JR Tokai Express Research has conducted a survey into Japan on the attitude towards the iPhone. Japan is considered a tough market for Apple because it’s already a sophisticated market and high-end phones in Japan really need 3G. The survey showed that 85.2 percent of 300 respondents had heard of the iPhone, and of those 73.6 percent said they knew more about it than just the name according to What Japan Thinks. So, of those who knew anything about about the iPhone, 51.7 percent answered “yes” to the question: “If Apple’s iPhone went on sale in Japan, might you like to buy it?” Note that’s a “might” not a “will”, but it’s still got to be a pleasing figure for Apple (NSDQ: AAPL). 19.3 percent answered “no”, and 29.0 percent said they weren’t sure.

The Music Media Watch newsletter has some brief stories relevant to mobile… The Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) has released the results of a survey of 1,054 people, which found that 37.1 percent said they use illegal sites for mobile music downloads, and 14 percent said they upload files to the sites. RIAJ estimates that more than 399 million mobile tracks were illegally downloaded in Japan last year, but the release is in Japanese, so I can’t delve into the details.

Also, Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) Japan has added the ability to search for chaku-uta (ringtones) and chaku-uta full (songs) directly on the portals of DoCoMo (NYSE: DCM) and KDDI/au. This is significant because Yahoo Japan is half-owned by Softbank, which is trying to build up the mobile business it bought from Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) into a serious contender. (release in Japanese)