'Candle Night'-Summer Solstice 2004 in Japan
December 10, 2004

Shinichi Takemura
Candle Night Committee
Anthropologist, Professor at Kyoto University of Art & Design

The trend in which people seek a new sense of values and
lifestyles beyond the civilization of mass production
and mass consumption in the 20th century have been gaining
momentum among Japanese citizens. One example that
symbolizes this trend is the Candle Night event.
http://www.candle-night.org/

Under the slogan of "Turn off your lights, and take it slow,"
for two hours on the summer solstice, the Candle Night event
started on June 22, 2003. This voluntary participatory
event was originally initiated by several Japan's
environmental non governmental organizations, or NGOs.

Responding to calls from the Candle Night committee, various
groups such as the Ministry of the Environment (MOE),
businesses, municipal governments and public facilities as well
as artists in a variety of fields across Japan showed support for
the event. Thus, the movement gained momentum and its popularity
among the citizens swelled. According to an estimate by the MOE,
a total of 5 million people nationwide participated in the event in
2003. Over 200 major landmark facilities, such as the Tokyo
Tower, Rainbow Bridge and Himeji Castle, turned their lights off.
The Candle Night became one of the major summer events.

NEC Corporation, one of the major manufactures of electrical
machinery in Japan, participated in the event on a company-wide
basis, with about ten million employees and their family members.
Iwate prefectural government also joined the event with all
of its prefectural citizens. In this way, large numbers of businesses
and local governments expressed their support for the events. It is
a clear example showing cooperation and collaboration among the
public sector, private businesses and citizens. This has become a
major trend and is now more common in Japan.

In this year's "Candle Night-Summer Solstice 2004" event, more
than 5,000 major facilities turned off their lights and convenience
stores across Japan voluntarily turned off their signs. During the
three day (Saturday-Monday) 2004 Candle Night, an estimated 6.5
million peopled joined the event.

Last year, many unique local candle events were also held across
the country. During their Candle Night event, some towns
established their own traditional "light"-scape, while others
decided to do a Candle Night every weekend to add to local charm.

Our Candle Night does not place any specific rules on participants.
It only encourages them to turn off the lights voluntarily and to
enjoy something different and unusual for two hours. The idea of
our initiative originated from the Voluntary Blackout movement
that started in the United States, but our approach is not limited
to energy saving nor power saving.

In fact, many people joined the Candle Night with strong hopes for
peace and a clean global environment. However this event is
symbolic. Rather than striving to attain a specific goal such as
reducing carbon dioxide emissions, it simply gives people an
opportunity to review and rethink their lifestyles and themselves
during these two hours.

The style of participating in this event, therefore, varies from
person to person. Some people focus on strengthening and
reconfirming their family bond by taking extra time to enjoy dinner
slowly, or taking a bath together. Others go to events such as the
Candle Concert, or find themselves re-appreciating the beauty of
stars alone in the darkness of downtown. On our website, a truck
driver announced his intention to turn off his engines while
parked.

The Candle Night event does not focus on attaining any specific
goals collectively. Rather, it tries to offer participants an
opportunity to discover a new sense of values, or offer an
alternative lifestyle for their future. The Candle Night Committee
hopes that the event can provide participants with a platform
where people can join it at their own will and way.

Sharing the concept without having any specific "rules" may be one
example of the Japanese way of thinking. We are sure that by
expanding the scope of potential participants, the event has gained
the popularity from people of all ranks, beyond regional borders
and generations. Another typically Japanese element is the use of
cell phones for joining and enjoying this event. This integrates the
cutting-edge IT based community with the slower-paced
environmentally aware movement.

The committee invited participants to send messages via the
internet several weeks before the event. The "Candlescape"
platform can monitor how the participants across Japan have
increased on a real-time basis. Participants visited the
Candlescape website
(http://www.candle-night.org/2004/jp/apply/index.html), and sent
their messages and their postal code. With the use of postal codes,
the system can identify the participant's location and can visualize
it on the map of Japan.

Through this map-typed message board, the participants can
realize the link with other numerous participants scattered all
over Japan. They can share a sense of unity with an invisible
community, a so-called a virtual community, where people are
linked to each other by a new sense of value.

This network-based participation was enhanced by another
web-based program, the "Candle Kaleidoscope," also available on
our website. "Candle Kaleidoscope" was a real-time online message
board for pictures. Participants sent photographs of their Candle
Night taken by mobile phone cameras via e -mail, and those photos
appeared on the board on a real time basis. The boards became a
mandala-like photo gallery of various images of the Candle Night
event. Please visit our website
http://www.candle-night.org/2004/index.html, click
"Kaleidoscope," and you can find the 2004 Kaleidoscope.

Some participants sent pictures of family and friends with a Haiku.
Haiku is a form of traditional Japanese poetry, a 17-syllable verse
form consisting of three metrical units of 5, 7, and 5 syllables. The
art of Haiku or traditional space of light and shadow generated by
candle light were revitalized through electrical network.

The next event is the "Candle Night"-Winter Solicits 2004. This is
not a large-scaled event like in the summer, but grass-root,
voluntary movement for the winter event has already started in
many places. In our next news letter, we will report the result of
the winter event.