Opinion

Daylight-Saving Time

By JULIET HINDELL

One of the very few things I miss about Britain while living in Tokyo is the long summer evenings. It doesn't get dark until 9 p.m., which means for most people there are two hours of daylight left after work.

It opens up a whole range of possibilities: evening tennis, games in the park, sitting outside a pub with a pint of beer watching the sun go down. There is every reason to be outside, and even if you are inside the sun comes through the window during dinnertime.

Children complain that it is difficult to go to sleep while it's still light outside, and farmers moan that they still have to get up in the dark because they have to milk the cows, who don't understand that the clocks have been changed. But they are just about the only people who don't like daylight-saving time.

I am amazed that Japan once had the same system of putting the clocks forward by an hour so that everyone benefited from long evenings. Japan tried the idea in 1948, but it was abandoned a few years later.

Now the idea of daylight-saving time is being discussed again. The idea is being promoted on environmental and economic grounds. It's thought that longer evenings would save half a million liters of oil a year and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 440,000 tons. Longer days would allow consumers to spend more money, adding an estimated 610 billion to the economy.

Those against the idea say that it will be bad for workers who will end up working longer hours, but this isn't the case in other countries where daylight-saving has already been introduced.

I think those campaigning for daylight-saving time should concentrate on the improvement in people's lifestyles. In Britain, where the winter seems so dark and so long, the whole nation seems to have a change of mood when the clocks change at the end of March. When British Summer Time begins it acts as a very strong signal that the long winter is finally over.

Plenty of people in Britain suffer from something called seasonal affected disorder, or SAD, which, like it sounds, is a condition in which you get really depressed by dark winter weather. Japan doesn't have that problem. Japanese winters, with their high blue skies and crisp air, are a wonderful treat for people from Britain, who are used to short days, grey skies and a lot of rain.

But in the summer here I long for summers in Britain where days seem to go on forever. If daylight-saving time is introduced in Japan it could happen in the beginning of the next century. Apparently two years are needed to make the changeover and "educate the public." I hope that in that education the officials don't forget to tell people how pleasant life can be when it doesn't get dark until late.

Shukan ST: March 19, 1999

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