Why are Japanese houses so cold?

[imomus]

Well, I'm glad I'm not in Berlin right now. Today's maximum temperature in Berlin is minus 8°C. Here in Osaka it's plus 8°C. There's a palm tree growing in the fire station at the end of the street I'm living on. We had a sprinkling of snow the other night, but mostly it's been extremely mild, usually touching ten degrees during the day.



But despite the fact that it's almost 20 degrees centigrade warmer in Osaka than in Berlin (and let's not even talk about Moscow), I've felt colder here than I ever did in my flat on Wühlischstrasse. That's because German houses have ultra-efficient, heavy duty heating systems, double glazing and insulation. Japanese houses don't. This came home to me most keenly in Hokkaido last year, where, despite kerosene and electric heaters and a denki kaapetto, I could never make my house so warm that I couldn't see my breath. I kept every single layer of clothes on when I was in the house; basically, it was like living outdoors. I even spent one particularly cold weekend camped up in the tiny bathroom, the only place I could conserve heat. For two days I sat on the toilet eating bento dinners, sipping beer from the coin machine across the road, and watching downloaded episodes of Nathan Barley. The kerosene heater turned the place into a sauna, and I kept the bath-tub full of hot water.

I expected the hacking cough I often get in winter to be much worse after two months in that Hokkaido house, but to my surprise it disappeared completely. Apparently living in those conditions was good for me. It certainly doesn't prevent the Japanese from living longer than anyone else in the world. And in the recent cold snap in north Japan, when almost a hundred people died, it was invariably because they fell off their roofs while attempting to clear them of snow, or were buried by collapsing snow-heavy roofs while they slept. These were not hypothermia deaths, deaths due to the cold itself.




The big question (and I've been asking everyone I meet the same thing) is, why is a nation capable of building the world's most advanced and comfortable technology not capable of heating its houses? "When I first came to Japan three years ago, I thought the Japanese were the stupidest people in the world," says Mint Woo, a Korean ad executive quoted in Bill Stonehill's interesting article The Cold and the Kotatsu. Koreans (partly because Korea is much colder than Japan) heat their houses the way the Chinese do; "when a building is being built, hot water pipes are laid in the cement floors of all the rooms. In winter, hot water is piped through them, making a very warm floor."

After talking with lots of people, I've collected a list of reasons why Japanese houses are so cold. None of these reasons is in and of itself sufficient, but together they add up to some sort of explanation.

Japanese houses are built for summer because, thanks to the warming Pacific current, the Japanese winter is short and mostly mild. Also, Japanese have a range of "localised heat" technologies which they (like us canny, mean Scots) prefer to the global heating systems of the West: the kotatsu table, the electric carpet, the heated toilet seat, even hot stick-on patches fuelled by chemical reaction, these provide spots of heat where and when you most need them. Apart from those, the omnipresent air conditioning unit serves as a (rather feeble) heater too. Also, the Japanese spend a lot of time out and about in public. In the public bath-house or the izakaya you can keep warm in company. What's more, the threat of earthquakes makes the Japanese build rather flimsy, throw-away houses.



But my favourite explanation is a religious-aesthetic one: the Japanese are extremely attuned to the seasons, thanks to their ancient agrarian national religion of Shinto. When it's winter, you should know it's winter. Don't walk around in a T-shirt pretending it's summer; it should feel cold. No wonder they go so crazy with joy when the first blossom arrives.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

You've hit upon the greatest mystery in modern Japan.

Your explanations make sense, somewhat. From what I've heard though, people who live in relatively new houses in the mostly cold regions - Hokkaido, Aomori - do have central heating. I think rich people here can and do buy themselves out of the Four Seasons lifestyle.

Also, you do see kids in Harajuku in the middle of summer dressed in head-to-toe wool punk gear, so they clearly haven't learned the Shinto thing yet.

My pet theory has always been that the construction industry in Japan is fundamentally corrupt and cost-cutting. The traditional way of building houses came about before the idea of modern insulation existed. The construction industry - totally non-competitive - has had no reason to invest in these new building methods, because they don't have to. Consumers have no power to force them to upgrade.

I can't imagine there is an explicit demand from the public that they leave out all energy saving devices. Central heating may be one thing, but always having the heater on can be a tremendous waste of energy. A very pro-environment house would at least have massive insulation, no?

Marxy

[jedibamf.livejournal.com]

I would just like to let you know that you are my hero. I love reading your journal. I think your life and your travels are very interesting. Also, I love your music.

Thank you for being a source of inspiration. That is all.

-Caitlin

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I'm not so much of an Alex Kerr-ite as to believe that a corrupt construction industry could somehow ride roughshod over all consumer demands for something like insulation. No, I think this is a cultural thing, something coming from the consumers themselves. Aside from the Shinto angle I mentioned, there's also a strong streak of Stoicism running through Japanese culture; suffering builds character, and what doesn't kill me makes me stronger.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

You have given me the best kind of warm glow, Caitlin! Better than central heating!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I was forgetting what they call Stoicism here in Asia: "Buddhism"!

"The Stoic concepts of passion and apatheia are analogous to the Buddhist noble truths; All life has suffering (Dukkha), suffering is rooted in passion and desire (Samudaya), meditation and virtue can free one from suffering (Nirodha and Marga)."

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism)

[cerulicante.livejournal.com]

The Japs don't have insulation because it's cheaper and more profitable for the construction cartels to make flimsy shacks and charge premium prices for them. Japanese homes are NOT built for summer; they're like ovens during the day and they're miserable, muggy steamrooms at night.

This is one area where Japan is just...STUPID. STUPID STUPID STUPID. They might as well head over to Africa to check out the latest in mud hut construction. Ever seen what the walls of a lot of houses are made of? It's some sort of straw wattle.



FANTASTIC.


Next time I go back, I'm living in a concrete apartment building.

[cerulicante.livejournal.com]

Japanese have brainwashed themselves into thinking of discomfort as the paradigm, even though their money allows them an escape. What good is progress and resources if the social meme forbids their intelligent application?

It is sort of like the burqa, a mode of dress that is NOT thousands of years old and was only fairly recently implemented to keep women from driving men crazy with rays from their hair.* Even though women might have the power to not wear them, they do-always.


*I am not kidding here.

[mckibillo.livejournal.com]

I live in Takayama in Gifu prefecture, but after this winter... screw this, we're heading down Tokyo way. I understand the explanation that houses here would be built for the summer... but up here where there is now at least a meter of snow on the ground it makes absolutely NO sense whatsoever. It's just unfathomable...

But, yes, I think that it has to do with this notion that you should suffer. It's where the anti-life, anti-materialist dogma of Buddhism smacks head on into the sybaritic Shintoism that you so love.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm suspicious that the construction industry is dying to create insulated houses, only to have a huge consumer uprising against it. There certainly may be a combination: the housing companies don't want to have to deal with it, and consumer don't care enough to complain. But, let's turn the tables here on our normal debate: the strongest way to actually demonstrate the cultural-religious component of this problem would be for you to somehow prove that the construction industry has no reason to start implimenting better energy-saving, warming practices and that consumers have specifically shown adversion to it when offered the choice.

Why are office buildings heated and cooled centrally? Wouldn't religion carry into the workplace? Shouldn't department stores be freezing in the winter? Isn't that the most Buddhist way to shop?

Marxy

[shiu.livejournal.com]

i dunno... alot of the new houses in my old area were advertised to be energy efficient, so maybe it's getting better now.

[sparkligbeatnic.livejournal.com]

I have continued to enjoy the localized approach to keeping (partially) warm since my first visit to Japan.

It has much to do with the feeling of being warm and cold in different parts of the body at the same time. I can feel winter's chill and, simultaneously, the local heat makes me reminds me of the comforts of civilization. Were I to live in an thermally isolated house, I would distance myself not only from nature, but also lose this palpable reminder of the benefits of civilization.

Moreover, I've always enjoyed the bracing stimulating feel of cold air. The presence of local heat means this pleasure doesn't require excessive stoicism on my part. Indeed, local heat amplifies my enjoyment of
cold and vice-versa.

Some Shinto practices involve bathing in extremely cold water or exposing the body to extreme weather on mountain tops. I've seen an interesting speculative theory about these forms of training in a book called The Looking Glass God (http://www.shinto.nl/shinto_books/looking_glass_god.htm) by former Kyoto resident, Nahum Stiskin. Roughly speaking these practices are interpreted as a way of directly experiencing the interplay of polar forces, within the framework of one's own body.

Another positive feature of Japan's locally heated breezy architecture is simply that I get my own supply of fresh air, and don't have to share the recycled, processed air with everyone else as I would have to in a globally heated, hermetically sealed building.

Judging from some recent trends in housing, local heating is something that may be on the decline in Japan. I'll be sad to see it go.

[nato-dakke.livejournal.com]

that's not the worst of it. Up here in aomori, plenty of my friends live in older houses without built-in ventilation for a kerosene heater.

The advice of the government authorities and heater manufacturers is to use the heater with the window open. no shit. with the window open.

btw, sparklingbeatnic, you don't live anywhere cold, do you? 8 degrees = refreshing, -3 = painful... and it robs you of your ability to type messages on a keitai.

[sparkligbeatnic.livejournal.com]

The advice of the government authorities and heater manufacturers is to use the heater with the window open. no shit. with the window open.

Well burning consumes oxygen, so that's really good advice. Kerosene fumes aren't too great for the brain either, though lack of oxygen is a real killer.

Yup I doubt I'd want a breezy house in Takayama, though presumably with a good local heating system that could perhaps be fine. I won't speculate since I've only visited places like that and not lived in them.

The Kyoto weather forecast tells me that today's high is 5C while the low is -2C.

[sparkligbeatnic.livejournal.com]

As a child, I also took over a friend's paper route for two weeks, while he went to India with his family. This was during one of the coldest February's in Montreal history. That's -20 C or -30 C before windchill.

A pretty direct experience of what it means to be really cold.

[nato-dakke.livejournal.com]

I'm familiar with the oxidation of fossil fuels. It's the waste and futility of heating a room with an open window that's remarkable.

and how did that -20 make you feel? briskly refreshed?

[(Anonymous)]

This is not supported by any evidence, but I seem to remember hearing from somebody in Nagoya that introducing central heating on a broader scale in Japan was on the political agenda in Japan at some point (60s, 70s?), but that the reform was considered too expensive and therefore scrapped. Ask around if the older folks where you are now know anything about it!

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

oh no do you think it will still be so cold in Berlin mid-February? I'll be between there and the UK soon. sad i'll miss you but thrilled about leaving these shores.
xo
mischa

[imomus.livejournal.com]

[sparkligbeatnic.livejournal.com]

I tried out one of those kerosene stoves once. It's the cheapest way to heat a room, but I still wounldn't recommend it. Works pretty well outdoors though.

I'm guessing you need something quite powerful, so you probably face a choice between gas or kerosene. Are any of your neighbours using something different?

As for efficiency, somehow Japanese consume far less energy and generate less greenhouse gas per capita than North Americans.
Europeans do even better.

[mckibillo.livejournal.com]

The only choice available is kerosene, you can't buy gas stoves for indoor heating. You can use prohibitively expensive oil or electric heaters if you've got the cash to spend. And as for the economic efficiency of breezy homes plus kerosene heaters... sorry but I don't think so. We need to get in our car at least weekly, to drive the the filling station, to fill up our kerosene containers and then drive back so we can fill up our stoves. And the price of kerosene has doubled this winter from last. A well insulated home, with double glazed windows and radiant floor heating would be a FAR more efficient use of energy resources. A little investment up front into the home pays off in the long run. Oh right, but the Japanese don't consider homes to be an investment as their usually torn down by the next buyer.

And as for the (dubious) pleasures of feeling temperature extremes at different parts of your body... ok, you know what cold is? Cold is when you have to run the hot water over your toothbrush and toothpaste before using them, otherwise your gums will sing with pain at the sudden stab of cold. Cold is not leaving water in flower vases overnight for fear of the water freezing and cracking the vase. Cold is putting food INTO the fridge at night because it'll stay warmer than the unheated kitchen. Cold is their being only a 2 degree Celsius difference between an unheated room and the outside temperature. Sound pleasurable?

[nato-dakke.livejournal.com]

a lot of the older schools are kitted out with those things. one in each classroom. between classes the kids huddle around them.

despite the prevalence of pinpoint heaters electic or otherwise, smoke detectors or other fire prevention measures are also absent in most residences.

[nato-dakke.livejournal.com]

beg to differ on the gas stove thing. one of my coworkers has a gas heater. pushes his gas bill above 2 man a month for a single dude in a small apartment.

Also, do they not deliver kerosene in your neck of the woods? and don't you have a large tank? I've got 70 gallons that i get filled directly from the truck plus an extra couple of polycans for back up.

[nato-dakke.livejournal.com]

I know the feeling. Aomori saw near-record snowfalls last year. By the end of the season I was thanking my lucky stars that I wouldn't have to go through that again. This year it's a hell of a lot colder, windier, and snowier. But I'm putting it behind me in august, and hightailing it to the big city.

[(Anonymous)]

This night it was -19° here in Berlin, now it has finally warmed up a bit. It's now -11°.

(I may have to convert to Buddhism, though: the radiator in the study has frozen over night and now won't come back on.)

der.

[mckibillo.livejournal.com]

didn't know that about the gas heaters...

we do have a large capacity tank but that's to power the (spotty) hot water boiler, for the room heaters we fill those up via containers which we have to get refilled about once a week.