- The 2024 results separate what went back to normal after COVID from what did not
- Interest in social contribution, which peaked in lockdown, has fallen back to pre-COVID levels
- Spending on going out has recovered to around 2018 levels
- Digital habits and a preference for doing things alone — started out of necessity — have stayed
The report at a glance
- Original title
- 生活定点 1992–2024
- Publisher
- Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living (博報堂生活総合研究所)
- Published
- 17 October 2024 (latest results)
- Coverage
- Around 1,400 data series tracked since 1992
- Language
- Japanese (charts are easy to read with translation)
- Access
- Free website with graphs and downloadable data
Key numbers and findings
What went back to “normal”
- Attitudes to social contribution rose sharply during the pandemic and have now returned to their pre-COVID pattern.
- Small celebratory and ‘special occasion’ spending and money spent on outings have recovered, broadly to 2018 levels.
What changed for good
- Digital behaviour adopted during lockdown has stuck, because people found it genuinely more convenient.
- So has a preference for solo activities — eating, travelling or spending leisure time alone — which is now a settled part of Japanese lifestyles rather than a temporary adjustment.
The data site
The Seikatsu Teiten website, developed with teamLab, lets you pick any indicator and see the trend line from 1992 to the latest wave, with breakdowns by gender and age. Datasets can be downloaded for research.
What it means for companies entering Japan
For a brand entering Japan, the value of Seikatsu Teiten is context. Before you build a campaign around a ‘new Japanese trend’ you read about in English, check whether the long-run data supports it. Many things described as new — solo dining, for example — have been building for years.
The durable rise of ‘doing things alone’ matters for product and service design: single portions, solo-friendly seating, individual experiences and content that does not assume a group. It is one of the clearest differences from UK and US consumer culture.
How to read the original
The site is in Japanese, but it is built around charts, so browser translation works well. Start with the category menu (food, shopping, information, relationships and so on), then compare age groups.
Open the Seikatsu Teiten data site (Japanese) ↗
This is an independent summary by Japan Business Insider. Figures are taken from the original publication; the interpretation in “Our reading” is our own. Please check the original before quoting figures.