The purpose of this paper is to clarify how Japanese people perceive various nations of the world. It focuses on the differences among Japanese generations in the cognitions of nations by analyzing survey data on the attitude toward 20 nations.
I found that the Japanese tended to favor Western nations more than other nations. This result is consistent with the so-called high western and low eastern-type rank ordering of the Japanese preference of nations, which has been pointed out by many previous works. To examine the differences between generations in the cognitions of nations, the average liking score of 20 nations was compared among four age groups (20-34, 35-49, 50-64, 65+). It showed that people with age 50 or above hold less favorable attitude toward Russia compared to those with age under 49 years. This implies that there are generation gaps in the subjective liking of an individual country.
To investigate the liking data in terms of not only one-dimensional order but also multidimensional relations, I used a multidimensional scaling technique (INDSCAL). I found that the respondents judged their liking of nations based on two dimensions: The first dimension was "Western nations (Japan included) vs. Non-western nations (excluding Japan)" which is very similar to the high western and low eastern-type rank ordering. The second order may be interpreted as the "exposure to negative images through the mass media." Older respondents (over 65 years old) based their judgment heavily on the first dimension, while people under 64 years used the second dimension for their judgment. This result indicates a possibility of changes in Japanese subjective liking of various nations that was once believed to be stable in previous research.