In a move to promote energy saving and leisure activities in summer, the government convened on Friday an open forum in Tokyo to discuss introducing daylight-saving time.
The meeting, the first of its kind, was titled "The National Conference to Deliberate on the Global Environment and Summertime." It was held in accordance with a June outline by the government to promote measures against global warming.
Ten of the 16 committee members, all of whom were chosen from academic institutions and media and business circles, participated in the meeting along with delegates from the Economic Planning Agency, the Environment Agency and the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, which are in charge of its arrangements.
Citing an ever-increasing volume of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases being emitted, the members said they hope the conference will provide the public with an opportunity to review lifestyles and come up with ecologically friendly ways of living.
Once introduced in Japan in 1948 at the instruction of the General Headquarters of the Allied Powers, daylight-saving time was abolished in 1952 because it was thought to lead to overwork as Japan went about its economic reconstruction after the war. But new calls to implement daylight-saving time, in which the clock is set one to two hours forward for the five to seven months covering summer, has been proposed in Japan in recent years as a way to complement the country's energy policy.