‘A huge mistake’: Japan’s sleeplessness crisis poses threat to society, warns leading expert

One of Japan’s leading sleep experts is calling for comprehensive education to combat the country’s sleep deprivation crisis

Ministry of Health study highlights severe lack of sleep among Japanese, raising alarms over potential societal impacts

Reading Time:4 minutes

A businessman sleeping on a bench at a Tokyo train station. Photo: AFP

Published: 12:00pm, 12 Apr 2024

Japanese people are not getting nearly enough sleep, with one of Japan’s leading sleep experts saying the crisis in the nation’s bedrooms threatens to have catastrophic consequences on society.

Dr Masashi Yanagisawa, director of the International Institute for Integrative Sleep Medicine at the University of Tsukuba, said a report released by the Ministry of Health in February that recommended that the public gets more bed rest was a good start but needs to be followed up with a “comprehensive” education programme to avoid the nation becoming even more sleep-deprived.

Concern over the amount of sleep that Japanese people get was triggered in part by a study conducted in 2021 by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that indicated Japanese people sleep an average of seven hours and 22 minutes a night, the least of the 33 nations included in the study.

Japan’s health ministry statistics from 2019 indicate that 37.5 per cent of men and 40.6 per cent of women get less than six hours of sleep a night on average.

A Japanese businessman has a nap on backs of chairs during a preview of the Tokyo Motor Show in Makuhari, suburban Tokyo. Photo: AFP

A separate study, carried out by the University of Tokyo and released in March, concluded that sixth-grade elementary pupils sleep an average of 7.9 hours a night, with that falling to 7.1 hours for pupils in the final year of junior high school and just 6.5 hours for final-year high-school students.