THE ORDINANCE
Why an ordinance, and not a promise.
What the Hirakubo Peninsula needs is one effective rule that applies equally to everyone who does business here. A voluntary agreement cannot deliver that: it binds only those who sign it, and it carries no force. That is why we are asking Ishigaki City to enact an ordinance.
Neither Japan's Building Standards Act nor its Landscape Act sets a numerical standard for the darkness of the night. Unless a region defines one, every case is judged differently. The draft is in its fourth version: nine chapters, thirty-four articles. It has not been enacted, and this page describes a proposal, not law.
Lighting standards modelled on Aoraki Mackenzie
The lighting chapter of our draft ordinance is drawn from the LIGHT chapter of the Mackenzie District Plan in New Zealand, home of the Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve. We took that plan as our reference for a specific reason: Mackenzie District wrote its lighting rules into the district plan in 1981, thirty-one years before the reserve was designated in June 2012. The rules came first; the darkness survived; the international value followed.
| Item | Hirakubo draft | Mackenzie District Plan |
|---|---|---|
| Correlated colour temperature | 2,700 K or less for new installations; 3,000 K for existing | 3,000 K (LIGHT-S3) |
| Upward light | 0% upward light output ratio (2.5% permitted for existing fittings until replacement) | Shield edge below the whole light source; all light below horizontal (LIGHT-S2) |
| Lamp types | LED, low pressure sodium and high pressure sodium only | Same (LIGHT-S4) |
| Illuminance at the site boundary | 1 lux from 22:00 to 06:00; 5 lux from 06:00 to 22:00 | Same values for rural zones (LIGHT-S5) |
| Curfew | Floodlights, lighting of unused areas and recreational facility lighting off from 22:00 to 06:00 | Same categories prohibited 22:00–06:00 (LIGHT-R1) |
| Skylights | No light spill from upward-facing skylights, 22:00–06:00 | No spill after 22:00 (LIGHT-R3) |
| Signage luminance | 100 cd/m² or less; off 22:00–06:00 | — |
To be precise about the comparison: the boundary illuminance figures match the values for rural zones in the Mackenzie District Plan, not the plan as a whole. Our draft also carries a total luminous flux cap of 5,000 lumens per 100 m² of site area, for which the Mackenzie plan has no equivalent provision; we intend to recalibrate it against our own SQM measurements. Existing installations have a ten-year transition period, and lighthouses, navigation aids, road and community security lighting, fishing-port and agricultural work lighting, and emergency lighting are exempt.
What the rest of the draft covers
This is not without precedent
Ordinances of the same kind are already in force elsewhere. We drafted ours from provisions that are actually working in those places.
Outdoor lighting in the district plan since 1981. The direct source for Chapter 3.
Japan's first light-pollution ordinance, 1989.
Star-sky conservation ordinance, 2017. Upward light output ratio capped at 2.5%.
Landscape ordinance linking height and area limits to building confirmation.
Land-use procedures ordinance: a gate before, not a penalty after.
Managed use under approved ecotourism master plans.
Where this stands
The draft has been revised three times since the first version, each time in response to criticism: the second for residents' daily life, the third because it lacked any working procedure, the fourth for how it read. Two further amendments were made within the fourth version — in September 2026, to align with the city's existing landscape plan, and to bring the lighting standards up to international practice. It has not been submitted to the city assembly.
This page is a summary written for readers outside Japan. The authoritative text is the Japanese draft. Comments on the draft are welcome, for or against — get in touch.