is a concern to most. Of course, all Japanese could smell but a quarter just don’t care…
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