Japan's emissions of greenhouse gases in fiscal 2010 totaled 1.2 billion tons, up 4.2 percent from a year earlier, the Environment Ministry said in a recent report.
It was the first time in three years the nation's greenhouse gas emissions had posted a year-on-year increase, ministry officials said.
Business conditions improved in fiscal 2010, which ended March 31, 2011, after being hit hard by the 2008 collapse of major U.S. brokerage house Lehman Brothers, pushing up emissions from the industrial sector, the report says.