Photo/Illutration Children at play June 27 at a nursery school in Kumagaya, Saitama Prefecture (Mutsumi Mitobe)

Summer is supposed to be a season that children eagerly anticipate with the prospect of playing outside with their friends.

But extreme heat has put a stop to that.

The number of days when the mercury hit or went above 35 degrees has significantly increased on a nationwide basis since the mid-1990s.

Tokyo registered nine such consecutive days--a record--through July 3.

Nursery schools and childcare facilities were forced to frequently cancel scheduled outdoor activities, including time spent in swimming pools, when the heat became too much.

The Asahi Shimbun in late June surveyed all 23 wards in Tokyo and 20 government-designated cities, as well as municipalities whose highest temperatures in August since 2000 ranked at the top level in Japan.

Fifty-one municipalities responded.

About 30 percent said they set their own standards with regard to deciding when to suspend outdoor activities at public nursery schools.

Fifteen municipalities reported that they based their criteria on the heat index, which measures air temperature, relative humidity, solar insolation and other factors, or on air temperature alone.

On days when the heat index or temperature exceeds the criteria, public nursery schools and other facilities cancel outdoor and pool activities as a matter of principle.

More than 40 percent of the respondents said they had installed a heat index gauge. An alarm sounds when the index goes beyond a certain level.

This precaution began being implemented after 2018 when a heatwave disaster was declared that claimed more than 1,500 lives. The phenomenon was blamed on global warming.

Average temperatures in Japan have risen by 1.28 degrees in the last 100 years.

The three highest annual temperatures in the country were observed in 2019 and the following two years.

(This article was written by Mutsumi Mitobe and Ryoko Takeishi.)

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