Anime is now considered an accepted form of animation and is considered to represent Japanese contemporary culture worldwide. There are many fans of anime and manga, creating a community known as otaku world. However, Japanese anime and manga have gained popularity in Western countries as well...

This paper explores how a trust in government shared by neighbors is associated with individual preferences for income redistribution and individual perceptions regarding income tax burden. Three measures for trust in government are used: “trust in ministries and government agencies”,...

Smokers are more impatient and, unlike nonsmokers, they tend to prefer current benefits. In this paper, individual-level data from Japan are used to examine how preferences for divorce and extramarital sex are different between smokers and nonsmokers. After controlling for various individual...

The Great Hanshin-Awaji (Kobe) earthquake hit Japan in 1995, causing devastating damage to the economic landscape of southern-central Japan. However, the earthquake also caused people to realize the importance of social capital in Japan. Based on a large, individual-level database comprising...

This paper examines the influence of government transparency on changing views regarding nuclear energy before and after Japan’s natural and nuclear disaster of 2011. Individual level data were used, covering 45 countries and containing 27,423 observations. It was observed in the majority of...

Local governors that hold office for longer periods are thought to be more likely to collude with various groups to increase their own benefit through long-term interaction. There is no term limit for local governors in Japan, seemingly causing such collusive behavior. However, since 1987, local...

Using a data set for all sumo wrestlers in the post-World War II period, this paper investigates how wrestlers’ body mass index (BMI) is associated with wrestlers’ winning rate and absence rate. Further, the effect of BMI is compared between an early period (before the emergence of foreign...

Based on prefecture-level panel data from Japan for 2010 and 2012, this paper investigates how the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident influenced the body mass index (BMI) of students aged between 5 and 17 years old. A differences-in-differences approach was used to show that (1) students’ BMIs...

The Great Hanshin-Awaji (Kobe) earthquake in 1995 has had a significant detrimental effect on the economic conditions of southern-central Japan. However, the earthquake also led people to acknowledge the importance of the many volunteer activities in Japan at that time. Using a large sample of...

A Japanese General Social Survey is used to re-examine how voluntary giving is associated with inequality aversion, and how the relationship differs between high- and low-income groups. This paper also investigates how social capital influences that relationship. The key findings are that (1)...