Public opinion in Japan is souring towards the United States, as US President Donald Trump’s strong-arm trade tactics and divisive domestic policies test the bonds of an alliance that has endured for eight decades.
The Cabinet Office’s latest annual survey, released on Friday, revealed that 70.8 per cent of Japanese respondents viewed Japan-US relations as “good” or “quite good”, tumbling 14.7 percentage points from a year earlier.
It marked the second-lowest reading since the question was introduced in 1998 and close to the 68.9 per cent low recorded in 2008 at the end of George W. Bush’s presidency.
US President George W. Bush speaks at an event in Kyoto, Japan, in 2005. Photo: Xinhua
For more than a decade before this year, Japanese affinity for the US had typically hovered between the mid-80s and low-90s percentile.
The postal survey on attitudes towards Japan’s key partners and regional rivals was sent to 3,000 people aged 18 and over, with around 1,600 responding. Favourable views of relations with China came in at just 13.3 per cent, down from 14.7 per cent the year before.
The data was gathered between late September and early November, before a recent diplomatic fallout triggered by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comments on Taiwan.‘Terrible, stupid decisions’
“We used to think that the US was the most advanced and simply the best country in the world,” Kiyoko Date, an office worker from Yokohama, told This Week in Asia.
AloJapan.com