From the results of the Rating Survey on Young Children's TV Viewing carried out in June 2022, this paper focuses on the relationships between young children’s real-time TV viewing and their usage of internet videos to analyze them cross-sectionally, across gender and age, by categorizing the children into groups according to the time spent on media use and the general time use in their everyday lives. As to young children’s usage of TV broadcasts and internet videos, a small proportion of them use “only TV” or “only internet videos,” with many watching both TV programs and internet videos. The survey finds that some children spend long hours watching internet videos, just like they watch television. Still, they view TV programs at certain times of the day, such as weekday mornings, which suggests they do not entirely stay away from television. Young children’s total TV-viewing time and video-viewing time per day do not change depending on the wake-up time and bedtime though they use these media in different time of day. It is also found that the content they watch and the usage of the media differ on weekdays and weekends. The authors also analyzed the time spent on media use of parents, which finds that the longer the parents watch television, the longer their children watch television. Meanwhile, no such distinct relation is observed for internet videos. Although internet videos are widespread among young children, they seem to be using TV and internet content differently; it will be necessary to analyze the usage more deeply from diverse perspectives.

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This paper reports the findings from the Public Opinion Survey on COVID-19, which NHK has conducted three times in a row at the same time each year since November 2020, focusing on the gap in household income for deeper analysis. The key findings were as follows. Regarding the change in their lives due to the coronavirus pandemic, respondents who perceive the change as “negative” exceed those who perceive it as “positive” in every household-income group, but the higher the household income, the higher the percentage of those citing “positive,” with the most noticeable reason being “teleworking such as working from home has become available.” The survey actually shows that the higher the income, the more people practice teleworking. The survey also found that the higher the income, the more people utilize digital tools to prevent infection in their daily lives, and the more likely to see the advancing digital transformation in the entire society positively. Meanwhile, the lower the household income, the more people answer that their income has “decreased” due to the pandemic. One of the factors for this is assumed to be that the impact of the pandemic was larger on those with occupations of relatively lower annual income, such as in “sales and service industries.” Furthermore, the survey found that the lower the income, the more likely people feel psychological damage, such as “feeling down.” The chronological comparison of the past years reveals that the higher the income, the higher the increase in those satisfied with their lives, with the gap between higher- and lower-income households widening year by year. Presumably, such results were attributed to the spread of teleworking among higher-income groups and the quicker recovery of the income that had been declined at an early stage of the pandemic than among other groups. These data suggest that it will be imperative to promptly provide economic and other support for lower-income groups at an early phase of a new pandemic that may occur in the future.

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- The tendency of “h” or “f” sound turning “p” sound (handakuon or voiceless-bilabial plosive consonant) was surveyed. As to auxiliary numerals of Chinese origin starting with “h” or “f” such as “haku/paku” [counters for stays/nights] “hatsu/patsu” [hit] “han/pan” [group] and “funkan/punkan” [period of minutes], as common responses for these words, many people said that (1) counters after “yon” (4) are more unlikely to turn “p” than after “san” (three) and (2) the younger, the more people cited ‘unlikely to turn “p.”’ Assumingly, a linguistic shift from “handakuon” to “non-handakuon” is occurring behind this trend, which is presumed to be progressing in eastern Japan prior to in other areas. - As to “arieru/ariuru” and “okorieru/okoriuru” [both possible/likely], the survey suggests an ongoing reversion from the modern colloquial form “okorieru” to the literary form “okoriuru” anew. - Regarding the inconsistency between “sasutenaburu” or “sasuteinaburu” [sustainable], the survey suggests that it seems unlikely for the latter, which is relatively faithful to the original English pronunciation, to become mainstream in the future. - Respondents were asked how they would feel about calling a boy “xx-kun” and a girl “xx-san” (names with honorific titles). Overall, many people feel ‘no need to unify by using “san” for everyone.’ Meanwhile, more than half of women in their 30s prefer ‘using “san” for everyone,’ which reveals gender and generation differences. It is also found that the highest proportion of respondents supports the use of “kun” for elementary school boys in incident news reporting. Nevertheless, those supporting “san” have increased from the previous 2015 survey. Notably, middle-aged people had a higher proportion of those supporting “san” than other age groups. - “Maedaosu” [to move up the schedule], which is considered to have been verbalized from the noun “maedaoshi” [moving up the schedule], is gradually spreading, especially among younger generations.

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This is the sixth installment of a series that reviews the transformation of the production methods and styles of Nihon no sugao (Japan Unmasked) (1957- 1964)—an NHK documentary series that is credited with having built the foundation for Japanese TV documentaries. The author analyzes and examines the developments in FY 1962 through 1963, which turned out to be the last two years of “Sugao,” in two issues, this month’s and next. As discussed in Part V, the latter phase of “Sugao” after fiscal 1961, or the post-1960 Anpo struggle (protests against the Japan‐U.S. Security Treaty), saw a gradual decline in its capacity to present social problems amid the peaceful and complacent mood. The fiscal 1962 and 1963 “Sugao” was covered with conformism, which was more rigid than in fiscal 1961. On the whole, the series enforced its character as a plain commentary program on social events as conformism prevailed. Nevertheless, there were many styles of conformism, depending on the text. Besides, even in this period, there were texts, albeit in a small number, that did not surrender to conformism and raised questions to society uncompromisingly. It should be important to note that methodological innovations were unfolding that made people forget about the framework of “conformism or non-conformism.” There was an emergence of images and sounds that were emotionally striking enough to blow away the frame of discussion on the “issue of xxx.”

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