Keywords: Soft power, political knowledge

The purpose of this research is to examine what kind of "knowledge" contemporary Japanese people have about "foreign countries," how accurate this knowledge is, and how it influences their impressions of these countries—in other words, how effective the “knowledge” is as “soft power (Nye 2004,2011) ”.
Previous studies on soft power have examined mainly the concepts and have made research about impressions about countries (e.g., Whitney and Shamber 2009). Then, are our impressions based on accurate knowledge?　What are the sources of knowledge on foreign countries?　Considering the fact that most citizens have little knowledge about political matters (Delli Carpini and Keeter,1996), it is naturally predicted that we know little about other countries.
To examine the state of Japanese people’s knowledge on foreign countries, the author conducted four web surveys in 2019, 2022,2023,and 2024. The main findings are follows:
1) Japanese people's foreign knowledge are somewhat unevenly biased by fields and countries. For example, though they know very well about Chinese classics and Chinese historical figures, they know little about contemporary Chinese pop cultures. On the other hand, Korean pop stars are well known among young Japanese, in spite that they know little about Korean classics and historical figures.
2) Positive impressions and knowledge about foreign countries would work as “soft power” only when such knowledge is linked with modern nations. For example, the respondents’ concern about Chinese classics had negative impacts on their impression of China.
3) Similar to research on political knowledge, the respondents do not know much about other countries, but media exposure, internet use and education would increase the knowledge. Also, socio-economic status such as education and assets had positive effects on foreign knowledge.