The sun and the clock in Kyoto (2026)
Kyoto lies at 135.8°E. Its time zone, UTC+9, is built around the 135°E meridian. The two very nearly coincide: solar noon — the moment the sun is highest — falls at about 11:57, which is as close to true solar time as a zone this wide can get. The zone holds UTC+9 all year — there is no daylight saving here.
The longest day of 2026 is 22 June, with 14h 31m of daylight. The shortest is 22 December, with 9h 48m. The swing between them is 4h 43m. This is the latitude band where the difference between summer and winter evenings is most obvious.
The earliest sunrise and the latest sunset do not land on the longest day. In Kyoto the sun comes up earliest on 13 June at 04:42, while the latest sunset waits until 30 June at 19:15. The equation of time is what separates them: the Earth's elliptical orbit and axial tilt move solar noon back and forth by several minutes over the year.
The sky stays usably light for a while after the sun goes down. In Kyoto that civil twilight runs about 25 minutes at the equinox, stretching to 30 minutes at the solstice.
Every figure in this section is computed from the city's own latitude, longitude and IANA time zone using NOAA solar algorithms (Spencer, 1971), accurate to about ±2 arcminutes below 65° latitude.
