robbieinjapan.com

I came across a news article in Japanese the other day about smoking in Japan. Before I came to Japan, I always had the image that more people in Japan smoke than people do in America and I think this is fairly true. I always see salarymen smoking in the designated areas in the train stations or salarymen are smoking next to me at the counter in restaurants. While it is annoying, I have noticed that cigarette smoke in Japan does not seem to smell as bad or as toxic as it does in the United States. I’m unsure but perhaps they have different regulations, use different tobacco or have a different composition for their cigarettes here in Japan which results in a better smell.

In any case, what I found interesting about this article, (which can be found here: http://news.mixi.jp/view_news.pl?id=219620&media_id=4, it’s in Japanese and it’s on mixi, so you’ll need an account to see it), was that of people entering the workforce now (aged 20-25), about 88% do not smoke at all.

75.8% had never smoked. 12.2% had smoked but quit. 12% smoke. I think this is a much lower rate of smoking than in previous generations. I’d be interested to see what percentage of Americans in this age group smoke. 12% smoking for Japanese 20-25 year olds seems pretty low to begin with. I wonder if the American percentage is even lower?

As far as Americans around my age that I know, very few of them smoke. Of the ones who smoke, I’d say more than 75% of them are trying to quit or have tried to quit in the past. Back at my college in America, Middlebury College, although European students make up a small percentage of the students, I’d say there are more European smokers than American smokers! Since all buildings are non-smoking, I often see the Europeans after dinner huddling together outside of the dining hall in the harsh Vermont cold smoking their cigarettes. Different culture, I suppose.

Other interesting facts from the article were that of those people who did not smoke, 65.2% did not smoke for the reason that it was bad for one’s health. Other reasons were that it costs money and dislike of the smell that gets into one’s hair and clothes.

As for people who did smoke, 46.2% smoked because it relieved stress. 24.6% smoked because it was relaxing. Interestingly enough, 94.2% of the smokers agreed with the statement, “Smoking is harmful to my health” and 89.8% agreed with the statement, “Smoking is harmful to the health of the people around me.”

Probably some day, cigarettes will become non-existent. Although today we are used to people smoking and have had marketing campaigns and other such things to make the image of smoking a cigarette cool, when the day comes that cigarettes become non-existent, people will probably look back at photographs of people today smoking and think how silly they look.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 30th, 2007 at 1:14 pm and is filed under Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.