Many thanks to Sven (hi Sven!) for sharing the summary of this NHK poll.
No doubt, the results of this poll do show that the Japanese consider school textbooks (and classes) as one of the most important sources of historical knowledge about the "last war" (I love this term).
I am not sure however about the usefulness of this and other similar polls if we are interested in exploring the factors and processes that shape the Japanese people's knowledge and interpretation of history.
Not long ago, I presented the findings of my study that analyzed university students' reception of revisionist historical manga.
Basically I gave the respondents exerts from Hate the Korean Wave and Introduction to China and asked them questions about the views expressed in these texts (the sampling is quite small but for those interested in reading the whole article it can be downloaded here http://www.academia.edu/2131695/Reception_of_the_revisi
onist_historical_manga_in_Japan_a_case_study_of_univers
ity_students)
One of the questions asked the students whether they were influenced by the arguments expressed in the texts. One of the participants at the workshop where I presented the findings of my study, who is a highly qualified political psychologist told me that from a psychological point of view, respondents' perceptions of whether they were influenced by something are not really important when trying to measure the actual influence of a certain event or text.
Apparently there are some rather complex methods used by psychologists in testing the effects of a certain experience and these have nothing to do with asking the respondents about their views of its importance.
I do not know much about psychology but it seems to me that the argument about the danger of taking people's responses about whether they were influenced by a certain text or the sources of their knowledge of history at face value is valid. After all, how many of us can trace the exact origins of their knowledge of certain historical facts and more importantly their interpretation? Personally I find this rather impossible.....

Yours,
Alexander Bukh
Victoria University of Wellington