How Climate Change Is Reshaping Japan
From stronger typhoons to shorter springs, Japan is feeling the impacts of climate change.
Developments threaten crops, coastlines, and communities.
The old-man joke is that there are only two seasons in Japan: atsui desu ne? (It’s hot, isn’t it?) and samui desu ne? (It’s cold, isn’t it?).
During my ten years in Tokyo, there has been a steady increase in the former and a corresponding decrease in the latter. This year, we set a string of new heat records, including the number of consecutive days with daytime temperatures higher than 30 degrees centigrade.
This is by no means just a Tokyo phenomenon, nor a laughing matter.
Average annual air temperatures nationwide have climed by more than 1.2°C, a pace well above the global average.
Tokyo, thanks to the heat-island effect, has warmed nearly twice as fast.
Across Japan, the effects of climate change are starting to reshape the country.
Extreme weather and its toll
Japan has long been disaster-prone, but climate change is exacerbating storms, making summers deadlier, and increasing the frequency of floods. Typhoon Hagibis in 2019 left damages exceeding 10 billion dollars, washing away riverside communities and cutting power to tens of thousands.
Torrential rainfall events have become more frequent, and landslides regularly devastate villages and towns.
Heatwaves, meanwhile, have become silent killers: 2024 saw a record-high 2033 heat-related fatalities between June and September.
Urban environments and Japan’s lack of urban green amplify these hazards.
Asphalt and concrete trap heat, creating sudden “guerrilla storms” that overwhelm drainage systems (the first time I saw streets turn into literal rivers was here in Tokyo).
Agriculture and food at risk
For a half-Dane and half-Brit, the hotter weather mostly means shaking your fist at the thermometer and adopting vampiric waking hours (I melt if I go out during the day). Also, I am considering starting a religion that worships AC units.
Elsewhere, the consequences are much more serious.
Japan’s farms and fisheries are becoming increasingly vulnerable to the effects of heat.
Citrus groves in Kochi and apple orchards in northern Honshu are showing irregular growth patterns as temperatures swing unpredictably.
At sea, traditional catches are vanishing from long-established waters. Spiny lobsters, once limited to southern waters, are now appearing in Iwate, while yellowtail, a celebrated winter delicacy in central Japan, has declined sharply even as catches in Hokkaido surge.
Production of Hokkaido’s famed rausu konbu kelp has, in some places, fallen by fifty to eighty per cent due to rotting roots in unusually warm seas.
Consequences across an ageing society
One of the major issues for the Japanese population is an increase in heat strokes. The ageing population exacerbates the situation, as elderly people are more susceptible to suffering serious consequences from the heat.
The health impacts extend well beyond heatstroke. Warmer summers are pushing vector-borne disseases further north, increasing the risk of outbreaks. Longer pollen seasons are aggravating allergies and asthma, while government surveys show that mental stress has tripled as a perceived health risk over the past two decades.
Climate change is also a story of economics. The cost of repairing infrastructure after typhoons and floods runs into the trillions of yen. Energy demand is surging as summers grow hotter.
Each disruption ripples across local economies, threatening both livelihoods and national growth.
Policy responses and public awareness
Japan, like other places, have responded with frameworks, such as the 2018 Climate Change Adaptation Law and the 2020 Act for Establishing Energy Supply Resilience.
However, these are extensions of traditional disaster-preparedness policies rather than strategies tailored to climate change.
Public responses and prioritisation also leave something to be desired.
A 2025 Ipsos survey found that only 40% of Japanese respondents agreed that individuals must act now to combat climate change — the lowest figure among 32 countries.
Confidence in government or corporate action was similarly muted, with fewer than one in ten believing Japan is a global leader on climate change. This gap between growing impacts and muted urgency may prove the most challenging obstacle to overcome.
All is not lost.
One thing that Japan has taught me over the last decade is that it tends to move slowly – but it then moves at speeds that would give other countries whiplash.
I say this fully aware that climate change is far from just a Japanese problem, or something the country can fix on its own.
That said, I hope that, as a developed, disaster-prone society, it can serve as a beacon for how to address the growing effects of climate change. And that it can leverage its rich history of sustainability and reverence for nature to bring about real change toward a sustainable future.
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