世論 What Japan Thinks

Here’s a look with goo Ranking at what the top reasons the Japanese think is great about Japan and their fellow Japanese.

Demographics

Between the 21st and 23th of May 2008 1,072 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. Exactly 50% of the sample were male, 5.7% in their teens, 12.9% in their twenties, 31.8% in their thirties, 27.5% in their forties, 11.3% in their fifties, and 10.8% aged sixty or older. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.

I’ve previously presented another survey on why the Japanese like being Japanese, and this one too will no doubt induce groans and eye-rolling within my readership!

Surprisingly but thankfully, most of the feedback from Japanese reading the survey seems to have been pretty negative.
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According to a poll recently conducted on behalf of the national broadcaster, when asked if without immigration would the nation’s economy suffer, almost half (49%) of the people of this island nation bravely trying to hold out against the inevitable forces of globalisation thought that it would not suffer without an influx of foreigners, versus 46% who thought it would suffer.

When asked if all these incomers would affect the unique identity of the nation, 62% agreed whereas only 35% disagreed; almost twice as many think assimilation is not possible, perhaps indicating some longing for past glories where it was their unique culture that was imposed on other countries.

In other news, 65% of Japanese wants to see more immigration, even at the unskilled level, to address labour shortages. The backward, xenophobic, racist nation described in the first two paragraphs is actually the UK.

Note that of course the Japanese and UK situations are in no way comparable, and there are other surveys that indicate, for instance, that 55% of the Japanese public blame a decline in public order in foreign crime, versus 36% in the UK, but it does show that nihonjinron is not a uniquely Japanese disease, and that Japanese public opinion is perhaps not such an outlier when compared to other nations. Having said that, Japan is an outlier when it comes to media and state reaction to racism and allegations of such, although I do not paint as black a picture as others.

Sources: UK survey from the BBC (pdf); Japan survey from the Mainichi via Japan Probe.

[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

Between the 18th of January and the 4th of February the Cabinet Office Japan conducted a survey into what people thought about society.

Demographics

10,000 people were selected randomly from all Japanese citizens aged 20 or older for face-to-face interviews. 5,585 people were available and agreed to take part. 54.5% of the sample was female, 7.9% in their twenties, 14.8% in their thirties, 15.2% in their forties, 21.0% in their fifties, 20.8% in their sixties, 15.4% in their seventies, and 4.8% aged 80 or older. 74.6% were married, 11.8% were divorced or widowed, and 13.5% never married.

People do not seem very enamoured by the government in Q7! As in part 1, in Q11 and Q12 there seems to be significantly more pessimists than optimists. Interestingly, however, is that in Q8 “cohesiveness of the people”, perhaps another way of phrasing “homogeneous”, comes very low in the list of praiseworthy aspects of Japan, despite what Bummei Ibuki might think. Personally speaking, I have to agree with him on this if you look at the data from a statistical viewpoint.
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As my entry for the upcoming Japan Blog Matsuri, this time being hosted by Bill at Rising Sun of Nihon, may I present the latest research from goo Ranking on one of the strange and uniquely Japanese (well, I’ve never heard of such a thing back home at least!) custom of enumerating famous locations, etc, as the Three Great Things. The research for this was conducted between the 18th and 20th of January, but no further demographic information is available. All the sights will be linked to relevant images or web pages, so feel free to click through to see what the fuss is about. However, some of the text may be Japanese if I can’t find a suitable English web page. Note there is also a WikiTravel article on a few of Japan’s Three Greats. Also note that the order they appear doesn’t imply a 1, 2, 3 rank.
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As part of their 104th Ranking Research, DIMSDRIVE Research asked 5,003 members of its monitor group why it was good that they were born Japanese. This poll was conducted towards the end of November.

When I first read this I laughed out loud at the item ranked second, and I think everyone else who has lived in Japan will raise at least a wry smile when they see probably the most groan-worthy stereotypical nihonjinron-like answer.

If I had to choose the top reasons why I’m happy that I was born Scottish, I’d probably choose the Scottish socialistic (with a small ‘s’) character, the great outdoors, our football team that can inspire both laughter and tears, something to do with our culture and heritage, and, of course, that I wasn’t born English.
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This slightly old survey by goo Research into Japanese dignity and morals was conducted over the last weekend in May this year. 2,114 people from their internet monitor group successfully completed a private questionnaire: 51.2% of the sample was female, 17.9% in their teens, 16.7% in their twenties, 19.0% in their thierties, 22.2% in their forties, 18.1% in their fifties, 4.6% in their sixties, and 1.5% seventy or older. By occupation, 3.2% were board-level management, 32.8% regular employees, 5.2% contract employees, 7.4% self-employed, freelancing or working from home, 5.8% part-timers or casual workers, 18.4% housewives (no househusbands!), 18.9% students and 8.3% otherwise, or not at all, employed.

This survey is in response, I presume, to a recent best-selling (2 million at the last count) 日本人論, nihonjinron book, 「国家の品格」, “kokka no hinkaku”, “Dignity of a Nation” (please visit this link to marxy’s translation and analysis of the book) by an apparently bonkers right-wing author, Masahiko Fujiwara.

As this was a difficult translation, and perhaps subject to personal bias, I’ll also note the Japanese term that I translated, so that others can either check or apply their own personal biases instead! First, the two basic terms: 道徳観, doutokukan, I have translated as morality; 品格, hinkaku, as dignity.

In addition, the font used in the graphs in the orginal is too small, so some of the kanji were very difficult to read, so I may very well have a mistake or two there.
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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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I saw on CrissCross News (ex Japan Today) an article on a survey regarding Japanese and April Fools. Basically, it doesn’t seem very popular, with just 20% expressing a positive view of it. Almost two fifth of those who expressed a negative opinion said that their reason for disliking it was because “this kind of thing is difficult to understand in Japan” versus, for example, less a fifth taking the “bah, humbug” option. This “ware ware nihonjin” attitude (see section 9) is one of my pet annoyances in Japan! However, the main anecdote in the story:

“The driver of the bus I was riding announced there was a bomb on board. After everybody disembarked in a big panic, he exclaimed, ‘April Fool! Now wasn’t that fun?’ And all of the other passengers laughed!”

smells a bit fishy to me, and not of the Poisson D’Avril type.

In addition, Mari’s Diary also covered a few April Fools (and non-Fool) news items.

One of the reasons for this blog is to provide sets of data that perhaps refute popular notions people hold about Japan. As the primary language of this blog in English, I mostly address the foreigner population. However, in Japan there is a popular genre of … I want to write fiction, but I should say opinion so as not to appear too biased, called Nihonjinron, basically the premise that Japan and the Japanese are some not just unique, but the most unique (yes, that’s deliberately semantically incorrect) nation, with the implicit race equals nationality undertones. This fuels a huge book industry (putting the term into Amazon.jp gives me 2,065 hits), reinforcing this perceived uniqueness that the (usually Western) traveller to Japan soon encounters. The unique four seasons (let’s ignore the rainy season), intestines being three times longer, penises are shorter but thicker (the first part of this last one at least is true); or, since the Japanese often view themselves as a whole, they also assume all Westerners are alike, so we can’t use chopsticks, dislike adzuki bean paste, and can’t learn Japanese fully.

It seems, according to an article the NPR forum, that there is a plan underway to write a book exploding the myths of Nihonjinron, which I hope is being written in Japanese. It would also be worthwhile, I think, producing an English anthology of some of the more bonkers Nihonjinron arguments.