Poll: Japanese Pessimistic About U.S.-Japan Relations
Earlier this month, I posted about a public opinion poll showing that 82% of Japanese people had friendly feelings towards the United States. That poll did not ask many questions, so it was hard to determine the exact meaning of the answers.
The Yomiuri has since released the results of its own annual poll, finding that Japanese people greatly appreciated America’s disaster relief mission in Tohoku. However, the poll also found that there are many Japanese who think that the Okinawa military base issue is hurting their country’s relationship with the United States:
The percentage of Japanese who said Japan-U.S relations were “good” or “very good” was 35 percent, while the percentage of those who called relations “poor” or “very poor” was 41 percent. The figures went up by 2 percentage points and 1 percentage point from last year, respectively.
The percentage of respondents who said they trust the United States “very much” or “somewhat” was 47 percent, down 5 points from 2010. Forty-two percent said they do not trust the country “very much” or “at all,” up 5 points from last year.
Eighty-two percent of Japanese respondents think the lack of progress on relocating the U.S. Marine Corps’ Futenma Air Station in Okinawa Prefecture has had a negative impact on the bilateral relationship, up 3 percentage points from last year. This result may suggest that Japanese people’s anxiety over the Japan-U.S. alliance is preventing their feelings toward the United States from improving.
Americans seemed pretty positive about their nation’s relationship with Japan, probably because about 60% of them don’t know about the Futenma dispute.
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