世論 What Japan Thinks

The Yomiuri Shimbun (Osaka only?) recently published the results of an opinion poll conducted in conjunction with goo Research to find out what users of Hankyu and Hanshin think about the takeover plans by Hankyu. Over four days at the end of June they got 1,065 members of the goo Research monitor group who were resident in the Kinki area to respond successfully to their internet-based questionnaire. 2% of the sample were under twenty years old (actually just 18 or 19 years old), 20% in their twenties, 41% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, 9% in their fifties, and 3% sixty or older. 58% of the sample was female. Note that sample sizes for the various sub-groups are not described.

For those of you not familiar with the Osaka private railway situation, both Hankyu and Hanshin run between Osaka and Kobe, along with a few other lines, of course. Although price-wise both services are much the same, Hankyu are nominally the first-class service, Hanshin third-class. (The ex-state-owned JR is second-class.) Hankyu has plush green seats with wood-panel effect walls in the carriages, and their line runs at a higher elevation between the two cities; the line, in fact, when passing through some of the posher areas like Shukugawa, Ashiya and Mikage defines the land prices to some extent; the hill side is more pricey than the sea side. Hanshin on the other hand passes through a lot of council housing estates, industrial areas, and the like, and while their trains are kept in tip-top nick, like almost all trains in Japan, of course, they are built to a much more basic design and finish.

The other business area where the contrast between the two companies could not be clearer is in their most famous subsidiaries; the manly and sweaty Hanshin Tigers baseball team versus the trying-to-be-manly-but-not-succeeding and definitely not showing any sweat Takarazuka Revue, the all-female song-and-dance theatre.

Finally, just as a bit of trivia, the name 阪神, hanshin, is just an abbreviation of the kanji for Osaka and Kobe, whilst 阪急, hankyu, is a contraction of Osaka Express.
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