世論 What Japan Thinks

Pet Soken, a pet insurance arm of PETOFFICE, recently conducted a survey into pets and babies, in particular to see how parents allow them to interact.

Demographics

Between the 5th of June and the 2nd of July 2013 730 people completed a survey available on Pet Soken’s pages and requiring a Facebook login to prevent multiple answers. 64.0% of the sample were female, but no further demographic data was offered.

Not having a baby, I cannot answer from experience, although I would probably go for the not paying much attention to cleanliness or anything else. On the other hand, my wife would probably tick every box in Q2!
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The Cabinet Office Japan released the results of a survey last month into animal welfare. Note that the Act on Welfare and Management of Animals mentioned later in the survey has an official English translation, if you’re interested in that.

Demographics

Between the 2nd and 12th of September 2010 3,000 people over the age of 20 chosen at random from resident registers were approached to complete a face-to-face questionnaire. 1,939 people were available and completed the survey, a response rate of 64.6%. 54.8% of the sample were male, 9.2% in their twenties, 16.1% in their thirties, 16.5% in their forties, 17.1% in their fifties, 21.2% in their sixties, and 19.9% aged seventy or older.

I remember as a child my brother (or it could have been me…) drawing a picture of what he wanted to be when he grew up, and he chose to be in charge of the euthanasia section of the local pound.

The Act on Welfare and Management of Animals is pretty tame; the average Japanese pet shop has cages stacked two or three high giving dogs little space to stand, let alone play. They get put on display after about six weeks, so don’t get weaned properly, and there are persistant rumours that if they get past their sell-by date of around five months or so, they get sent back to the breeder for “disposal”.
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The Cabinet Office Japan released the results of a survey last month into animal welfare. Note that the Act on Welfare and Management of Animals mentioned later in the survey has an official English translation, if you’re interested in that.

Demographics

Between the 2nd and 12th of September 2010 3,000 people over the age of 20 chosen at random from resident registers were approached to complete a face-to-face questionnaire. 1,939 people were available and completed the survey, a response rate of 64.6%. 54.8% of the sample were male, 9.2% in their twenties, 16.1% in their thirties, 16.5% in their forties, 17.1% in their fifties, 21.2% in their sixties, and 19.9% aged seventy or older.

Comparing the answers for cats and dogs, I don’t really know why pet cats run twice the risk of getting their wedding tackle removed!
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Following on from yesterday’s look (well, it was supposed to be yesterday’s but I forgot to press the “Publish” button!) at the life of a Japanese dog, this survey from iShare took a look at people’s opinions regarding pet funerals – any pet, not just dogs.

Demographics

Between the 5th and 8th of July 2010 480 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.6% of the sample were male, 28.1% in their twenties, 34.8% in their thirties, and 37.1% in their forties.

In Q3, the story was that a pet funeral business in Hanno city in Saitama prefecture, rather that giving Fido a proper send-off, they just fly-tipped him and hundreds of his buddies down a back road. In order to counteract this problem in the future, from 2012 the government will require pet funeral business to be registered.

Note that since Japan is nominally Buddhist especially in matters of death, cremation is also the prefered method for disposing of pets. If I had a dead pet, I’d just get the council round to take him away, but I’m sure my wife would have other ideas.
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This recent survey from DIMSDRIVE Research into pets had interesting information regarding insurance, but sadly the number of pets per person were not reported, a figure that would have helped in understanding some of the numbers.

Demographics

Between the 11th and 26th of March 2009 10,501 members of the DIMSDRIVE monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was 50:50 male and female (one more female than male, but she was lost in rounding), 1.1% were in their teens, 13.1% in their twenties, 33.8% in their thirties, 30.6% in their forties, 14.7% in their fifties, and 6.7% aged sixty or older. Additional demographic information included 51.4% lived in a house, 33.5% in a flat, 12.7% in an apartment, and 2.4% in other accommodation.

I really don’t like pet shops in Japan at all; the cages on display are far too small, and they take the animals away from their mothers too early – about six weeks is the standard figure, while they are still cute enough to sell. I remember last year seeing one male kitten that was so desparate for mother’s milk that it had taken to sucking his own nipple, pulling out a lot of his own hair and leaving a big ugly raw-red mark on his chest.
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MyVoice recently published their second survey into pet life, a rather too direct translation of the Japanese title of the survey. I also translated the results of their first look at pet life almost three years ago, for reference.

Demographics

Over the first five days of September 2008 15,293 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed a private online survey. 54% of the sample were female, 1% in their teens, 15% in their twenties, 36% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 19% in their fifties.

When I wrote about cat pee and poo recently one question that came up there too was about shedding hair. One of my readers, sasutan, was kind enough to highlight the FURminator as an effective means of reducing shedding. However, some investigation on the internet priced it at around 10,000 yen (US$100), but further investigation showed that an alternative, the ShedBuster is widely available in Japan at under a third of the price, and apparently even uses the identical metal brush head supplier as the FURminator. One especially nice bonus of these undercoat brushes is that unlike ordinary brushes they don’t cause huge clouds of hair, but instead almost all the hair clumps in the tines, so there’s fewer problems for those with cat allergies, and of course less dead hair also means less dandruff, the cause of most cat allegies, so it’s a win-win device.
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Sorry for the rather boring headline, but since Nakamura ate my dog last week, I thought I’d better stay clear of any suggestive remarks regarding cat-owning young Japanese women and photographs of their… well, I hope you get the picture, so when you do, please forward it to me. Anyway, back at the survey, BlogCh and CLUB BBQ investigated pets.

Demographics

Between the 14th and 6th of May 2008 582 users of the free email forwarding service CLUB BBQ completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 51.9% of the sample was male, 15.5% in their twentes, 42.7% in their thirties, 31.9% in their forties, and 9.9% of other ages.

Pictured above is my lovely American Shorthair who is also my mobile phone wallpaper.

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goo Research, in conjunction with the Yomiurin Shimbun, published the results of a survey conducted into youth and volunteering and pets. This is the second time there’s been a strange combining of topics by goo Research; last time it was love and comedy.

Demographics

Between the 24th and 26th of April 2007 550 members of goo Research’s online monitor panel completed a private questionnaire. There was an exactly 50:50 split between the sexes, and 35% of the respondents were students, 31% in full time employment, and 11% fulltime homemakers. The occupation (or lack thereof) of the remaining 23% was not reported.

Looking at the results, it is nice to see that a majority have some degree of interest in volunteer activities, with a large minority willing to take part in them. Through the union at work I occasionally see calls for volunteers for river bank clearing, etc and whilst I have an interest in that, I really do not want to do anything for the union as they do very little for me. Last year in fact they tried to get me to volunteer (there is an almost-obligatory volunteering system) to take part in a campaign to get people to vote.
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Over four days in early March (sorry, but they are always slow to report) Central Research Services, Inc carried out a survey on views on pets. 2,000 people throughout the country aged 20 or over were randomly selected for face-to-face interviews; just over two-thirds, or 1,341 agreed to participate. The same questions had also been asked in other surveys carried out in 1999, 2000, 2002 and 2005.

Pet ownership is yet another of the facets of Japanese society that we foreigners find hard to understand. Whilst this survey does highlight some of the things that seem strange to me, sadly it does not explain them. In reference to the headline, a few years ago there was a huge boom in Chiuwawa sales thanks mostly to a series of adverts for high interest loans, with some other adverts following suit. One that particularly sticks in my mind was for a product I forgot, but the daughter was moving out to her own place, and you saw her coming in with her newly-bought puppy only to find the parents already waiting with another one. Oh, how they laughed!
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MyVoice conducted a web-based opinion poll amongst the 12,311 members of their internet community, of whom 57% were female, to find out their opinions about keeping pets. Given that most of the pet shops I see seem to be 80% dogs and dog-related items, I’m very suprised to see that cats are scoring so highly! Perhaps it’s just that cats are easier to obtain from friends than dogs?

Q1: Do you currently keep a pet at home?

Yes	39.3%
Plan to get one in the near future	0.9%
I want to keep one sometime	18.6%
I’ve no plan to get one	41.2%

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