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let's distrust everybody

den4

先輩
15 Nov 2002
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53% of Japanese distrust United States

Yomiuri Shimbun

Fifty-three percent of Japanese respondents to a poll said they did not trust the United States, a figure far higher than the 29 percent of Americans who said they distrusted Japan, according to the findings of a joint Yomiuri Shimbun-Gallup survey released Wednesday.

Despite this, many respondents said they believed that the Japan-U.S. relationship remained on good terms.

The distrust of the United States among Japanese was the highest recorded in the survey over the past five years, a sentiment believed to have been caused by U.S. policies regarding the governing of postwar Iraq.

Meanwhile, 71 percent of Japanese respondents said they did not trust China, reflecting their deteriorating view of the country due to the recent intrusion into Japanese territorial waters by a Chinese nuclear-powered submarine and other gripes related to China.

The telephone survey was conducted in the latter half of last month, with 1,006 voters aged 20 or older in Japan and 1,000 voters aged 18 or older in the United States responding.

Pollees who said Japan-U.S. relations were good increased nine percentage points from the previous year to 49 percent in Japan, but dropped one point to 53 percent in the United States.

Regarding mutual trust, the number of Japanese respondents who expressed distrust of the United States soared eight points to 53 percent from last year, a figure much higher than the 38 percent who said they trusted the United States.

In 2000, the interview format was changed from person-to-person interviews to telephone interviews, and since last year the number of Japanese pollees who said they distrusted the United States exceeded those who said they trusted it.

The gap has widened from four percentage points to 15 percentage points, showing that distrust of the United States has increased.

In the United States, the number of respondents who said they trusted Japan was 67 percent, much higher than the 29 percent who expressed distrust of Japan, illustrating a gap between Japanese and U.S. pollees in their perceptions about each other.

The Iraq problem is believed to be the main reason behind the Japanese pollees' distrust of the United States, with 75 percent of them expressing discontent about the governing of Iraq led by the United States.

Sixty-one percent of Japanese pollees said they did not feel a fondness toward U.S. President George W. Bush, who was reelected in November. In the United States, it was 60 percent for Bush and 39 percent against him. Even in the United States, 62 percent of the respondents said they did not believe other countries had a liking for the United States.

The Iraq war has created a rift between the United States and Europe, resulting in a deepened sense of isolation among Americans.

In Japan, 71 percent of the respondents said they did not think other countries admired the United States.

Regarding their relationships with China, 59 percent of the Japanese respondents described Japan-China relations as poor as did 16 percent in the United States.

The number of Japanese who described their relationship with China as poor jumped 28 percentage points from the previous year and was the highest since the 2000 survey.
 
I don't trust those figures.

;)

Good subject, I'll post my thoughts on this later, when I'm not pretending to be working.
 
I don't see it as a big deal. I'm Canadian and I haven't trusted the United States since that [expletive deleted] was elected.
 
as a Canadian I've never trusted the United States

as a Chinese I've never trusted Japan, US and China.
 
I've never trusted the People's Republic of China's undemocratic dictatorial government.
 
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Wow.

OK, I said I'd post after work, which turned into "after the weekend." Oy vey.

Anyways....

There is something to be said about intentionally developing a sense of distrust. Particularly when it comes to building a sense of nationalism, eh? Demonizing another country/culture/people is a good way to rally support. Just look at what happened in America since 9/11. The media was pretty much able to drive fear into the heart of the American public. --Remember, your taxi cab driver could be working for the Taliban. Know anyone Islamic? Report suspicious activity!-- The government and the mainstream media did a fantastic job of playing off 9/11, manipulating "patriotism," and generally fostering an environment of needless fear. Well, Ergo the public couldn't tell the difference between which country the terroists came from and Iraq...

Just about every country in WWII did it at some time. Japan and the United States did a good job of making each other seem really evil. Japan still has a more benign form of mistrust for foreigners, of course. Remember the government website that encouraged Japanese people to report "suspicious activity" from foreigners?
 
Tsk! It's all this distrust is why the world is in such a damn sad and sorry shape these days.
 
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