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Light Behind the Fall: Japan's Electricity Consumption, the Environment, and Economic Growth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Vaclav Smil
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The phenomenon is unmistakable (albeit largely unnoticed), and the contrast lends itself to all kinds of symbolic interpretations: Japan's unending retreat from being a highly respected polity and economic powerhouse, widely expected to become the 21st century's global ichiban, has entered troubled waters. As a result of that downward economic trend, whose beginning was signaled by the collapse of the Nikkei index in 1990, Japan's GDP managed the real (inflation-adjusted) annual growth of just 1.1% between 1991 and 2006, while during the preceding 15 years the country's GDP had nearly doubled. But this long-lasting economic and social malaise has been accompanied by a substantial (17%) increase in Japan's primary energy consumption. This is remarkable because pre-1990 Japan was the world's most consistently, and most admirably, energy-efficient economy that had always managed to do with relatively less energy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 5 , Issue 4 , April 2007 , e1
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2007

References

Notes

1. Calculated from annual data series in: Statistics Bureau. Japan Statistical Yearbook. Tokyo: Statistics Bureau. The most recent volume is online: www.stat.go.jp/english/data/nenkan.

2. I dealt with various consequences of that transformation in: Smil, V. 2006. Japan and China: The next fifty years. Japan Focus Summer 2006: www.japanfocus.org/products/details/2213.

3. See, among many others: Smil, V. 1987. Energy Food Environment: Realities, Myths, Options. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Smil, V. 1992. How efficient is Japan's energy use? Current Politics and Economics of Japan 2(3/4): 315-327.

4. I have used purchasing power parity, rather than official exchange rate, to calculate the Japanese value from official energy and GDP statistics.

5. For the US data see: Energy Information Administration. 2007. Energy consumption, expenditures, and emissions indicators, 1949-2005. Available online: www.iea.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/ptb0105.html. For the Japanese data see: The Energy Conservation Center. 2006. Handbook of Energy & Economic Statistics in Japan. Tokyo: The Energy Conservation Center.

6. Energy Conservation Center Japan. 2007. Japan Energy Conservation Handbook. Tokyo: ECCJ.

7. Statistics Bureau. 2007. Japan Statistical Yearbook 2007. Tokyo: Statistics Bureau.

8. Compiled from data in 2007 and 1992 editions of Japan Statistical Yearbook.

9. Waide, P. 2006. Light's Labour's Lost: Policies for Energy-efficient Lighting. Paris: International Energy Agency. Available online: www.iea.org/Textbase/work/2007/cfl/Waide.pdf.

10. Improvements in the efficacy of electric lights are traced in detail in: Smil, V. 2005. Creating the 20th Century: Technical Innovations of 1867-1914 and Their Lasting Impact. New York: Oxford University Press; Smil, V. 2003. Energy at the Crossroads: Global Perspectives and Uncertainties. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Compiled and calculated from data in Waide [9], Japan Statistical Yearbook and Statistical Abstract of the United States.

11. Even in sub-Arctic Sweden with short winter days the average usage is only 1.35 hours/lamp.

12. Trains are the Japanese second bedroom. What Japan Thinks, 7 December 2005. Available online: whatjapanthinks.com/2005/12/07/trains-are-the-japaneses-second-bedroom

13. Steger, B. 2006. Sleeping through class to success: Japanese notions of time and diligence. Time & Society 15(2-3): 197-215. If you have electronic access to Time & Society, I highly recommend this illuminating analysis.

14. Fukumizu, M. et al. Sleep-related nighttime crying (yonaki) in Japan: A community-based study. Pediatrics 115 (1): 217-224.

15. Sioshansi, F.P. and W. Pfaffenberger, eds. 2006. Electricity Market Reform: An International Perspective. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

16. The image is available at: Kitamoto, A. 2007. Earth in the Night: Nighttime Lights of the World Data by DMSP Satellites. Tokyo: National Institute of Informatics: agora.ex.nii.ac.jp/~kitamoto/research/rs/world-lights.html.en