News Why Japan struggles with daylight time

[thomas]

This has been driving me up the wall for ages: the waste of daylight time in Japan, with the sun rising in summer as early as 4:30 A.M.! According to tenki.jp, the sun currently sets at 19:02, and that's as late as it gets, while most European capitals enjoy sunlight until 9 or 10 P.M. If you have been wondering why the country hasn't been able to introduce daylight savings time in decades, Bloomberg's Gearoid Reidy will tell you.

Japan is nine hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time, and one of the few major industrialized nations not to have daylight saving. With offices generally starting at 9 a.m., hours of sunlight are wasted in the mornings before most people are active; during the peak commuting hours in summer, it's already scorching. Conversely, evenings are short: For much of the year, by the time the nation's salarymen and women get out of work, the sun has already set. In midwinter, it's dark in Tokyo long before 5 p.m.

Partly, it's a legacy of the 19th century:

Japan maintains the same time zone first introduced at the International Meridian Conference in 1884, which established the modern universal time system, setting an hour of time at each 15 degree interval of longitude from London. The conference fixed Japan Standard Time at 135 degrees east, passing through Akashi in Hyogo prefecture, nine hours ahead of GMT. In Tokyo, which is nearly four degrees east of Akashi, the sun rises and sets some 20 minutes or so earlier than the country's legal time. In the 1880s, the city had only recently become the nation's capital, with a population of just 1 million. Now, about 36 million people live in the megacity and surrounding regions, with the Kanto area producing almost half of the nation's gross domestic product. Does it make sense for it to be stuck in a time zone decided nearly 150 years ago?

And it's been suggested before:

A decade ago, then Governor of Tokyo, Naoki Inose, made a forward-thinking proposal to permanently move the country's time zone forward two hours. Seeking to ride the wave of hype surrounding Abenomics, he linked his proposal to market hours, envisaging that the city's trading would start as soon as it closed in New York. While his proposal had supporters, including noted reformist Heizo Takenaka, it went nowhere. A permanent shift in the time zone is an idea that would be worth exploring again, however. Japan is situated in the same zone as Seoul, which is almost 13 degrees of longitude closer to GMT — that's nearly an hour difference in evening daylight. While two hours seems too much, a one-time shift to move the entire country from GMT+9 to GMT+10 would fix many issues.

Shift those time zones already!


Source: The Land of the Rising Sun Rises Much Too Early

 

[Petaris]

I wish we would get rid of daylight savings here. Its silly and serves no real purpose anymore. No one is saving lamp oil or electricity doing it.

 

[thomas]

Well, I'm not sure if it's just about oil or electricity. However, no one needs bright daylight at 4:30 A.M.; on the other hand, it's nice to have one more hour of daylight to enjoy outdoors.

The article actually suggests a permanent switch to GMT +10, which would make a lot of sense.

 

[Petaris]

Those were the reasons brought up here for its original (lamp oil) and contemporary (electricity) purpose. The contemporary reason was why they extended it from what it was originally here in 2007. The idea is that by adjusting by an hour people will only be active during daylight and won't have to use lights, which is probably true in only a small number of instances and would only be effective for a few weeks anyway.

I would agree that the permanent shift would be better. Resetting clocks twice a year is annoying but the real pain is getting your body to adjust to the new time.

 

[Grandpa Frank]

I always hear it's so the kids don't have to go to school in the dark. Seems all the kids I see going to school now get dropped off by their parents right in front of the school or get a bus right in front of their house.

 

[Maciamo]

I completely agree that Japan should change its time zone - if not by two hours, then at least by one. If it did, it would be in the same time zone as eastern Australia (including Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney and Brisbane). In Russia, even Vladivostok, which is at the same longitude as western Japan (roughly between Fukuoka and Hiroshima) is one hour ahead of Japan.