Japan Has Spent Decades Preparing for an Energy Crisis. Is It Enough?

Japan’s dependence on overseas energy supplies — laid bare by an oil shock in 1973 — has shaped its policy for more than half a century.

As one of the world’s largest industrial economies with scant domestic resources, it has built extensive safeguards to buffer disruptions in oil and gas flows. Now, with conflict in the Middle East rattling global markets, Japan’s government has said it will tap its strategic oil reserves — a move that will test how well those long-laid plans can steady the world’s fourth-largest economy.