世論 What Japan Thinks

[part 1] [part 2]

The Cabinet Office Japan recently released a survey into people’s thoughts about public safety in Japan. 3,000 people aged 20 or older were chosen by random, and between the 14th and 24th of December 1,795 of them, or 59.8%, took part in face-to-face interviews. Of those who did not participate, 124 had moved, 79 were on long-term absenses from home, 365 were not at home, 58 could not be found, 514 refused to participate, and 65 did not take part for other reasons. Demographically, 54.1% were female, 8.9% between 20 and 29, 15.0% between 30 and 39, 16.9% between 40 and 49, 21.9% between 50 and 59, 20.7% between 60 and 69, and 16.7% aged 70 or older.

The “gaijin hanzai” comment is related to the recent uproar regarding widespread availability of a magazine playing on precisely the fears expressed in this survey.

When I first heard about this survey I was really keen to get hold of it and translate it, but when I saw quite how much the fear of the foreign peril seems to have been stirred up, I got quite depressed. When the news of this poll appeared on Japan Today I posted a sarcastic comment (that got pulled by the moderators!) about how I was disappointed that foreigners did not make the list of dangers in that summary by Kyodo News. Little did I know that it was perhaps selective editing by the press so as not to hurt our English-speaking feelings. About the only bright spot I can find is that international terror organisations, etc, (with that “etc” covering local terror groups, the main ones so far that have actually attacked Japan) are not high in people’s concern. Note though that Q5 mentioned only international terrorists, there is no “etc”, or other questions on local loony groups.
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According to the Center for Multicultural Information and Assistance (多文化共生センター) and reported on in the Kobe Shimbun, the easiest places in Japan for foreigners to live in were the prefectures Kanagawa and Hyogo (my home), and the cities of Kawasaki, Yokohama, and Osaka (my previous home city and the location of my employer).

Doing poorly were the perfectures of Ibaraki, Hiroshima, Kochi, Fukuoka, Oita and Kagoshima on twenty to twenty-nine points, and right at the bottom with nineteen or less points each were Aomori, Aichi, Saga, Nagasaki and Okinawa. It is significant to note, I think, that Aichi has many, many foreigners residing there working for Toyota and related companies, Nagasaki is rather international, and Okinawa of course has lots of USA military bases.

UPDATE: Scott and Durf have provided information (see comments below) on how the points were awarded. I’ll translate the list of questions tonight, if possible.

In addition to the the question posed in the headline, I’d like to ask my Tokyo-based readers if your Japanese friends have tried taking you there, and what did they want to take you to there?

I discovered today another new-to-me web site, but this time it’s of a rather prominent research company, Macromill Inc. They’ve got some interesting opinion poll results on their site, but one that caught my eye was this one on the image of the towns within Tokyo. Over one day at the end of September last year they interviewed 1,032 people from their online monitor group, evenly split 516 male and 516 female, and each sex also evenly split with 129 people in each age band from between 20 and 29, 30 to 39, 40 to 49, and 50 years or older.

This is a slightly old survey, and since I am not a Tokyo expert by any long shot, I’ll skip a full translation (although give me a shout if you would like to see more!) and instead focus on the most relevant portion for my readers, a couple of images related to foreigners. Note that although the Japanese word 外国人, gaikokujin, means anyone from overseas, it is usually taken as referring to non-Asian foreigners. (Is it? I and many other English-speaking foreigners often assert this, but is there any evidence to support or disprove this supposition?)

Also note that Q1 specifically mentions foreigner friends, so it is presumably not just where they would recommend the average tourist should go. On the other hand, the respondent may be thinking of a friend from abroad coming to Tokyo for the first time, so perhaps it is the tourist spots that they are thinking of?
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In one of these strange and totally unscientific surveys that goo Rankings rather often conducts, we find out who the Japanese consider to be a model international couple. That is “model” as in “role model”, not “fashion model”. There is no demographic or other information for this poll, except that it was conducted over three days towards the end of November.

I believe the gist of the original Japanese question is after which international couple’s example would they like to model their relationship. One wonders about the thought processes that went on in the selection of two other-kind-of-model brides.

You may also note that all bar one seems to be a marriage with a white foreigner.

UPDATE: Following feedback from Roy, I’ve promoted (demoted?) Kumiko Goto to just “model”.
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goo Ranking recently published the results of another silly ranking survey, this time on which famous person born overseas but living in Japan would you most like to go on an overseas trip with. As usual, no demographic information is available, and the scores given are percentages of the top votes.

Don’t ask me why Thane is so popular, and many of the other answers seem like people were just struggling to remember any gaijin’s name. Note that KONISHIKI, an ex-sumo champion, is actually a naturalised Japanese, I believe. Also note that for some reason they give the state that the USA people were born in, and “Los Angeles State” is an error in the published survey!

From that list, I think Panzetta Girolamo (a middle-aged Italian playboy sort of guy) is about the only person who might be interesting to go off on a trip with.
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In November last year, DIMSDRIVE Research interviewed via an internet-based questionnaire 3,604 people (1,620, or 45.0% male) regarding what foreigner they thought was good at Japanese.

To most people who have never been to Japan this probably sounds like a really bizarre question to ask, but with Japan having only about 2% non-Japanese residents, and with the vast majority of these actually being born in Japan and often bred as Japanese (Google for zainichi), the number of non-native speakers of Japanese is very low, and of course Nihonjinron tells the Japanese that we gaijin cannot learn the language properly. (Actually, Japanese is relatively easy for basic speaking fluency, as most verb and noun conjugation is regular, the core vocabularly is quite small, and pronunciation is mostly straightforward. However, the intricacies of polite language and kanji (although kanji is not excessively difficult, there’s a lot of it to learn!) inhibit most people from getting to perfect mastery.) In fact, being told you are good at Japanese by a Japanese person is more often than not お世辞, oseji, flattery, bordering on the line of patronisation, which I suspect is the reason that the third-placed person is there.
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I’ve often heard about how a lot of companies, Toyota in particular, employ a good number of foreign workers – Toyota is heavily into employing South American staff – but I’d never seen any figures to back up these assertions. There are also suggestions that a lot of firms in the Toyota supply chain, for instance, employ illegals, but I suspect this is purely (mainly?) rumour and speculation.

However, today I saw some data on a large American-owned multinational with manufacturing facilities in Japan (printed matter, so no web link to the article, and the company name is omitted just in case…) that said that within Japan 16% of their staff (how many people in total are employed by the company in Japan was not noted, and their web site does not say either, but I suspect it is a good few thousand) are non-Japanese; of the 16%, 20% were from the Philippines, 19% were Korean, 16% Indian, 13% from the USA, 12% Chinese and 20% from 22 other countries including Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia and Venezuela.

These numbers are interesting and surprising as the total foreign population of Japan is barely 2%, so at first glance this might boast of the company’s commitment to diversity, but the data is also worrying as I wonder how many of these workers are doing a 3K job on the rather dodgy trainee visa scheme? How representative is this company of all the firms in Japan, I know not either.

According to a survey published in the Nikkei Shimbun of 865 foreigners incarcerated in various prisons around Japan, performed in September and October of last year, the vast majority would prefer to do their time back in their home country. Note the slightly onimous (but statistically perfectly accurate) opening phrase, highlighted for your benefit, translated directly from the original article.

Amongst the continually growing foreign prisoner population, 80% answered that if they could choose where to be imprisoned, they would select their home country rather than Japan. Amongst Chinese prisoners, who make up almost half the total number, well over 80% of them hoped for their home prisons. The main reasons given was distance from their families and the differences in language and culture. The Ministry of Justice Correctional Office said that there is a possibility of introducing international prisoner transfers with some of those countries that we cannot currently transfer to.

One could read some sinister undertones into this news item, as a lot of people are wont to do these days, but I shall not. One reason the foreigner prison population is growing is that the foreigner population is also. The exact statistical correlation is difficult to discern, however.

Well, we’ve had the ultimate test of public opinion (more analysis of the numbers later) and Koizumi led the LDP and New Komeito alliance to win over two-thirds of the seats in the new lower house, knocking out half of the people kicked out of the party for opposing the Post Office privatisation, the very issue that brought on the election in the first place.

The Japan-based foreigner (and ex-foreigner!) communities are buzzing right now, much of it filled with humbug about how could the Japanese be so stupid as to vote for the LDP, with the implied “…but we, of course, know better”. I’m looking right now for exit polls on why people chose to vote, but the implications that people have of it being a single-issue (PO privatisation) election does not mesh with previous polls which indicated that voters were getting less interested in the PO issues.

According to the exit polls, the 20.2% who described themselves as unaffiliated voters voted by a small majority (42% versus 35% averaged over the two votes) for the main DPJ opposition party but with the high numbers of affiliated voters, this was not enough to alter the results.

Koizumi’s main slogan was “Don’t stop the reforms!” We’ll see how he sticks to these through the life of the parliament. However, he is, according to LDP rules, going to reach the end of his term as leader next year, and will not be eligible to stand again, so will his reforms live on with a new leader?