Issue:
August 2024 | Letter from Hokkaido
Authorities have been slow to address hotter summers in Japan’s northernmost prefecture
Summer in Japan brings with it the usual litany of complaints about heat and humidity. But in recent years, people have realized that the increasing number of days when temperatures soar to 35C or higher is not an aberration or something deserved to be treated as light news.
In the not too distant past, television stations covered the summer months by doing little more than quoting people commenting on how hot it was, often with footage of children playing in park fountains or crowds of young people in yukata eating kakigōri shaved ice.
But not any more. Concern about the increasing number of hotter days and nights, especially in concrete jungles such as Tokyo and Osaka, has prompted serious discussion about the short- and long-term health risks, as well as the social and economic impact of the heat.
Hokkaido, of course, is a summertime escape for many people on Honshu looking to spend a few days somewhere cool. Although, thankfully, we do not have the long, hot, humid summers that are standard in the rest of the country, things do get quite hot up here, especially in late July and August. When that happens, it can be dangerous for the island’s residents and wildlife, and for reasons that are not always obvious to outsiders.
Unlike Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku, many homes in Hokkaido still do not have air conditioning, including my own apartment. Hokkaido homes and buildings were designed to keep out the cold weather, with double-glazed windows, proper insulation, and central heating. Air conditioning units were long seen as a waste of money, something you might only need for a few hours a day during a couple of weeks in August. It is much cheaper to just turn on the fan or leave the windows open and let the evening breeze serve as natural coolant.
That has changed over the past two decades, however. Newer hotels in Hokkaido’s major cities have air conditioning, as do all modern restaurants and public buildings. Yet it’s still possible to find places where there is none, including some of the nicer hotels. They are rarely found in cheap boarding houses and small B&Bs. Rather than air conditioning, it wasn’t that long ago when certain hotels turned their heaters on in the summer. In Nemuro, where summer usually means dense fog and temperatures in the teens and low 20Cs, I checked into a business hotel in July 2008 following the G7 Summit in Toyako. The heater in the lobby was on to keep the chill out at a time when Tokyo and Osaka were baking in 30C+ temperatures.
But in recent years, Hokkaido authorities have been forced to consider new measures to deal with the hotter summers. In July and August, and sometimes in early September, daytime highs on the island reach, or even surpass, Tokyo and Osaka levels. In early July, Nemuro held a meeting with local residents, warning them of the dangers of heat stroke and advising them to take extra precautions in their non-air conditioned homes.
Unlike Sapporo, let alone other major cities elsewhere, much of Hokkaido lacks large numbers of ambulances and medical facilities to quickly respond to a spike in heatstroke cases. Elderly residents are at greatest risk, especially those who work on the vast farmlands of central and eastern Hokkaido.
Public schools are attempting to install air conditioning, and some private schools have already done so. But only over the past two or three years have officials come to accept that air conditioning in local public schools is neither spoiling the students nor a waste of money, at a time when the prefectural population is aging and declining, along with other pressures on the public purse. In the meantime, more efforts are being made to remind parents, teachers, and school administrators of the dangers the heat poses to students in stuffy classrooms.
Yet heat warnings don’t always get conveyed to visitors. Over the past month or so, I’ve welcomed friends from Tokyo and Osaka who came for the cooler, drier climate. But it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that because Hokkaido's July temperatures are usually only in the mid-20Cs, as opposed to the mid-30Cs, that there is no need to worry about heat stroke. I’ve also seen any number of tourists so thrilled with being in “cool” Hokkaido that they head off to remote areas dressed inappropriately and unprepared for a sudden rise in temperatures, ignoring the threat of heat stroke while hiking in the midday sun with little or no water.
The hotter Hokkaido weather is also having an impact in another area that people in large cities never think about: livestock. One of the most pressing issues dairy farmers face is getting air conditioning installed in their barns. Without it, there are increased health risks to the cows, which means that milk, and therefore, cheese, ice cream, and yogurt production is negatively affected. The same goes for beef cattle as well as poultry barns. The thought of providing air-conditioned facilities for cows and chickens might elicit a chuckle among urban readers. But it’s no joke: there are serious economic consequences for Hokkaido’s agricultural economy if policymakers ignore the heat risks.
Most climate scientists agree that, while Hokkaido summers are not likely to be as long or as hot as those elsewhere in Japan in the coming years, they will still be longer, and warmer, than local historical averages. PR campaigns touting the island as a cool, green summer paradise tell only half the story at best. At worst, they make it harder to properly prepare Hokkaido residents and visitors for a future in which measures for dealing with summer heat are as necessary as the those needed to cope with the winter cold.
Eric Johnston is the Senior National Correspondent for the Japan Times. Views expressed within are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Japan Times.
