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Japan Mining
Mining was a rapidly declining industry in the 1980s.
Domestic
coal production shrank from a peak of 55 million tons in
1960 to
slightly more than 16 million tons in 1985, while coal
imports grew
to nearly 91 million tons in 1987. Domestic coal mining
companies
faced cheap coal imports and high production costs, which
caused
them chronic deficits in the 1980s. In the late 1980s,
Japan's
approximately 1 million tons of coal reserves were mostly
hard coal
used for coking. Most of the coal Japan consumed is used
to produce
electric power.
Japanese coal is found at the extreme ends of the
country, in
Hokkaido and Kyushu, which have, respectively, 45 and 40
percent of
the country's coal deposits. Kyushu's coal is generally of
poor
quality and hard to extract, but the proximity of the
Kyushu mines
to ports facilitates transportation. In Hokkaido, the coal
seams
are wider and can be worked mechanically, and the quality
of the
coal is good. Unfortunately, these mines are located well
inland,
making transportation difficult. In most Japanese coal
mines,
inclined galleries, which extended in some places to 9.7
kilometers
underground, were used instead of pits. This arrangement
is costly,
despite the installation of moving platforms. The result
is that a
miner's daily output is far less than in Western Europe
and the
United States and domestic coal costs far more than
imported coal.
Data as of January 1994
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