Interesting article in the Washington Post says that more blogs are written Japanese than are written in English. The article says, “The Japanese have gone blog wild.”
Excerpts from the article:
- In the past three years, Japanese has been running ahead of or about even with English as the dominant language of blogging. Of all recorded blog postings in the fourth quarter of last year, 37 percent were written in Japanese, 36 percent in English and 8 percent in Chinese.About 130 million people understand Japanese, while about 1.1 billion understand English.
- By some estimates, as much as 40 percent of Japanese blogging is done on mobile phones, often by commuters staring cross-eyed at tiny screens for hours as they ride the world’s most extensive network of subways and commuter trains.
- Japan’s conformist culture has embraced a technology that Americans often use for abrasive self-promotion and refashioned it as a soothingly nonconfrontational medium for getting along.
- Bloggers here shy away from politics and barbed language. They rarely trumpet their expertise. Compared with Americans, Japanese blog at less length, they write anonymously, and they write a whole lot more often.
This article was originally entitled “Japan’s Bloggers: Humble Giants of the Web” and was written by Blaine Harden for Washington Post Foreign Service
