“How are you doing? Do you have enough of everything?”
“I was just thinking of messaging you. Japan seems to weirdly… OK… compared to the rest of the world?”
At the start of February, the novel coronavirus —later known as COVID-19—looked set to sweep through Japan. In the UK, ‘The Times’ broadsheet declared the situation inevitable, due to Japan’s mistake in situating the country so close to China. But while cases did continue to rise, the rate was far from explosive and Japan was rapidly overtaken by countries far further afield.
Plot from Cohen & Kupferschmidt, March 2020 Science.
This was strange as unlike the lockdown in Wuhan, or the stringent travel restrictions and quarantine regulations of Singapore or Taiwan, Japan’s efforts seems positively lacklustre. Public gatherings had been discouraged and many events were cancelled, the schools closed and a handful of private companies switched their employees to telework. But for many —myself included— life was continuing at a fairly normal pace, with work, trains and shops all operating as usual. Even my tennis club was open and after a couple of weeks, the schools were discussing re-starting.
Not that there weren’t signs of panic. Someone hit the emergency stop button on a train when a fellow passenger coughed without wearing a face mask. Said face masks were in such short supply, that fights were breaking out on the street outside stores; a rather shocking anomaly in one of the most considerate and orderly societies I’ve ever lived in. Oh, and we may have started the toilet roll crises.
But given the centre of Tokyo seemed basically as busy as ever, what was behind Japan’s supposed resilience to the pandemic?
Theories abounded. Some ideas were positive: Japan’s love of surgical masks extends to wearing these for cosmetic reasons, minimising the spread of larger droplets from even asymptomatic people. Public spaces, such as bathrooms, are typically cleaner in Japan than elsewhere, and a nicely distanced bow is the common greeting, rather than a handshake or kiss. Basically, Japanese culture had been preparing for this moment forever.
There were also other suggestions, such that Japan was particularly good at treating pneumonia (one of the serious symptoms of COVID-19) and also that this year’s influenza infections were lower than previous years, possibly implying that the population was obeying the request for increased hand washing to prevent infection.
But it was also true that Japan had an exceeding low test rate for COVID-19 compared to nearly everywhere else. The swift diagnosis of pneumonia and a lack of autopsies could also mean even serious cases were not being correctly reported. This would correspond to an uptick in the number of pneumonia cases in the country… but those results are only published every three years. The cynics claimed that the looming Tokyo Olympics was a reason for keeping the true numbers under wraps.
Yet even if all the numbers were underestimated, it would be difficult to hide a disaster on the scale of what was happening in South Korea or Italy. The consensus was that Japan might have done just enough to prevent disaster, but this situation was precarious and could dissolve at any moment.
We should have known the downfall would be cherry blossoms.
The cherry blossom or ‘sakura’ season in Japan is famous the world over. For a few short weeks, the trees turn pink and people pour out to spread tarpaulin mats under the flower-laden boughs and drink, eat and generally pretend it isn’t still too cold for such nonsense.
But this year, there were to be no gatherings. The news was firm: we could not go out and hold large parties under the trees. The risk was just too big.
And for a while, I thought people were listening. As the buds appeared and turned pink, there did seem to be less people grouping around trees in my neighbourhood and gawping. But as the trees reached full bloom, that went completely out the window.
COMPLETELY. OUT. THE. WINDOW.
Even the prime minister’s wife was pictured with a large party of people under a flowering tree.
Sakura was Japan’s Achilles’ heel. That, and the lack of masks sending people a bit bananas.
The same weekend, a mixed martial arts event allowed a 6,500 strong audience to attend at an arena just north of Tokyo. In the wake of that event and the blossom parties, the number of COVID-19 cases in the Tokyo-area shot upwards.
What happened next was a rapid 24 hours of blurred activity that left me feeling slightly dizzy.
On Tuesday evening, I received an email from HR at work saying that anyone whose duties could be done via telework was now eligible to request the full five days working from home.
“You should probably take that option?” noted my friend in our messaged conversation that took place the following lunchtime.
That evening, the governor of Tokyo, Yuriko Koike (who had previously told us we all needed to step-up our game) now said there was no choice but to request that for the love of all that is holy, THIS WEEKEND DO NOT GO OUT and put the city under an advisory lockdown. The NHK (Japan’s equivalent of the BBC) flashed up a headline that read “Japan raises travel alert for entire world”.
“That escalated quickly.”
“Lunchtime was apparently a different era.”
The following day, our campus closed abruptly, forcing everyone onto telework until April 12. Japan announced it was setting up an coronavirus task force, which frankly seemed a bit late.
Reports this Saturday implied that the streets of Tokyo were indeed noticeably quieter, although cynical members of my twitter feed who were forced to be outside for work-reasons, noted that a significant number of people still considered visiting a coffee shop as “essential activity”.
Koike appears to have appealed to a higher authority for help in controlling her sakura-obsessed responsibilities. After a week of mid-20s°C weather, it snowed this morning.
Exactly what happens from here isn’t clear. There are talks of an actual lockdown, but stalled by the usual mutters about the effect on the economy. The hope may be that people will now return to behaving themselves and merely hoarding toilet roll.
But after days of gazing aghast at my overseas friends and family as they were shoved into their homes… I at least have joined them. And if you need me, I’ll be banging my head against my (apartment) desk.
Notes:
I should add that while last week’s events predominantly made me want to face-palm, that’s not going to be the reaction of the people who have become sick. SO PLEASE STAY THE FUCK INSIDE, PEOPLE.
Interesting read on why Japan’s rate of infection has previously remained low by Jake Adelstein [here].