Japan ‘Anxiety Index’ shows only 4 out of 10 Japanese trust their leaders

And it's not suprising that 91% of Japanese feel very anxious, but who are the calm and stoic 9%?

The earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on March 11 left 91% of Japanese very anxious, but only a third are confident in the government’s ability to successfully steer the country through the crisis, according to a survey by J. Walter Thompson.

The survey, conducted a month after the earthquake and tsunami, found that Japanese regard corporations as more reliable than the government and see the resumption of regular advertising as signaling a return to normalcy.

Corporations seem to be filling the trust void, with 8 in 10 Japanese saying they trust what big corporations have been doing to help during the disaster, and two-thirds saying the same of local businesses in their town.

JWT’s second AnxietyIndex survey in Japan was conducted April 13-18 using SONAR™, JWT’s proprietary online tool; 502 adults aged 18-plus were polled, and the data was weighted by age. Due to the disaster, 14 regions were excluded from this research, representing 27 percent of Japan.