Japan's meager daylight savings

This summer, thousands of people here on Hokkaido island switched to daylight saving time, with the idea that they'd start work an hour earlier and get off in time to enjoy the long summer evenings. (More on why that didn't work out later.) But thousands of others here didn't make the switch. And to make things even more quixotic, the rest of the country wasn't on board with the springing-ahead thing at all.

Proponents of daylight saving time want to expand their 5-year-old experiment to the rest of Japan. But it's been a mixed bag. One big problem is that people can't move their clocks an hour forward, unlike in the West, because daylight saving time isn't official, and it's entirely voluntary. Hundreds of companies and government offices in Sapporo and elsewhere on Hokkaido participate in the program, but most others ignore summertime, as it's called here. Some banks follow it, but other institutions, such as public schools, don't.

"Everybody has different ideas about it," said Mitsuhito Araya, director of Sapporo city's general planning department.

Araya likes daylight saving time. The 52-year-old has no problem coming to work at 8 instead of 9 -- it's a "fresh experience," he said. But he seldom leaves the office any earlier, mainly because he finds it hard to go home before others do, not all of whom start an hour earlier. Every now and then, Araya says, he sneaks out at 5 p.m., as he did on a recent Thursday to meet his wife for a drink and dinner at a cozy restaurant.

"It's rare for Japanese families, and husband and wife, to spend time together," he said.

Others see summertime as a way to save energy and boost consumer spending. But at the Sapporo city government, only about 900 of the 12,000 employees switched to daylight saving time this year. That can complicate coordination among departments, for meetings and other functions. Citizens have complained about public employees not being available late in the afternoon.

Part of the reason for the low participation may be summertime's checkered past here: Daylight saving time was introduced during the U.S. occupation after World War II. Many Japanese associated it with defeat and longer work hours, and it was dropped in 1952.

Since then, Japanese politicians have tried to revive the system. But then as today, people remain suspicious about the claims of benefit to employees.