The late, great rock musician Kiyoshiro Imawano covered Eddie Cochran's classic "Summertime Blues" back in the 1980s, and the lyrics were prophetically brilliant.
Basically, his song pointed out the awfulness of summertime in Japan — and how the Japanese would go for a dip in the ocean to escape the heat, only to be confronted by a genshiryoku hatsudensho (原子力発電所, nuclear power plant) towering over the pine trees along the opposite shore. Imawano's lyrics counted 37 plants (that total has now jumped to 54) and the refrain went "sappari wakannee, nanno tame" (「さっぱりわかんねえ、ナンのため」 "I just don't understand what the hell these plants are for") and then concluded with "semai Nihonno summertime blues" (「狭い日本のサマータイム ブルース 」 "summertime blues in this small, crowded Japan").
We now know why genpatsu ( an abbreviation of genshiryoku hatsudensho) was cause for so much summertime depression — suffice to say, it had been the main generator of Japan's summertime work ethic. Those plants fueled the nation's factories, kept air conditioners going in office buildings, blasted cold air into subway tunnels, chilled convenience stores to the extent that the staff had to wear long sleeves, and generally kept the majority of working people cooled and chained to their jobs during the hottest, clammiest months of the year.