Country Report on Japan (Preliminary Draft)

A Comparative Survey of DEMOCRACY, GOVERNANCE AND DEVELOPMENT Working Paper Series: No. 32 Jointly Published by Japan Country Report Second Wave of Asian Barometer Survey Ken’ichi Ikeda, The University of Tokyo Masashiro Yamada, Kwansei Gankuin University Naoko Taniguchi, Teikyo University Satoko Yasuno, Chuo University Yoshitaka Nishizawa, Doshisha University Gill Steel, The University of Tokyo Issued by Asian Barometer Project Office National Taiwan University and Academia Sinica 2007 Taipei Asian Barometer A Comparative Survey of Democracy, Governance and Development Working Paper Series Jointly Published by Globalbarometer The Asian Barometer (ABS) is an applied research program on public opinion on political values, democracy, and governance around the region. The regional network encompasses research teams from twelve East Asian political systems (Japan, Mongolia, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore, and Indonesia), and five South Asian countries (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal). Together, this regional survey network covers virtually all major political systems in the region, systems that have experienced different trajectories of regime evolution and are currently at different stages of political transition. The ABS Working Paper Series is intended to make research result within the ABS network available to the academic community and other interested readers in preliminary form to encourage discussion and suggestions for revision before final publication. Scholars in the ABS network also devote their work to the Series with the hope that a timely dissemination of the findings of their surveys to the general public as well as the policy makers would help illuminate the public discourse on democratic reform and good governance. The topics covered in the Series range from country-specific assessment of values change and democratic development, region-wide comparative analysis of citizen participation, popular orientation toward democracy and evaluation of quality of governance, and discussion of survey methodology and data analysis strategies. The ABS Working Paper Series supercedes the existing East Asia Barometer Working Paper Series as the network is expanding to cover more countries in East and South Asia. Maintaining the same high standard of research methodology, the new series both incorporates the existing papers in the old series and offers newly written papers with a broader scope and more penetrating analyses. The ABS Working Paper Series is issued by the Asian Barometer Project Office, which is jointly sponsored by the Department of Political Science of National Taiwan University and the Institute of Political Science of Academia Sinica. At present, papers are issued only in electronic version. Contact Information Tel: 886 2-2357 0427 Asian Barometer Project Office Fax: 886-2-2357 0420 Department of Political Science E-mail: [email protected] National Taiwan University Website: www.asianbarometer.org 21 Hsu-Chow Road, Taipei, Taiwan 100 Country Report: Japan (Preliminary Draft) (Please do not quote without the authors’ permission) This paper is a draft of the country report on the survey conducted in Japan in February-March 2007. It consists of four parts. Part I is a brief description of the field work and the macro-political and economic context. In Parts II to IV, we describe the findings. Part II examines Japanese attitudes and values toward democracy. Part III focuses upon trust in Japan. And Part IV analyzes national attachment in Japan. 1 Part Ｉ. Field Work in Japan 2007 and the Macro-Political Context I. 1. The Survey Design and Fieldwork The Japan survey was conducted between February and March 2007 and yielded 1,067 valid cases from a sample of 2,500 cases yielding a response rate of 42.7% (for the reasons we discuss below, we did additional sub-sampling which will be used for the valid cases. Including the additional cases, the sample size was 3,111 and the response rate was 34.3%). A layered two-stage random sample was taken from the adult population 20 years and older nationwide (in all 47 prefectures, 203 districts (50 major metropolitan cities, 151 other cities, and 22 town/villages). The detailed information is as follows; Survey Period: 2007, February 23 –March 12 Data Collection: number of effective responses 1,067 (response rate 42.7% for the original sample and 34.3% including additional sample) Reasons for non-response (including additional sample): Change of address 125 (6.1%) Refusal 1144 (56.0%) Long-term absence 84 (4.1%) Refusal before the interview 59 (2.9%) Temporary absence 507 (24.8%) Absence notice before the interview 6 (.3%) Address unknown 70 ( 3.4%) Other 49 ( 2.4%) Total 2044 (100.0%) The response rate was lower than the EAB 2003 Japanese survey (the response rate was 71% then). First, the survey environment worsened in the fall of 2006 following changes in the law regulating survey research that banned commercial surveys from using the voters’ lists or resident registries. This was widely known and 2 many people misunderstood and thought that the restriction to be applied to academic surveys. Second, many hoax “surveys” were widely reported, these purported to be surveys, but were actually tools to sell consumer goods. Third, the questionnaire for the Asian Barometer 2nd round was quite long, the average time the respondents needed to finish was 50 minutes (as shown below) which is 10 minutes longer than the 2003 survey. Reflecting this situation, even the successful interviewees often seemed irritated (22%) and 9% refused to answer at least part of the questionnaire. In order to deal with these difficulties, we relied on the additional sub-sampling (5 each for metropolitan city districts and 3 for other districts, yielding a total of 709) and used 611 of these as a substitute sample, if the original target was inaccessible due to a change of address, death, or long-term absence. In sampling, the basic district units established in the 2005 national census were used as the first sampling unit. The number of survey districts was calculated so that sample size of each layer was about 13. Municipalities in each layer were ordered according to a code determined by Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications at the time of selection. Respondents were selected from voters’ lists (complete resident registries in some districts) of designated town, block, and street number within the survey district, using an equal interval selection method. The interviews were conducted by Central Research Services interviewers. Though the interviewers were skilled at this kind of fieldwork, they were still required to participate in an orientation training session for these particular interviews. Interviews were conducted in Japanese. The mean length of the interviews was 50.3 minutes, with a range from 19 to 178 minutes (the SD was 16.2). The survey was 3 exclusively for the Asian Barometer 2nd round survey. However, we plan to extend this sample to create a panel survey in the summer of 2007 after the House of Councilors Election. This 2nd wave of the panel will include a CSES3 (Comparative Studies of Electoral Systems 3rd round) module, as well as other election and political participation related questions. In order to test whether the survey was successfully conducted, we sent 30% of the total sample a confirmatory letter by mail. The result was basically sound. I.2. The Macro-Political Context and Evaluations of Economic Conditions Our survey was conducted from February 23 to March 12, 2007. During this time, the approval rate of the Abe cabinet was declining (Figure 1)1. Various reasons caused the decline, including the statement, “Females are reproductive machines” by Hakuo Yanagisawa, then Minister for Health, Labour, and Welfare. Female politicians and voters in particular resented this statement, although Prime Minister Abe did not ask for his resignation, he conceded that his statement was inappropriate. Before this incident, the minister for deregulation policy, Gen’ichiro Sada resigned on December 28, 2006, because his staff turned in a false report of his political finances to the government. Shinzo Abe is heir to the structural reform policies of the Koizumi administration. The policy package encourages decentralization and ‘small government’. According to table 1, compared to 2003, citizens felt that the economy was better in 2007 than in 2003, but expectations that the economy would be better in the future had not (responses to the question “What do you think the state of our 1 The data come from Jiji Press, which conducts monthly surveys of the approval rate for the cabinet (http://www.jiji.com/service/yoron/result/index.html). 4 country's economy will be in a few years from now?”). Many Japanese feel that a rapid growth of inequality among Japanese households or regional gaps in the standard of living have occurred. The media popularized the term ‘kakusa shakai’, meaning a society with income disparities. In addition, citizens know that the country is aging rapidly, and feel insecure about their own lives in the future. Part ＩＩ. Japanese Attitudes and Values toward Democracy II. １. Overview How do Japanese people regard democracy? Ikeda and Kohno (forthcoming), based on the previous Asian Barometer survey (2003), summarize Japanese attitudes toward democracy in the following way: first and foremost, “the overwhelming majority of Japanese perceive a fundamental

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