The changes in perceptions and attitude of Japanese and Russian students towards the neighboring country (comparison of polls from 2007, 2012, and 2021)

Abstract

With the increase in cross-border educational contacts thanks to the Internet, the importance of obtaining objective, rather than stereotypical, ideas about foreign countries and their citizens by young people increases.One of the several contributory reasons of choosing university students as a target group for our research is the fact that education is closely tied to a nation’s growth and development, which strengthens social cohesion and the active civic participation of the youth. Also, the reason for focusing on students is that it is presumed that university students (future university graduates) would, perhaps inevitably, have firsthand connection or experience with political matters in the future, and so they will influence their country’s future politics and international relations in the Asia Pacific Region.The main aim of this study was to examine the changes in public perceptions and attitude of Japanese and Russian students towards the other country from 2007 to 2021. This study does not concentrate on political developments, but assesses changes and variations in students’ perceptions, images, and attitudes towards Russia and Japan over the 15-year period, seeking to identify the key events that inspired the identified perceptions and reactions. The surveys of Japanese and Russian university students conducted from 2007 to 2021 serve as the empirical basis for this study.In recent decades, images of countries have attracted close attention of scholars from around the world. When we launched the study, to the best of our knowledge, there were no other long-term studies that investigated these topics among this target group. This paper aims to fill this scholarly gap in literature by exploring and discussing the above-mentioned topics.