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Though hardly a Christian nation, with church-going citizens reaching barely 1 percent of the population, Japan has been doing all it can to look like one at Christmas time. Shopping centers across the country are decked out in Christmas trees, with holiday tunes echoing all around.
A more recent Christmas obsession is to illuminate buildings at night. Even public offices, usually the most timid in putting on an entertaining face, are joining in this seasonal frenzy. Many more families are sharing in the fun of lighting their homes. An estimated 300,000 houses, whose owners proudly refer to themselves as "illuminators," are shining at night this year across the nation.
Fortunately for the ecologically and economically conscious, Japan is also leading in the use of LED lighting technology, made from a variety of chemical semiconductor materials, including aluminum, phosphorous, indium and nitrogen, which create different colors. They emit light when connected to electricity.
The lights consume much less electricity, last longer and weigh much less than conventional bulbs or fluorescent lamps. They are being used this season in many places outside of Japan as well.
The famous Christmas tree in New York's Rockefeller Center is decorated with LED lights for the first time this year. About 30,000 LED units are hung over the 25-meter-tall tree, saving up to 60 percent of the power required to light the tree in years past. The Champs Elysee in Paris is also decorated with newly designed LED lights that reduce energy consumption.
LEDs have been used industrially for backlights in cellular phones, liquid crystal TV screens and notebook computers. Their usage was significantly broadened when blue-ray LEDs, long considered impossible to create, were developed in 1993 by a Japanese firm called Nichia, headquartered in Tokushima prefecture west of Tokyo.
After the introduction of this last of the three primary colors of light, many more color schemes were made possible to express an imaginative, dream-like or even healing atmosphere.
Among fashionable districts in Tokyo, Roppongi Hills Arena in Minato Ward began using blue-ray LEDs in 2003. This year, 420,000 white/blue LEDs line its roadside zelkova trees, creating an inviting environment for romantic couples.
In addition to making Christmas more colorful, blue LEDs are now used for traffic signals as well as artistic lighting objects. Japan's agricultural authority has recently designated a blue LED application for squid fish-luring lanterns in its list of countermeasures against global warming.
Led by Nichia, Tokushima prefecture, on the smallest of the four main islands that constitute the Japanese archipelago, now occupies nearly 25 percent of the global LED market and about 60 percent of white LED production.
With the prospect of a 1 trillion-yen (around US$8.8 billion) market worldwide for general-purpose LED lighting, the prefecture government has been working to turn the area into an "LED Valley" since December 2005. The scheme aims to attract light-related industries as well as university faculty, administrators, researchers and engineers, for maximum integration and concentration of research and development resources in the vicinity.
