1.6 Interest in what happens outside Japan
A third of the respondents said that they were not interested in what happens outside Japan. Only one in seven (14%) was very interested in the outside world; the remainder were 'quite' interested.
Women, the under 20s, the least educated, and people living in small towns were most likely not to be interested in the world outside Japan. Men, the better educated, and people living in large cities were most likely to the very interested in international affairs.
1.7 Understanding/learning English
30% of the respondents said that they can speak or understand some English. Fluency in English was fairly rare: 5.9% said they can understand English 'reasonably' or 'very' well, while 4.1% said they can speak the language well.
16% of the respondents are currently learning English. Most learners of English are in their teens and are studying at school. (Special language schools were mainly men- tioned by people in their 20s.) Radio programmes and cassettes are each used by about one-fifth of English learners.
1.8 Previous research
The last survey in Japan, in 1983, was also conducted by Nippon Research Center Ltd. It was also a national survey, among population aged 13 and over, and comprised 4,957 personal interviews in three waves of the omnibus.
1.9 General notes
As in any survey using sampling, there will be a certain degree of imprecision in the results arising from the facts that no sample can be expected to match the population exactly in every respect. This has been taken into account where differences between figures are discussed in this report.
Japan 1987
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