ADVERTISEMENT

Tokyo Governor Casts Doubt on Daylight Savings for 2020 Olympics

Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said that she was concerned about the expense and disruption of moving clocks forward.

Tokyo Governor Casts Doubt on Daylight Savings for 2020 Olympics
Yuriko Koike, governor of Tokyo, speaks during an interview in Tokyo, Japan. (Photographer: Keith Bedford/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- Tokyo’s highest official is casting doubt on government plans to institute daylight savings time in 2019 and 2020 to help manage the scorching heat during the Summer Olympics.

Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said Monday that she was concerned about the expense and disruption of moving clocks forward by two hours during summer months for two years only. Koike told Bloomberg News that she also has heard apprehension expressed about the difficulty of introducing the measure in time for the Tokyo Games.

Tokyo Governor Casts Doubt on Daylight Savings for 2020 Olympics

“A lot of people are concerned about the cost and social instability caused by having it for just two years,” she said in an interview at her office, adding that she wasn’t opposed to a more permanent move. “Separately from the Olympics and Paralympics, I think it is worth considering.”

While the city’s Olympic bid documents cited the region’s relatively “mild” summers, this year’s record high temperatures have sparked concerns about the safety of competitors and spectators in 2020. More than 80,000 people have been sent to the hospital with heat stroke this year, an 82 percent increase from last year. Some 144 have died, many of them elderly.

That has prompted Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government to consider moving the country’s clocks forward for the next two summers, enabling more outdoor events to take place in the relatively cool morning hours, the Sankei newspaper reported earlier this month. Daylight savings was previously introduced in Japan under the postwar U.S. occupation, but quickly abandoned.

Some 53 percent of Japanese adults opposed instituting daylight savings time, according to a survey released Monday by the ANN news network, compared with 36 percent who approved of the idea.

Koike, who was once a member of Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party, founded a new party last year in an unsuccessful general election bid to oust him. She later stepped down as head of the group. Asked about the LDP leadership election next month, in which Abe is expected to win a third consecutive term, Koike told Bloomberg that it was a matter for the party to decide.

To contact the reporters on this story: Isabel Reynolds in Tokyo at ireynolds1@bloomberg.net;Emi Nobuhiro in Tokyo at enobuhiro@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net, Ruth Pollard

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.