JAPAN

Japan’s secret to taming the coronavirus: peer pressure

A largely masked crowd of commuters at Shibuya Station in Tokyo on June 21. No Japanese government authority has ever mandated masks or vaccinations or instituted lockdowns. Instead, Japan’s residents have largely evaded the worst ravages of COVID-19 by letting peer pressure do a lot of the work. | CHANG W. LEE / THE NEW YORK TIMES

By Ben Dooley and Motoko Rich
THE NEW YORK TIMES

Jul 3, 2022

To understand how Japan has fared better than most of the world in containing the dire consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, consider Mika Yanagihara, who went shopping for flowers this past week in central Tokyo. Even when walking outside in temperatures in the mid-90s, she kept the lower half of her face fully covered.

"People will stare at you,” Yanagihara, 33, said, explaining why she did not dare take off her mask. "There is that pressure.”

Japan’s COVID death rate, just one-twelfth of that in the United States, is the lowest among the world’s wealthiest nations. With the world’s third-largest economy and 11th-largest populace, Japan also tops global rankings in vaccination and has consistently had one of the globe’s lowest infection rates.