To save energy, Japan urges salarymen to shed their suits

The fashion models who prowl the catwalks of Japan tend to be long-legged and slinky. But the latest style setter here has a leonine glare and the kind of commanding bark that makes junior executives sit up and take note.

Hiroshi Okuda, chairman of Toyota Motor, Japan's largest company, is about to make his runway debut, promenading before the cameras for a new national campaign to cajole Japanese men to help the nation save energy by shedding their jackets and ties in summer.

This blatant appeal to hierarchy comes as Japan - the world's second-largest oil importer, after the United States - charts a sartorial revolution intended to cut summer air-conditioning bills.

The dark business suit, the beloved uniform for generations of salarymen, is supposed to stay at home this summer as all public and private offices - in a bid to save energy and reduce output of global warming gases - are to set their air-conditioners at a sweltering 28 degrees Celsius, or 82.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

"Japanese often feel they cannot do this or that if their bosses are not doing it," said Yoshihisa Fujita, the environment ministry official in charge of the campaign. "We targeted top executives of major corporations to lead the movement because smaller company employees would feel, 'We cannot remove neckties when our customer company people wear them'." Until now, office air-conditioning settings have varied, with some women complaining of glacial temperatures that allow their male colleagues' suits to look crisp.

With air-conditioners blasting less hot air into streets, the nation's dominant city also hopes to attack its summer "heat island" syndrome. With few parks, vast swaths of cement and new high-rises blocking sea breezes, Tokyo's number of "tropical nights" - when thermometers never drop below 25 degrees Celsius, or 77 degrees Fahrenheit - jumped to 41 last year from fewer than five a century ago.

"This summer I will not allow anybody with tie or jacket into my office," Yuriko Koike, Japan's environment minister, told ministry employees on April 1, well in advance of the June 1 unofficial start of the air-conditioning season. In a nationally broadcast news conference, she said that "Cool Biz," a fashion label pronounced "kuuru bizu," had been chosen from among 3,200 suggestions submitted for Japan's new casual summer look. Joining the bandwagon, the powerful Lower House of Japan's Parliament voted to encourage lawmakers to forgo neckties this summer in committee meetings and in plenary sessions.

Some Japanese men sniff a plot by the nation's apparel industry to copy the boom enjoyed by American men's clothing stores a decade ago, when "casual Fridays" forced office workers to augment their wardrobes with pressed khakis and nice sports shirts. "We welcome the Cool Biz move; it is a favorable wind for us," Masaaki Kato, spokesman for Renown D'urban Holdings, one of Japan's largest apparel companies, said in an interview. "The fence between business and casual has been crumbling down recently. There is a decline in the traditional view that the man who is wearing a suit is a businessman and the man who's not is unemployed."

The catchy Cool Biz name is essential because many Japanese cringe at memories of a fashion crime committed by a prime minister after a 1970s oil "shokku." Dubbed the Sho-ene, or "energy saving," look, this short-lived business suit featured short jacket sleeves, cut off above the elbows. This hybrid salaryman safari suit bombed. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi unveiled the casual summer look in April, pitching it to the nation as part of Japan's effort to meet its 212 goal of cutting its emissions of greenhouse gases by six per cent from 1990s levels.