Well over half of Japan’s citizens feel affection for Taiwan, while an overwhelming majority of them believe relations between the two countries are in good shape, a recent opinion poll showed.
The poll, conducted by Nielsen Co Japan from May 18 to Monday last week via telephone and the Internet, found that 66.9 percent of Japanese either felt “much affection” for Taiwan or said they had “affection” for the country.
The survey, commissioned by Taiwan’s representative office in Tokyo, also showed that 91.2 -percent thought Taiwan-Japan relations were “good” or “very good.”
Asked whether they trusted Taiwan, 84.2 percent responded in the affirmative, with 20.2 percent saying they trusted Taiwan “very much.”
The respondents were randomly chosen from adult residents throughout Japan, except in the areas hardest hit by the powerful earthquake and subsequent tsunami on March 11. However, the number of valid samples collected in the survey was not available.
The Taipei Economic and -Cultural Representative Office in Japan had conducted a similar poll in 2009.
Compared with the 2009 survey, the ratio of Japanese who said they felt affection for Taiwan increased by 10.8 percentage points.
On the question of Taiwan--Japan relations, the ratio of those who thought ties were in good shape rose by 15.2 percentage points, while in the area of trust for Taiwan, the increase was 19.5 percentage points.
In the latest survey, 80.8 percent of the respondents said they had never been to Taiwan and 78.3 percent said they planned to visit Taiwan at some point, up 17.1 percentage points from the 2009 survey.
Taiwanese Representative to Japan John Feng (馮寄台) said some of the factors that had contributed to improved Japan--Taiwan ties and Japanese people’s positive views of Taiwan were the signing of a working holiday agreement between the two countries, Taiwan’s opening of a branch office in Sapporo and the launch of direct flights between Tokyo’s Haneda Airport and Taipei (Songshan) International Airport.
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