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

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 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.

Those figures fall significantly below the minimum suggested hours of sleep required for good health.

The ministry is recommending that adults aim to sleep a minimum of six hours a day, while infants up to the age of two should get between 11 and 14 hours every day, elementary school children up to 12 hours and junior and senior high pupils between eight and 10 hours every night.

As well as calling for people to sleep more, the ministry’s 12 “sleep guidelines” also recommend that they get better quality sleep as rest “contributes to preventing lifestyle-related diseases”.

“The fundamental problem is