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The story
Following a string of fire incidents involving mobile power banks, the Japanese government has settled on a policy to mandate third-party inspections. In the 5ch thread, users — largely taking for granted that most power banks are Chinese-made — debated the reliability of individual brands like Anker and how much the PSE safety mark actually accomplishes in practice.
Sun, Aug 23, 5:01 AM (JST)
Yomiuri Shimbun Online
Following a string of fire incidents involving mobile power banks, the Japanese government has settled on a policy to drastically strengthen safety regulations. The centerpiece is mandating inspections by third-party organizations, aimed at tightening checks at the manufacturing stage and preventing substandard products from reaching the market. The government plans to announce the policy within the month, targeting implementation within the current fiscal year through revisions to relevant ministerial ordinances.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
And what brand of power bank do YOU use, then?
Power banks are basically all Chinese-made at this point — it's not "Chinese vs. not," it's just good Chinese-made vs. bad Chinese-made.
Don't need that catching fire on me.
Same goes for handheld fans, so don't leave those in there either.
Does Anker even count as a real brand?
> A high-grade PSE mark backed by third-party inspection
Wait, there are TWO kinds of PSE marks???
There's a triangle one and a circle one —
one's checked by a third-party body, the other the maker just slaps on itself more or less voluntarily.
The registered inspection body just reviews the manufacturer's self-inspection documents "on paper."
They're technically supposed to inspect the factories too, but that only means confirming the test equipment works — there's no way to actually verify whether the self-inspection was done properly, so they just don't check.
And of course, a PSE mark can still be issued even when the inspection was done by a Chinese registered inspection body.
According to METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry), this is apparently all perfectly safe and secure lol
Just go with lithium iron phosphate (LFP) then.
Zero issues whatsoever.
Makes you wonder what actually separates the batteries that last for years from the short-lived ones.
Japanese makers really ought to be advertising this strength more.
My eneloop mobile booster (aka "mobab") — bought it around the time of the 3/11 earthquake — is still going strong.
My Panasonic one died long ago, but the Sanyo-made stuff really holds up.
But if you did that, almost no other country even makes power banks, so they'd basically vanish from the market lol
Still sketchy now, honestly.
Back then they used Panasonic's tough, safe cells.
Anker… more like "Akan-ker" (a pun on "akan," Japanese slang for "no good").
Maxell used to make them but gave that up ages ago.
So it really comes down to a choice between the bulky, high-safety type or the compact lithium-ion type.
You mean cylindrical cells vs. LiPo?
I've got one of the Maxell cylindrical ones — 6700mAh, not huge capacity, but plenty unless you're gaming on it.
My Anker one wore out before it ever swelled.
I've bought about three Anker batteries and never had one swell up on me —
about the only gripe is the bundled charging cable is total junk and frays almost immediately.
The high-capacity ones do swell up, actually.
"Chinese-made = junk" is such a Showa-era mindset.
There are plenty of solid Chinese-made products,
but the problem these days is that the good ones and the junk ones all get thrown together in a "mystery hot pot" and sold side by side on e-commerce sites.
Power banks are basically all Chinese-made anyway —
if every Chinese-made unit were actually solid, we wouldn't be seeing this many fire incidents.
They need to publish a list of certified products online.
That's not quite it — importers are required to obtain a certificate from a registered inspection body.
The inspections themselves are just full of holes.
I've got one too, but the charging speed is slow and the capacity's lacking.
The output is only 1A, so it's usable for something like a "garaho" (a bare-bones Android device styled like an old feature phone), but it struggles with smartphones that have big batteries and high power draw.
So what can you do? At best, you compromise by picking one that's Made in China but managed by a Japanese manufacturer.
I still use a Sony one — even though it's manufactured in China, it's been solid and reliable.
Like I said in Re: #130, Made-in-Japan power banks are almost nonexistent — you could count them on one hand.
And the few that exist can't compete on price anyway.
So even if you go with Made-in-China, the one line you absolutely must hold firm on is "Produced by a Japanese company."
Just make sure the design and manufacturing aren't entirely Chinese from end to end.
These days anything you buy is rechargeable, no matter what it is.
For stuff you rarely use, leaving it sitting around just kills the battery, so it's actually more convenient if it runs on plain disposable batteries —
like old digital cameras used to (some still do).
Products with Chinese-made batteries should just be banned from use in Japan entirely.
That'd wipe out 99% of everything.
Bye-bye smartphones then, lol
Background and Key Points
Japan’s power-bank fires are governed by the Denan Law (Electrical Appliance and Material Safety Law), enforced by METI, which created the PSE mark system decades ago to keep dangerous consumer electronics off the market. Crucially, PSE has two tiers: a diamond mark for “specified” products requiring third-party conformity testing, and a circle mark for “non-specified” products where the manufacturer can self-certify. Power banks currently sit in the more lax category, which is exactly the gap this new policy targets — folding them into mandatory third-party inspection rather than paperwork self-declaration. It also matters that Japan no longer makes lithium-ion cells domestically; Maxell, once a holdout, exited the business years ago, so “Made in Japan” batteries are effectively extinct and even trusted brands like Sony or Panasonic now source Chinese-made cells.
The thread’s actual disagreement wasn’t China vs. Japan — posters largely conceded that’s no longer a meaningful line — but whether the *inspection process itself* is trustworthy. One user’s detailed post (>>93) argued registered inspection bodies, including Chinese ones authorized to issue PSE marks, mostly just review self-submitted documents rather than verifying real factory testing, which undercuts the government’s proposed fix before it even launches.
What outside readers likely miss: the PSE mark on a product they’re already buying doesn’t mean what they assume — for non-specified goods it can just mean the importer filled out forms correctly. The reform is less “China clean-up” and more an admission that Japan’s own certification pipeline has been rubber-stamping products, domestic or not.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “Mobile Batteries Keep Catching Fire: Third-Party Inspections to Be Mandated to Eliminate Substandard Products… Most Sold Domestically Are Chinese-Made.”
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