世論 What Japan Thinks

One thing I feel is very different since coming to Japan is that the insect population is totally different from at home; there we had bees, flies and bluebottles, caterpillars and midges; in our garden now we have praying mantises, crickets, cicidas, big dragonflies, stink bugs, asian tiger mosquitoes(vicious wee black things that bring me out in big allergic bumps) and of course the occasional cockroach, although those do not last long. To find out what the Japanese think of all these various creepie-crawlies, MyVoice conducted a survey on insects.

Demographics

Over the first five days of September 2007 13,734 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 18% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 27% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

In Q7, I wonder if most westerns are suprised that the Japanese see themselves as ants much more than as bees. Perhaps this is because the word for bee, hachi, covers (I thinks…) not just the honey bee, but wasps and hornets too.

I’ve never actually seen a firefly myself; the closest I come is passing through 蛍池, Hotaru Ga Ike, Firefly Pond, every day, but whatever water-based insect feature that may have been there in the past has, I suspect, long ago been concreted over.
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