Japan's state of emergency is no lockdown. What is it?

"In fact, almost everybody I knew back in Silicon Valley, including myself..."

Listen to the self-appointed expert!

I live in Bergamo, Italy, initially the hardest hit area of Europe. I lived in Japan 18 years just so you know. Anyway, me, my wife (Japanese) and our daughter have been in full lockdown the past 4 weeks, that is, only my wife goes food shopping twice a week as the virus hits women much less than me. Schools have been closed 6 weeks now so my daughter hasn't met another child physically in 6 weeks. I haven't met another human being in 4 weeks. We survive. The reason we haven't been sick is due to our typical Japanese/Asian reaction: we were the first to wear masks two weeks even before isolation began.

I can tell you one thing for sure: many, if not most of these deaths have been unnecessary, that is, could have been avoided if this full lockdown had begun at least two weeks before it was finally implemented. Countries like Spain, the UK etc. are worse/more ignorant as they had Italy as a perfect example of how ignoring the danger could explode.

Law or not, Japan has to decide the value of human health versus financial health. Do you want to have financial difficulties (my salary is 30% less this month and will be worse next month), or do you want health problems, such as the inability to breathe without assistance?

It is not a difficult choice.

TheLongTermerToday  01:07 pm JST

Now those same posters are ridiculing Japan for not being able to act in an authoritarian manner, arresting or ticketing non compliant people like in other countries. So which is it? Y'all want a real lockdown? Then Abe needs to amend the constitution. Can't have it both ways.

I think I asked this before, but no reply. Do you even live in Japan?

Do you? And of what relevance would that be to anything? lol

Now those same posters are ridiculing Japan for not being able to act in an authoritarian manner, arresting or ticketing non compliant people like in other countries. So which is it? Y'all want a real lockdown? Then Abe needs to amend the constitution. Can't have it both ways.

I think I asked this before, but no reply. Do you even live in Japan?

I mean, need some credibility first before we get the lecture.

If I hire a pilot to fly me, I want some flight hours, not just someone who read a text.

Very basic stuff, like how would the pilot react in a real life situation?

How would you react to the unspokens we all deal with here daily?

It's called a state of emergency but trains full of people are still running at rush hour. What does state of emergency mean in Japanese?

Paper policies just like a puppy barking but no bite and if does bite it's very weak. I just received reports from all over the countryside of folks who bounced out of Tokyo out to the countryside and more expected to arrive by this weekend. So much for not going to the countryside where in some areas have not been infected.

A lot of focus on the "stick" aspect and not enough about the "carrot" of how Japan is handling this "lockdown".

Other countries procedures have coupled a strict lockdown regimen with an almost universal gurantee of income for the time being of the crisis. In the case of Japan, where the plan for assistance seems vague and uneccessarily complex, businesses and workers are forced out of desperation to keep operations as usual. And even the nightlife business which seems to get disproportionately focused upon, as well as their customers , is a reflection of this. If you know the possibility of receiving assistance is low why not keep going for as long as you can before any stricter measures may be enacted?

I bet this will back fire after 1-2 weeks. I’m no expert, but I can somehow see the obvious. Work is still there, our company is treating the corona virus like a joke and almost every japanese. Even after Abe declared the state of emergency, there are still tons of people still interacting with each other. People going out. Especially metro trains. All the pictures you see that looks like there’s no people? Well I suggest going there early and in the afternoon and you’ll be suprised.

As Ossan America said.

The 1947 Constitution does not provide for such emergency scenarios. This is why for decades the LDP and Komeito have always warned that the constitution needs urgent revision. Minshutō holds the key to unlocking that constitutional amendment which it has always exercised. I hope that from this crisis Edano understands that he has to sit at a negotiating table.

Whatsnext

No country wants to voluntarily destroy its own economy. Not even on a whim. We have two options here. 

1) Or you stop the economy voluntarily and under planned parameters. To avoid a high number of deaths that can collapse the health system.

2) Or wait for the virus to bring the economy to a screeching halt. With a huge loss of human life out of control.

I would choose option 1. I prefer to bring forward the summer holidays and confine millions of people to their homes, for a prudent period of 60 days. Than let the virus stop the economy by force majeure. Apart from killing thousands of people for a period of at least 3 months, and without total control.

Japan's state of emergency gives complete freedom to the people to observe it at their own sweet will without any legal compulsion on them to strictly follow it in their day to day life.

People got to work. I feel bad for restaurant owners. A couple months from now you will all be wondering where all the restaurants gone. Shutter streets and malls if the government continues to insist people stay home.

90 people have died of the virus. And we have to destroy your neighbors livelihoods?

You may not have a mortgage and children but a lot of us do. I hope this ends soon

As an English teacher in Tokyo, now no work , does the company help to pay for lost wages ? Or does the Government help ?

"Japan’s history of repression under fascist governments before and during World War II has left the public wary of government overreach. The country's postwar constitution lays out strict protections for civil liberties. "

OMG. Envy makes people crazy.

Some Tokyo residents drew criticism for rushing to escape from Tokyo to the countryside.

This is why you can't be selective about which prefectures are in quarantine

Seems to be a PR stunt. Once again words have no meaning and whatever this is will just extend the problems needlessly. Why?

Japan's state of emergency is no lockdown. What is it? It's every morality, discipline, diligence, social obedience and consideration, and God speed!

Funny,,,,day in and day out we read posters here screaming how Japan is right-wing, that Abe plans to send Japan back to pre WWII days...and yet we now see that Japan can't even legally enforce a lockdown in the way the US/EU can. And certainly not like China. Now those same posters are ridiculing Japan for not being able to act in an authoritarian manner, arresting or ticketing non compliant people like in other countries. So which is it? Y'all want a real lockdown? Then Abe needs to amend the constitution. Can't have it both ways.

Not to mention people are calling for Japan to copy South Korea and Taiwan, who employ big brother systems of tracking and monitoring that would never fly in Japan.

Experts found that one-third of Tokyo's recent cases were linked to hostess clubs and other night entertainment districts where cluster tracing is difficult. Meanwhile, compliance with calls for working remotely and other social distancing has been weak.

Basically, lots of small companies will suffer because people couldn't refrain from going out at night.

Major disconnect and confusion is what it means...

http://www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/articles/13281174

In the first place Japan doesn't have such law of lockdown of city/town from the beginning. The state of emergency means the government request/ask all people to stay home as much as possible and to try not go out unless there is urgent matter. So government depends on people's favor. That is Japan.

Funny,,,,day in and day out we read posters here screaming how Japan is right-wing, that Abe plans to send Japan back to pre WWII days...and yet we now see that Japan can't even legally enforce a lockdown in the way the US/EU can. And certainly not like China. Now those same posters are ridiculing Japan for not being able to act in an authoritarian manner, arresting or ticketing non compliant people like in other countries. So which is it? Y'all want a real lockdown? Then Abe needs to amend the constitution. Can't have it both ways.

The meetings, conferences, exhibitions, and live events industry has also been hit, with cancellations starting from more knowledgeable and caring clients much earlier in February. These are jobs that can't be done from home! Some video-conferencing or webstreaming has been done, but is often limited due to security, and now people at both ends are absent from their workplaces.

The on-site AV, lighting, rigging, camera, production, printing and conference management companies have seen zero income for a couple of months now, along with many of the freelance specialist technicians and engineers. They typically have 2-4 months of reserves, and rely on good cash flow management. Another month or two, and they'll be unable to pay their staff left, along with premises, overheads, and the inevitable purchases of the latest equipment that clients demand.

All are wondering what kind of support will be available?

@ Burning Bush

The city of 14 million had 1,196 cases as of Tuesday, up from about 600 a week earlier.

To be accurate, this is the accumulated total from the very beginning, without recovered cases being removed from the figure. Most people infected in February have long since recovered and should be removed from that figure.

JBirdToday 05:57 pm JST

Sorry, but most people infected in February haven’t recovered, though nearly 30 have died.

Tokyo had only 52 COVID patients recover and be released. Subtracting both the recoveries and the deaths still gives 1,114 active cases and STILL shows an increase of nearly 600 new infections since last week!

The recent steep increase is what’s most troubling yet you still insist on down-playing the seriousness of this virus!

Exactly. In nations around the world the recovery time of hospilatized corona patients is between 3-5 weeks. And that is exactly the reason why this virus is so disastrous for modern well equiped medical centers, like hospitals. It's not the treatment itself, it's the amount of patients and the time it takes and the enormous pressure it gives on medical staff.

Missing from the article that prefectural governerns havent or won't for the time being actualy ask businesses to close.

A simple way to explain is Abe officialy gave the 7　prefectures permission to declare an emergency anytime until May 7

but of this evening none have.

Tokyo probably will on Friday

Japan today and the media should explain but largely arent

An example

My busine

My friends bar in hakata was set to close but will stay open

YubaruToday 04:02 pm JST

No, Abe and officials say Japan cannot legally enforce European-style hard lockdowns.

European? Not a good example!

Actually there are no 'European' (EU) lock downs. Almost every country has it's own way to counter the spreading of the virus. Take for example how it is dealt with in Sweden or Spain, totally opposite.

It looks like Japan will follow the line of countries as Germany or Netherlands. Impose stricter measures little by little in a period of 2 weeks and giving society as a whole lots of responsibility in following up the measures with some legal pressure.

If a person's job involves mostly sitting a desk in front of a computer and phone, it can easily be done from home with zero loss of productivity. In fact, almost everybody I knew back in Silicon Valley, including myself, would tell you that working from home was MORE productive.

talk to their bosses instead... i know that you,re talking about Japanese but the thing about Japanese workers is what society tells them to do

I am actually talking to the bosses.

My boss didn't have the initiative to make the staffs do telework. Even though you can personally request for it, we all know you can't do that in Japan if the boss isn't doing it. Last week I asked to do telework, and after a long explanation he just replied "ok".

Now everyone is doing telework in because the university asked us to. Did it change anything? No. We can still get things done even though we are at home. Going to work is just that - going. No value added. No value lost.

but in the downtown Shibuya district, business was almost as usual. Rush hour trains were still crowded and commuters were heading to work, though fewer people were seen in other areas....

Like everything else in Japan, it depends on the situation. Recently I saw a nasty looking, open air ramen shop, with Japanese waiting in a line that stretched around the corner but in other eating places like MCD, all the tables were blocked off. The ramen shop, BTW, was staffed by Chinese.

People who are still insisting on going to work need to understand - you're not important, you're job is not important, the world will not end if you don't go to work.

probably 80 / 90 % of those, if you,d give them a choice, they would want to stay home. talk to their bosses instead... i know that you,re talking about Japanese but the thing about Japanese workers is what society tells them to do, not what they want to do ... ... one of the reasons why this state of emergency feels like it,s everything... except an emergency ...

How effective is this?

After seeing the amount of people in rush hour today, I’d give it a zero....

@ Burning Bush

The city of 14 million had 1,196 cases as of Tuesday, up from about 600 a week earlier.

To be accurate, this is the accumulated total from the very beginning, without recovered cases being removed from the figure. Most people infected in February have long since recovered and should be removed from that figure.

Sorry, but most people infected in February haven’t recovered, though nearly 30 have died.

Tokyo had only 52 COVID patients recover and be released. Subtracting both the recoveries and the deaths still gives 1,114 active cases and STILL shows an increase of nearly 600 new infections since last week!

The recent steep increase is what’s most troubling yet you still insist on down-playing the seriousness of this virus!

Yes, that is what I asked several times before it was declared, but none of the people who screamed for it could answer that.

Right now, it looks like all it means more power for Koike. What is that supposed to solve?

Japan’s history of repression under fascist governments before and during World War II has left the public wary of government overreach. The country's postwar constitution lays out strict protections for civil liberties.

See the words CIVIL LIBERTIES? Do you know what they mean?

Perhaps I don't. Please enlighten me. Thanks

People who are still insisting on going to work need to understand - you're not important, you're job is not important, the world will not end if you don't go to work.

PM Abe now is the time to change Japanese constitution.

Get your priorities in order.

emergency law is just a stronger worded urging. Literally nothing will change. The name of the law is very misleading, nothing is even enforceable as there’s no punishments for not following it.

Shops which can close already did, those which financially cannot close will not.

If any govt had of handled this correctly they would have simply closed the borders to anyone coming from the infected area back in january or february. That would have been the most effective way to deal with it so for people saying NZ , Denmark or Norway or some other place handled it well I say NO they did not. NZ for example continued to allow people in from the infected area without any checks while knowing people were coming in infected.

In future I really hope our so called World Leaders do not repeat this farce that has unfolded world wide and they bar entry for anyone coming from any nation that has rapidly spreading infectious diseases just like our fore fathers used to do decades ago.

This whole thing could have been avoided if those in charge had used some common sense in the beginning !!!

Post will be deleted for being off topic or some other made up rubbish though !

A committee-led fudge. And as the saying goes: a camel is a horse designed by a committee.

At least it kind of punches a hole in the tale of Abe being power-hungry. Or maybe he's smart and thinking maybe he can channel his record of restraint this time towards Constitutional change.

REALLY ???. Will they pay for foreigners that lived here for more than 30 years ???.

Meanwhile, countries that tested, traced, isolated and shut down very early on are almost ready to come back online and have minimal deaths or other disruption.

Cases in point: New Zealand, Norway and Denmark. No coincidence that people in these countries also have very high trust in their governments' handling of this crisis.

Even Wuhan has opened up again. Meanwhile, Japan which buried its head in the sand from the start hasn't really implemented ANY of the above measures properly.

To defeat this, ALL nonessential services and work must be halted, people MUST stay at home and not go out unless absolutely necessary.

I think they are hoping that the warm weather is going to make this all magically go away.

The only outcome is going to be a bad one.

I think it's 'sticking one's head in the sand' and hoping it goes away.

This whole thing has revolved around fear from day 1, so sticking one's head in the sand might bring respite for many...

No, Abe and officials say Japan cannot legally enforce European-style hard lockdowns.

European? Not a good example!

I think it's 'sticking one's head in the sand' and hoping it goes away.