The percentages of respondents who have read other books were all less
than 5%.
From these results it turns out that roughly half of the 21 books we
asked people about have been read by over five percent of respondents.
If we were to extrapolate this percentage to the whole of Japan's population,
we would arrive at a figure of more than five million people. Of
course, it is possible that these figures reflect the pecularity of Nishinomiya
City, the area in which the survey was conducted. Even so, it is difficult
to deny that awareness of and contact with Nihonjinron is high.
A preliminary report of this survey has been published (Befu and
Manabe 1987). It is clear from this report that none of the basic tenets of Nihonjinron is espoused by anywhere near 100% of the sample. These tenets may be grouped into four major categories: