The Japanese registry has published a report which shows the figures of 2008 and of the first quarter of 2009. Without a doubt, the biggest event in 2008 happened on March 1st when 1 million registrations were reached. On March 1st 2009, approximately 1.1 million .jp names were registered. So we can’t talk about a huge growth.
Especially not when we take a closer look at the number of Japanese inhabitants. 127 million live in Japan. So with only 1.1 million domain names, we see there’s a very low rate of registrations per capita. In Japan, 0.85 name per 100 inhabitants is registered. Just to compare: In the Netherlands 28 names per 100 inhabitants are registered, in Belgium 9 per 100 inhabitants.