世論 What Japan Thinks

With it looking like we have managed to survive the summer without a single power cut in Japan, it may be a good time to look at a survey from goo Research conducted in July on saving electricity.

Demographics

Between the 4th and 7th of July 2011 1,080 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.2% of the sample were male, 19.5% in their teens, 20.3% in their twenties, 19.9% in their thirties, 20.2% in their forties, and 20.1% aged fifty or older.

The survey title in the original Japanese is usually translated (as I did above) as “saving electricity”, but as a pedant I’d like to point out that you cannot really save electricity, but instead just cut down on the usage. We tried to cut down this summer by using less air conditioning and relying on a simple fan a bit more, but quite frankly I see little difference in our monthly bills.

At work we have various changes, but the stupidest one was to unplug the rechargers for our company mobile phones during peak hours. However, the company phones have hopeless batteries, so if you forgot to plug back in before a long weekend, for example, you could come back to a dead phone that has returned to factory settings. On top of that, it just takes one person to bang their head on the underside of the desk and you’ll have the Health and Safety people all over you. This activity lasted exactly two days in our team.
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Actually, this survey would be more accurately headlined “Nuclear power last year and 9 years hence” as it was conducted last September, well before everything went all pear-shaped in Fukushima. The official title for this survey from Central Research Service Inc was the environment and energy problems.

Demographics

At some point in September 2010, 3,000 people over the age of twenty selected at random from the Kansai prefectures of Osaka, Kyoto, Hyogo, Nara, Wakayama and Shiga and 1,500 people from Fukui prefecture (where all Kansai’s nuclear reactors are situated) were sent a survey by post. 1,082 people from Kansai (36%) and 569 (38%) from Fukui returned the completed survey. A breakdown by age and sex was not reported.

I’ve previously reported on a similar survey by the same company into nuclear power in Kansai, which may serve as a useful cross-reference.
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