Tokyo
The reverberations from Japan's worst disaster since World War II continue to ripple through the country, right into the office of Akihiko Tanaka, executive vice president of the University of Tokyo.
Like many Japanese executives these days, Mr. Tanaka has removed his necktie, shut off his air-conditioner, and dimmed the office lights. His computer is off when he's not using it. "Anything that saves power," he explains.
Universities across the capital, struggling to meet a government demand for 15-percent cuts in electricity use, have set classroom temperatures at a muggy 28 degrees Celsius (82 degrees Fahrenheit). Many have ended classes early to avoid sweltering summer months, when thermometers hover over 30 degrees for weeks on end.
The alternative is worse, says Mr. Tanaka. "We have to avoid a power blackout this summer. That would not simply terminate our experiments. It would destroy them."
Power supply in Tokyo is monopolized by the Tokyo Electric Power Company, known as Tepco, operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which was crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. With many other reactors also offline following the disaster, the city has faced a power crunch in the peak-demand months of July and August.
Japan's government has already told millions of office workers to ditch their suits. The salaryman uniform of necktie, dark jacket, and leather shoes is out. Chinos, loose Hawaiian shirts, and sandals are in. Government office workers can wear T-shirts ("solid colors"), jeans ("no rips or holes"), even pedal pushers—anything that keeps power-guzzling air-conditioners switched off.
As one of the 10 largest consumers of electricity in the capital, the University of Tokyo is under pressure to lead the way. It claims to have already shaved a huge 350,000 kilowatts of electricity a day off its bill at its five campuses and aims to double the government target to 30 percent.
Supercomputer simulations, work with electromagnetic pulsars, and other power-hungry experiments have been shifted to the evenings and weekends. Computers automatically adjust air-conditioners to 28 degrees Celsius. Twitter alerts warn professors who are using too much electricity.
A Permanent Change?
The university is also one of many considering awarding credits to students who do summer volunteer work in Japan's disaster-hit northeast, in part because it gets students out of the classroom. Tokyo's prestigious Meiji University has begun a course that gives credits to students who have helped disaster victims, attended lectures, and filed reports on their work.
Mr. Tanaka says the changes are an opportunity to transform the nature of the campus. "It's about aggregating small changes to change a system that has been plagued by inertia. If successful, we could be used as a model for other universities."
Those sentiments were echoed by Ryu Matsumoto, then the environment minister, who said the summer power saving would not be just a temporary event. "It is going to change the way of life in Japan."
The nation's top science college, the Tokyo Institute of Technology, has reduced lighting in classrooms by 50 percent and curtailed or banned the use of air-conditioners, projectors, and other electrical equipment. At Temple University's branch campus here, professors have been told to avoid ties and jackets, but to use "common sense"—"in keeping with the fact that you represent an institution of higher education in Japan," Dean Bruce Stronach told faculty members in June.
The changes have created a concern among scholars at the larger universities that their work will suffer. Professors have privately lamented to some news-media outlets that the cuts will damage Japan's research competitiveness. Mr. Tanaka accepts that possibility but adds, "We all know that we have to do our best."
