Five Years of "Happiness No. 1"

I have finally found time for something other than building websites, and I can put my thoughts online. This is the opinion of a Semboku City resident who lives in Kakunodate.

Let me admit something at the outset. I already failed to write this article once.

I read only the comprehensive plan and started writing that the city says "Happiness No. 1" but does not measure its own work. That was jumping to conclusions. When I actually opened the citizen opinion survey, the city was asking about its own work after all. It asks residents about fifty-six separate policies, one by one, whether they are satisfied and whether they think the policy matters.

So this time I read the survey results themselves rather than the plan. Five years of them, from fiscal 2021 through fiscal 2025. All of it is on the city website.

Reading it, something else caught my attention.

THE HAPPINESS FIGURE IS RISING

Happiness is measured with a single question: "How happy do you feel at present?" Respondents give a score, and seven through ten counts as "high."

Fiscal 2023: 38.8 percent. Fiscal 2024: 45.6 percent. Fiscal 2025: 46.8 percent.

It is rising. This is the number the city puts forward.

BUT LIVABILITY IS FALLING

A few pages further into the same survey, there is this.

"What do you think about how livable Semboku City is?"

People answering that it is livable: 55.0 percent in fiscal 2022. 39.2 percent in fiscal 2025. A drop of sixteen points in three years.

People answering that it is hard to live in: 13.7 percent in fiscal 2023, 17.4 percent in fiscal 2024, 20.4 percent in fiscal 2025. Rising every year.

There is also this question: "Would you recommend that your family or friends move to and settle in Semboku City?" Those who would recommend it have stayed around twenty-five percent for four years. Those who would not have gone from thirty-three percent to thirty-nine percent. For four straight years, the people who would not recommend it outnumber the people who would.

This is not my interpretation. The city writes the following in its own summary for fiscal 2024:

"Regarding the question on livability, compared with two years ago, the proportion answering 'livable' has decreased and the proportion answering 'hard to live in' has increased."

Happiness is increasing while livability is decreasing and the number of people who would not recommend the place is growing. These are answers from the same residents, on the same sheet of paper, on the same day.

HOW CAN BOTH BE TRUE

It puzzled me, so I lined up all five years and read them again. What looked like an explanation was not in the numbers. It was in the measuring stick.

In fiscal 2024, the scale for happiness changed. Until then it ran from zero to ten, eleven steps. From that year it runs from one to ten, ten steps. The city's own report carries a note: "changed to 1-10 in fiscal 2024."

That same year, the unit of aggregation for the policies changed as well. What had been grouped under eight policy headings such as industry, public safety, and health and welfare was reorganized into eight administrative departments: general affairs, planning, citizen welfare, and so on.

The number of policy items moves too. Thirty-seven in fiscal 2023, forty-three in fiscal 2024, fifty-six in fiscal 2025. Items get merged, renamed, and added.

The items said to underpin a sense of happiness were six in fiscal 2022. From fiscal 2023 they became seven. "I make an effort to be healthy in daily life" was added.

The wording of the livability options changed as well. "Livable / fairly livable" became "very livable / livable."

In five years, the scale, the options, the item names, the number of items, and the unit of aggregation have all changed.

AND YET THE BARS LINE UP

Despite all that, the summary reports show bar charts for each year sitting neatly side by side. Fiscal 2023 next to fiscal 2024 next to fiscal 2025. As though they were measured with the same stick.

I am not saying the city is lying. The change of scale is properly noted. Nothing is hidden.

But if you look only at the chart without reading the note, happiness has been climbing steadily. And people, as a rule, only look at the chart.

HALF THE RESPONDENTS ANSWER "DO NOT KNOW"

There is another column that bothers me. The policy satisfaction table has a "do not know" option, and the figures there are extraordinary.

Promotion of agriculture, 58.8 percent. Urban planning, 58.1 percent. Housing and the residential environment, 53.3 percent. Promotion of commerce and industry, 50.5 percent. Human resource management, 49.1 percent.

Around half of residents cannot say whether these policies are good or bad.

The city explains it this way: "For policies belonging to departments that ordinary residents have little direct contact with, there was a tendency for many respondents to answer 'do not know.'"

I think that is correct. If you are asked about something you have no experience of, you cannot answer. I would be stuck too if someone asked whether I am satisfied with "the promotion of human resource management." I have never seen such a thing in my daily life.

But is that the end of the matter?

The city is asking residents to grade things residents cannot experience. Of course "do not know" fills the column when the question is unanswerable, and the city writes off that inevitability as a "tendency" and asks the same question again the following year.

The same result could be read another way: half of these policies are not reaching people's lives.

THERE IS NO "NATIONAL" ANYWHERE

One more thing. Nowhere in five years of documents is there a figure comparing Semboku with any other city or town. There is no national ranking either. The only thing being measured is a survey the city conducts among its own residents.

So where exactly is the "national" in "Happiness No. 1 in the nation"?

THE RESPONSE RATE IS FALLING

Fiscal 2018: 46.5 percent. Fiscal 2021: 46.1. Fiscal 2022: 42.5. Fiscal 2023: 40.1. Fiscal 2024: 42.9. And fiscal 2025: 38.1 percent, the lowest on record.

Three thousand forms sent out, one thousand one hundred and forty-three returned. Of those respondents, twenty-eight percent were seventy-five or older and ninety percent had lived in the city for more than twenty years.

Happiness climbs while the number of people willing to answer falls.

NOW FOR THE REAL POINT

Everything above can be worked out by an ordinary resident.

I am not an expert. I have never studied statistics. I downloaded five years of PDF files from the city website, lined them up in order, and compared the numbers. A few days off is enough.

That same Semboku City has an organization for digital transformation that brings together seventeen bodies from industry, government, academia and finance. Companies, a university, a bank, and the prefectural technology center all have their names on it.

And here is the goal that organization states:

"Through the promotion of DX, to achieve regional economic development and improved wellbeing for citizens, and to realize a town that is No. 1 in Japan for happiness."

Digital technology for the sake of happiness. It says so plainly.

Even so, I could not find any analysis of why livability dropped sixteen points. Nor of why, for four years running, the people who would not recommend living here are the majority. Nor of why half of residents answer "do not know."

The numbers are collected properly every year, published properly, and there they stop.

Before talking about digital technology, AI, and pilot projects, would it not make sense to read the five years already in hand? You would not need the strength of seventeen organizations. It is the sort of thing an amateur can count on his days off.

For the record, this organization, its membership, and the goal it states are all public information. They are placed where anyone can see them.

If that work is not done, then what exactly were all that technology and all those people gathered for?

CLOSING

There is no need for me to copy out every figure here. Five years of it sit on the city website exactly as they are. If you are curious, open it and read it yourself.

Read it and you will see. Though I wonder how many people have.

[Note on dates: Japanese fiscal years run from April to March. Reiwa 3 through Reiwa 7 have been rendered here as fiscal 2021 through fiscal 2025.]