Japan Data
Society
A survey of Japanese teenagers aged 17 to 19, marking 80 years since the end of World War II, found that most of them almost never discussed the war with friends or family.
War Views
The Nippon Foundation conducted a survey of 1,000 young people in Japan aged 17 to 19 in mid-June 2025, just ahead of the eightieth anniversary of the end of World War II, with the aim of finding out their views regarding the war.
Among the respondents 95% said that they had learned about World War II.
Two-thirds of the respondents said that “school lessons” were memorable, while around a third mentioned “a trip to a museum or memorial site.”
When asked which books or films about the war left the strongest impression, over 40% mentioned the Studio Ghibli anime Grave of the Fireflies. The film is an adaptation of a short story by Nosaka Akiyuki depicting the harsh life of a brother and his younger sister who are orphaned during the war. The next most influential work related to the war, mentioned by 20% of the respondents, was Barefoot Gen, a manga by Nakazawa Keiji based on his experience as a survivor of the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima. Other influential works were Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl, Saitō Ren’s children’s book Zō no inai dōbutsuen (The Zoo Without Elephants), and the film The Pianist.
Only around 30% of the respondents said that they had heard first-hand stories from someone who had experienced the war. The most common situations for hearing such stories were cases where speakers came to schools, to either speak in the classroom or take part in a school event, or occasions where students listened to speakers at a museum or memorial hall. Fewer than 30% of the respondents had heard a story directly from a grandparent or great-grandparent.
The overwhelming majority of respondents, at over 70%, said that they have almost never discussed World War II with family or friends. The next most common response was the just over 10% who said they talked about the war around once a year.
(Translated from Japanese. Banner photo: A scene from Grave of the Fireflies [left] and a film tie-in collection of short stories by Nosaka Akiyuki. © Jiji.)
World War II