The Annual Yomiuri-Gallup Survey: The Japanese lack of Trust in Our Institutions

 The results of the annual Yomiuri Shimbun-Gallup survey on Japan and the United States, conducted by random digital dialing and reported briefly at Yomiuri online, are published in more detail in the hardcopy version. Most of the questions concern the Japan-US relationship and/or matters of mutual interest, but it’s the first one that caught my attention, the one that asks responders to choose from sixteen domestic institutions the ones that they specially trust. The following is a full translation of that first Q&A, followed by my minimal comments. Ready?

Q. If there are any organizations and public institutions in our country that we will read out loud, please choose as many as you like.

Japan			United States
prime minister		44%  6	president	56%  8
Diet		25% 13	Congress	24% 14
police, prosecutors		44%  6	police, prosecutors	71%  4
courts		56%  4	courts	62%  6
Self-Defense Force		71%  1	military	93%  1
temples, shrines, churches		41%  8	churches (and synagogues?)	77%  3
central ministries and agencies		24% 14	federal agencies	43% 12
local government		46%  5	local government	57%  7
schools	41%  8		schools	69%  5
hospitals	68%  2		hospitals	83%  2
newspapers	57%  3		newspapers	53%  9
television	34% 10		television	44% 11
big business	28% 11		big business	38% 13
labor unions	26% 12		labor unions	46% 10
others	00%		others	--
none	06%		none	--
no answer	00%		no answer	00%

Notes: 1) “–” no one chose this answer.

2) I put the ordinance numbers in for your convenience.

3) I used red for the Japanese/US institution that polled better than its counterpart.

Of the fourteen institutions, twelve US institutions are more trusted domestically than their Japanese counterparts, and mostly by wide margins. The discrepancy is particularly large in the case of “police and prosecutors” and “schools”, national administrative institutions, and religious institutions. The two others only lose out to their Japanese counterparts by slim margins. (I’ll just mention in passing that one of those two Japanese winners are…newspapers!—now who’d’a thunk?) The military tops the list of winners in both countries, followed by hospitals.

The lack of Japanese trust in police and prosecutors and schools can be reliably traced to recent, major scandals, while the disregard for central ministries and agencies is most surely due to the steady negative drumbeat that has continued through the “lost decades,” magnified by the post-3.11 revelations and frustrations. The religious gap is surely a manifestation of the secular nature of Japanese society. I wonder what numbers European responders would provide, particularly in largely secular nations with a significant Catholic presence (France…).

Which brings me to a question about the US trust in churches: The United States has seen many national scandals break out in the religious world, from individual megachurch leaders and televangelists procuring prostitutes to the systemic failure of the Catholic church to protect children from sexual predators of the cloth it its employ. Why hasn’t that translated into lower numbers? Come to think of it, why are the numbers so high for the US police and prosecutors?

Questions, questions, and no way to answer them to my satisfaction, certainly no overarching thoughts to cover them all, but the survey has provided an interesting set of facts to ponder—perhaps I should go look for the results of the previous surveys to see if there’s timeline data—so I’ve brought them to your attention.