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Japan
Climate
Japan is generally a rainy country with high humidity. Because
of its wide range of latitude, Japan has a variety of climates,
with a range often compared to that of the east coast of North America,
from Nova Scotia to Georgia. Tokyo is at about 36 north latitude,
comparable to that of Tehran, Athens, or Los Angeles. The generally
humid, temperate climate exhibits marked seasonal variation celebrated
in art and literature, as well as regional variations ranging from
cool in Hokkaido to subtropical in Kyushu. Climate also varies with
altitude and with location on the Pacific Ocean or on the Sea of
Japan. Northern Japan has warm summers but long, cold winters with
heavy snow. Central Japan has hot, humid summers and short winters,
and southwestern Japan has long, hot, humid summers and mild winters.
Two primary factors influence Japan's climate: a location near
the Asian continent and the existence of major oceanic currents.
The climate from June to September is marked by hot, wet weather
brought by tropical airflows from the Pacific Ocean and Southeast
Asia. These airflows are full of moisture and deposit substantial
amounts of rain when they reach land. There is a marked rainy season,
beginning in early June and continuing for about a month. It is
followed by hot, sticky weather. Five or six typhoons pass over
or near Japan every year from early August to early September, sometimes
resulting in significant damage. Annual precipitation, which averages
between 100 and 200 centimeters, is concentrated in the period between
June and September. In fact, 70 to 80 percent of the annual precipitation
falls during this period. In winter, a high-pressure area develops
over Siberia, and a low-pressure area develops over the northern
Pacific Ocean. The result is a flow of cold air eastward across
Japan that brings freezing temperatures and heavy snowfalls to the
central mountain ranges facing the Sea of Japan, but clear skies
to areas fronting on the Pacific.
Two major ocean currents affect this climatic pattern: the warm
Kuroshio Current (Black Current; also known as the Japan Current);
and the cold Oyashio Current (Parent Current; also known as the
Okhotsk Current). The Kuroshio Current flows northward on the Pacific
side of Japan and warms areas as far north as Tokyo; a small branch,
the Tsushima Current, flows up the Sea of Japan side. The Oyashio
Current, which abounds in plankton beneficial to coldwater fish,
flows southward along the northern Pacific, cooling adjacent coastal
areas. The meeting point of these currents at 36 north latitude
is a bountiful fishing ground.
Data as of January 1994
Japan
Earthquakes
Ten percent of the world's active volcanos--forty in the early
1990s (another 148 were dormant)--are found in Japan, which lies
in a zone of extreme crustal instability. As many as 1,500 earthquakes
are recorded yearly, and magnitudes of four to six on the Richter
scale are not uncommon. Minor tremors occur almost daily in one
part of the country or another, causing slight shaking of buildings.
Major earthquakes occur infrequently; the most famous in the twentieth
century was the great Kanto earthquake of 1923, in which 130,000
people died. Undersea earthquakes also expose the Japanese coastline
to danger from tsunami, tidal wave.
Japan has become a world leader in research on causes and prediction
of earthquakes. The development of advanced technology has permitted
the construction of skyscrapers even in earthquakeprone areas. Extensive
civil defense efforts focus on training in protection against earthquakes,
in particular against accompanying fire, which represents the greatest
danger.
Data as of January 1994
Japan
Pollution
As Japan changed from an agricultural society to an urbanized industrial
power, much of its natural beauty was destroyed and defaced by overcrowding
and industrial development. However, as the world's leading importer
of both exhaustible and renewable natural resources and the second
largest consumer of fossil fuels, Japan came to realize that it
had a major international responsibility to conserve and protect
the environment. By 1990 Japan had some of the world's strictest
environmental protection regulations.
These regulations were the consequence of a number of wellpublicized
environmental disasters. Cadmium poisoning from industrial waste
in Toyama Prefecture was discovered to be the cause of the extremely
painful itai-itai disease (itai-itai
means ouch-ouch), which causes severe pain in the back and joints,
contributes to brittle bones that fracture easily, and brings about
degeneration of the kidneys. Recovery of cadmium effluent halted
the spread of the disease, and no new cases have been recorded since
1946. In the 1960s, hundreds of inhabitants of Minamata City in
Kumamoto Prefecture contracted "Minamata disease," a degeneration
of the central nervous system caused by eating mercury-poisoned
seafood from Minamata Bay (nearly 1,300 cases of Minamata disease
had been diagnosed by 1979). In Yokkaichi, a port in Mie Prefecture,
air pollution caused by sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide emissions
led to a rapid increase in the number of people suffering from asthma
and bronchitis. In urban areas, photochemical smog from automotive
and industrial exhaust fumes also contributed to the rise in respiratory
problems. In the early 1970s, chronic arsenic poisoning attributed
to dust from local arsenic mines (since shut down) was experienced
in Shimane and Miyazaki prefectures. The incidence of polychlorobiphenyl
(PCB) poisoning, caused by polluted cooking oil and food, particularly
seafood, was also problematic.
Grass-roots pressure groups were formed in the 1960s and 1970s
as a response to increasing environmental problems. These groups
were independent of formal political parties and focused on single,
usually local, environmental issues. Such citizens' movements were
reminiscent of earlier citizen protests in the 1890s. As a result
of this pressure, Japan began in the early 1970s to combat pollution
on an official governmental level, with the establishment of the
Environmental Agency. Although the agency lacked strong public influence
and political power, it established effective regulations to curb
pollution from photochemical smog through strict automotive emissions
standards. It also worked to reduce noise from trains and airplanes,
to remove mining, forestry, and tourist debris left on mountainsides
and in national forests, and to monitor noise and air pollutant
levels in major cities.
Groups also pressured the government and industry for a system
of compensation for pollution victims. A series of lawsuits in the
early 1970s established that corporations were responsible for damage
cause by their products or activities. The Pollution Health Damage
Compensation Law of 1973 provides industry funds for victims. Compensation,
however, was slow, and awards were small, but the establishment
of a government fund helped industry diffuse public outrage. In
1984 it was reported that Japan had more than 85,000 recognized
victims of environmental pollution, with an estimated rate of increase
of 6 percent a year. The regulations aimed at business were not
enough to solve Japan's environmental problems, according to the
Environment Agency's 1989 White Paper on the Environment,
although public awareness and interest had grown and a number of
civic and public interest groups had been established to combat
pollution. Fewer public interest groups were engaged in the environmental
debate than in antinuclear issues, and the peak of public interest
in the environment occurred in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Japan had still not addressed worldwide environmental issues adequately.
Japanese whaling continued in the early 1990s to be the object of
international protest, and Japanese corporate involvement in the
deforestation of Southeast Asia created concern among domestic and
international groups.
The late 1980s saw the beginnings of change. In a 1984 public opinion
poll conducted by the government, Japanese citizens had indicated
less concern for environmental problems than their European counterparts.
In the same year, the Environmental Agency had issued its first
white paper calling for greater participation by Japan's public
and private sectors in protecting the global environment. That challenge
was repeated in the 1989 study. When citizens were asked in 1989
if they thought environmental problems had improved compared with
the past, nearly 41 percent thought things had improved, 31 percent
thought that they had stayed the same, and nearly 21 percent thought
that they had worsened. Some 75 percent of those surveyed expressed
concern about endangered species, shrinkage of rain forests, expansion
of deserts, destruction of the ozone layer, acid rain, and increased
water and air pollution in developing countries. Most believed that
Japan, alone or in cooperation with other industrialized countries,
had the responsibility to solve environmental problems. Although
environmental public interest groups were not as numerous or active
as they had been in the 1970s, the increased awareness of global
environmental issues is likely to result in increased grass-roots
activism.
Since the 1960s, Japan has made slow but significant progress in
combating environmental problems. Efforts made in the late 1980s
created a base of technology and concern that was expected to help
the Japanese face the environmental issues of the 1990s.
Data as of January 1994
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