January 2015
From the ISSP Survey on Citizenship: Survey Results of Japan
Toshiyuki Kobayashi
The NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute is a member of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), a cross-national collaboration body for comparative surveys. The theme of its July 2014 survey was “Citizenship.” Since the previous survey under the same theme was conducted in 2004, this article presents how Japanese people’s willingness for political and social activities have changed over the decade, by comparing the latest and the previous surveys, based on which the author discusses the background to the changes in the last chapter.
Regarding respondents’ experience of and willingness for political and social activities such as “signing a petition,” the comparison between the latest and previous surveys revealed that there was an increase in people who answered they “have not done it and would never do it” in all seven comparable activities. Large increase rates were observed in “Donated money or raised funds for a social or political activity” (38% to 52%), “Signing a petition” (20% to 28%), and “Contacted, or attempted to contact, a politician or a civil servant to express your views” (65% to 73%). These results highlight that Japanese people’s willingness for political and social activities is lowering. By age, this tendency was pronounced among younger generations in their 40s and under.
In this article the author examined the background to this trend and concluded that it was caused presumably by the overlap of the following three factors: (1) public attitude that nothing will be changed by their political activities or efforts, (2) relatively stable economy, compared with ten years ago, (3) the change in value that people, especially the youth, now find living in a familiar community quite “satisfactory.”