Japan’s Coronavirus Response: What Went Wrong?

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared a state of emergency for all of Japan on April 16 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. He had initially declared a state of emergency on April 7 for two metropolitan governments (Tokyo and Osaka) and five prefectures, but the continuing spread of COVID-19 within Japan gave him few choices other than to expand the emergency declaration to cover the entire country. The state of emergency will stay in effect until May 6, unless extended. 

This is a dramatic reversal from a month earlier. In mid-March, Japan, along with other parts of Asia such as South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, was considered one of the success stories for how countries should respond to the novel coronavirus. The world attributed Japan’s — and the many other Asian countries’ — ability to contain the spread of the virus to everything from its universal healthcare system to the national habit of wearing facemasks. As the United States struggled, with the number of COVID-19 cases skyrocketing and overwhelming hospitals in hard-hit areas, Tokyo appeared to be largely successful in containing the spread of the virus. Japan was keeping the number of the patients low, and the outbreak contained within a limited number of areas, and looked to be on the path to re-open the country and its economy by early April. While there was the disappointment of having to postpone the Tokyo Olympics until 2021, that decision was mostly discussed in the context of the rest of the world — not Japan itself — being unprepared. 

But by mid-April, with Japan struggling to contain a surging infection rate, few would hold the country up as a model COVID-19 response. What went wrong? 

First and foremost, Japan never recovered from the early missteps it made, including not putting restrictions on travel from China early enough. Furthermore, as Tokyo and other metropolitan areas witnessed the accelerated spread of the coronavirus, the government was slow to come up with clear, decisive guidelines for prefectural and metropolitan governments to follow. If anything, the central government continued to rely on the Japanese public’s self-restraint to ensure social distancing and other measures to alleviate the impact of the COVID-19.

Second, when the government finally came out with guidelines, they were too ambiguous for the public to come to grips with the magnitude of the challenge the nation is facing, or how their individual efforts today will help to curb the spread of the virus. While the government was beating around the bush with ambiguous and indirect messages such as “we need to aim for the reduction of social contact by 80 percent,” common questions (Why? For how long? How will that help?) went unanswered. Instead, the public is turning to the personal blogs of medical doctors and other social media accounts for information about the availability of face masks, safe social distancing practices, and how their behavior today will affect tomorrow. 

Finally, the COVID-19 outbreak exposed how unprepared Japan’s workplace and education systems were for a pandemic emergency like the current one. Specifically, the inability of so many workplaces — in both the government and the private sector — to transition to remote work was a stark reminder of the rigidity of Japanese workplace, raising serious questions over whether Japan has learned anything at all from its prolonged economic downturn about how to adapt to the working environment in the 21st century. 

Throughout this process, one question continues to emerge — is Shinzo Abe really the decisive leader that he has portrayed himself to be? Since the beginning of the outbreak, Abe’s moves have been anything but decisive. From a delayed response in restricting the entry of travellers from China to a lack of enforcement of a 14-day quarantine and the long overdue declaration of the state of emergency, his government’s response to COVID-19 has been “too little, too late.” Abe has been overly reliant on jishuku (self-restraint) from the Japanese public, with a lack of clarity in government guidance on social distancing and other elements that are considered critical in mitigating the spread of COVID-19. 

Abe began 2020 with hope that he would be remembered as the leader who cemented the restoration of Japan’s relations with China, successfully hosted the Tokyo Olympics, and successfully managed Tokyo’s relation with its only ally, the United States, navigating through a period of a great uncertainty regarding U.S. commitment to continue to play a leading role in upholding the existing liberal international order. But if Abe’s government continues to fumble its response to COVID-19, he will be remembered mostly for his failure to lead Japan during an unprecedented public health emergency.