Introduction

Japan: A lot of people, very little space

World Demand for Steel

Uses for Steel

Japan After World War II

Japan and the Steel Industry Today

Japan: A lot of people, very little space.

Let’s travel around the world to the country of Japan. By taking a closer look at Japan we can see how the demand for coal can depend on a country’s population and the amount of a natural resource, like coal, that it has.

Map of Japan

Population and Demand
Japan is a very small country. It covers an area of 405,228 square kilometers, which is just a little bit smaller than the province of Newfoundland. Japan’s population is close to 126 million people.³ That is over 4 times as many people as we have living in all of Canada. In Japan there are 337 persons per square kilometer which indicates that this is a very densely populated country.⁴ Because the country of Japan has such a large population and very little land, they don’t have enough natural resources to look after all their people.

Importing a natural resource like Coal
The Japanese buy, or import most of their coal, crude oil, natural gas, and other energy sources from other countries around the world. They need to do this so that all the homes, businesses and factories in Japan have the power or energy that they need to keep working. Japan imports 80% of its energy and 14% of this energy is made up of coal.⁵

The Japanese are the largest importers of thermal coal, also called steam coal, in the world. Thermal coal is the type of coal that they use to make power.⁶

Japan imports 135.4 million tonnes of coal per year.⁷ So where does Japan get all this coal from?

Japan buys most of its thermal coal from the United States, Australia, China and South Africa. This is not the only type of coal that the Japanese need though, they also buy metallurgical coal (coal used in their factories to make steel) from the United States, Australia, Russia and of course Canada. They buy a lot of their coal from mines right here in British Columbia, close to 11.5 million tonnes every year.⁸

Japan has coal too
Even though the Japanese buy a lot of coal from other countries it is one of the nation's most important mineral resources. Japan has coal reserves (coal that can be mined) that add up to 865 million metric tonnes (mmt).⁹ This may sound like a lot but when we compare it to other countries like our own which has coal reserves of 9.5 billion metric tonnes we see that it is in fact quite a small amount.¹⁰

Japan has two coal mines that are open today but they only produce between 3 and 4 million tonnes of coal a year. This is not very much when we compare it to 139.5 million tonnes, the total amount of coal that Japan uses every year.¹¹ Japan has the world’s second largest economy and needs millions of tonnes of raw materials like coal to keep their factories producing steel and other products. If the Japanese used only their own coal reserves, the 865 million tonnes wouldn’t last for much longer than 6 years.

Now let’s take a look at why Japan has such a huge steel industry and why it is so important that they buy a lot of coal from countries like Canada.

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