Heatstroke Countermeasures 2.0 | Hiroyuki Ishida, Dean, Graduate School of Health Management
July 8, 2025
The intense heat continues. According to past data, the end of the rainy season in the Kanto-Koshinetsu region is "normal" around mid-July or later, but it has been as hot as midsummer since the end of June. Naturally, heatstroke incidents are reported daily, and various media outlets are repeatedly urging people to use air conditioners and stay hydrated. I recall that when we were students (in the Showa 50s, roughly 1975–1984), unreasonable guidance such as "Don't drink water during exercise" and "Drinking water will make you tired, so just rinse your mouth and spit it out" was commonplace in club activities. While it's true that enduring this forged tough minds and bodies, we must not turn past follies into war stories. Of course, such absurd guidance is no longer given today. However, even when people are careful about hydration, the body's compensatory mechanisms cannot keep up with the unexpectedly high temperatures and humidity (for which the human body was not designed), and unfortunately, fatal accidents are still seen in sports, at work, and at home. In response to this climate change, the Ordinance on Industrial Safety and Health was revised on June 1, 2025, making heatstroke countermeasures mandatory in the workplace. In short, the responsibility of managers has been clarified. It seems that not only construction sites, with their extensive outdoor work, but also offices that used to turn off their air conditioning after 5:00 p.m. to promote work style reform are struggling to comply.
Legal matters aside, preventing heatstroke incidents during extracurricular activities is also an urgent issue at Juku. Just the other day, the Office of Student Services issued a notice, "Regarding Extracurricular Activities and Heatstroke Countermeasures."
I was involved in creating the video, and although I, someone who keeps a distance from blogs, social media, and streaming, had mixed feelings about appearing in this way, I decided to cooperate for the good of Juku. I can only hope that all students will prioritize safety in their activities during this extreme heat. As introduced on this site, the Guidelines for Preventing Heatstroke during Exercise issued by the Japan Sport Association explicitly state that, under certain conditions, exercise should be prohibited in principle. Of course, tolerance to heat varies among individuals, and not everyone will collapse once a certain critical point is passed. Therefore, some might argue, "But some people are fine!" However, why not try to change our perspective here? For example, we cannot go out on days with severe blizzards. During a typhoon, public transportation services are suspended according to plan, and professional baseball games are canceled. In other words, it has become a given that social activities are restricted during disaster-level severe weather. I feel the time has come for a paradigm shift where restricting activities on extremely hot days becomes one of these givens—that is, treating extreme heat as a "disaster" on par with blizzards and typhoons. In fact, the Japan Championships in Athletics, held from July 4 to 6, changed its competition schedule based on the predicted Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) for the day, and a certain prestigious golf course reportedly announces a simultaneous suspension of play when the WBGT exceeds a specific temperature. If we call the era when the now-nostalgic sports drink Gatorade was introduced to our country and drinking water during exercise gained acceptance "Heatstroke Countermeasures 1.0," then this year, with its legal revisions that include penalties, may well be the era of "Heatstroke Countermeasures 2.0."
In my field of expertise, sports medical sciences, safety management in sports activities is one of our important missions, but compared to its early days, I feel we are in a completely different era now. Heatstroke countermeasures are one example, but the handling of concussions and the prevention of sudden death during exercise have also changed considerably. Returning to my student days, during rugby matches back then, when a player was knocked unconscious by a concussion, medical staff would rush over and pour water on his head from a kettle they carried. The cold water shock would cause the player to wake up and stand, drawing a huge round of applause from the crowd. This All Japan Pro-Wrestling-esque scene was a common sight, and the water from the kettle was called "magic water." Needless to say, there was no medical evidence for this whatsoever. Furthermore, if cardiopulmonary arrest occurred during a sports activity, people would call 119, but those around could do nothing but pray until the ambulance arrived. The public availability of AEDs, the spread of BLS education, and the adoption of pre-participation screening in competitive sports have only become widespread in society over the last 20 years or so. Of course, we cannot condemn past events by today's standards. This is because social morals are determined by a "relative relationship" with the standards of each era. There are many things that would be unacceptable now but were tolerated back then. The drama "Shitsurakuen" (Nippon TV) could probably no longer be rebroadcast on terrestrial television, and the title of Teresa Teng's Showa-era hit song "Aijin" (lyrics by Toyohisa Araki, music by Takashi Miki) would likely be a compliance violation today.
The tricky part is that while this "relative relationship" has changed significantly since the Showa era, the 1.0 generation and the 2.0 generation still coexist as active members of society. Naturally, since the world has changed, we have no choice but to switch to 2.0. I can understand the urge to say, "In our day..." or "It was fine back then...," but these war stories only serve to confuse the 2.0 generation. This is not the 100th year of Showa, but the 7th year of Reiwa. I, too, intend to firmly switch my mindset and engage in safety management for sports activities based on 2.0 standards.