Can you remember the last time you wore a mask in a shop? Had to have your temperature checked before entering a facility of any kind? Were urged by a Government minister to help ‘stop the spread’ of Covid?
It’s taken a while, but much of the world seems to have caught up with us lockdown sceptics, at least insofar as people have realised that Covid is here to stay, that ‘stopping the spread’ in the long run is impossible, and ultimately that getting rid of what one might call the Covid paraphernalia – masks, social-distancing markers, perspex screens, etc. – is really just like ripping off a plaster. It might hurt for a moment, but once it’s done, it’s done, and the whole sordid business can then finally be forgotten.
Well, in Japan, at the dawn of 2023, they are still only tentatively picking away at the very corner of that plaster. Almost everywhere you go, almost everyone still wears a mask. You still have to have your temperature checked to enter a local council office, a police station, or even that holiest-of-holies, a karaoke parlour. Perspex screens are all over the place, even between the tables in restaurants, because of course the only time most people take off their masks when out and about is while eating. The daily news still features charts showing the numbers of infections and vaccinations including for the latest booster (millions of people are already on their 5th shot at the time of writing). And politicians still appear on the TV routinely to urge everybody to do their bit in fighting Covid, stopping the spread, keeping us all safe, and so on and so forth – you remember the drill. The Japanese have now been doing this for almost three years, with absolutely no end in sight. The ‘new normal’ never really caught on in Britain; in Japan, on the other hand, it appears to have well and truly taken root. What explains this bizarre phenomenon?
I can’t claim to be an academic expert on Japanese culture and society, but did live in Japan for almost a decade, speak the language fluently, and visit regularly – one trip in fact being in the winter of 2019-2020, just before Covid itself began to spread around the world. (I still remember watching the news reports coming out of China with my Japanese in-laws and us all looking at each other in mystified horror at what the authorities there were up to, without the slightest suspicion that anything similar might happen anywhere else.) I currently write these words sitting in the Japanese countryside, having arrived earlier this month for a few weeks’ stay. So I can at least provide some insights into what is going on and what on Earth the future holds for this wonderful country.
The first thing to say is that the same confluence of factors that drove most other developed nations crazy with panic in March 2020 are present in Japan, and in accentuated form. Japan is not so much an ageing population as an old one: almost 30% of the population is aged 65 or older, compared with just 12% aged 14 or below. The kind of struldbrugism that prioritised the needs of the old over the young is therefore as much, if not more, of a feature here than it is in a country like the U.K.
Japanese society had also long before the pandemic become dominated by a creeping, nannyish safetyism akin to that which we Brits experience – albeit one that tends to emphasise avoiding physical risks rather than medical or dietary ones. To live in Japan is constantly to be cajoled at every turn to be aware of potential dangers lurking just around the corner; visitors are often charmed by the brightly coloured signs and posters which festoon every corner of Japanese cities, but the truth is that many of them are there to remind people to look both ways when crossing the road, beware of thieves, remember one’s umbrella, watch out for lightning strikes, be careful not to trip when putting one foot in front of the other, and so on. The Japanese people were therefore in a sense already perfectly primed, as we were in Britain, for the ‘stop the spread’ message.
And finally, as in any other developed country, many Japanese people already lead fairly atomised, isolated lives, spending all of their time either at work or at home in front of the telly (the Japanese consume more TV than almost anybody else on Earth). Refraining from socialising has, it’s sad to say, not been much of a hardship for many of them, just as in the U.K. or the U.S. a population which spends most of its free time at home watching Netflix or fiddling around on a smartphone saw little wrong with lockdowns and social distancing. A lot of people, in truth, just don’t seem to mind all of the Covid nonsense, and are actually quite relieved to get some validation for living a very passive, humdrum and boring life. This is as true in Tokyo as in London.
But on top of these factors, which Japan holds in common with the rest of the developed world, there are also unique features of life here which seemed to have put the pandemic response on steroids, and which mean that it’s going to be a very long time, if ever, before things get back to anything like the ‘old’ normal.
The first is the masks. Mask-wearing was already common in Japan before the pandemic. People would wear them, usually in winter, if they had a cold, or were especially worried about catching one. It was largely a mark of consideration for others that was highly valued in a very crowded country, and it was perfectly normal to see, say, around 10% of people wearing masks when out and about during the months of November-February. What happened when the pandemic struck was that, fearing ‘asymptomatic spread’, people just started wearing their masks all the time. And they’ve worn them ever since – because, of course, Covid has never gone away. It’s not quite true that everyone wears them (in Tokyo in particular there are enough eccentrics, individualists and ‘lone-wolves’, as the Japanese would call them, to see the occasional unmasked face), and those that do don’t wear them all the time (if they’re outside and they’re absolutely sure that nobody else is within, say, 100m, a largish minority of people will take them off). But basically most Japanese people wear masks all the time now when not at home, even when alone in a car, including the children, and no matter if anyone else is nearby. They’ve now been doing this for so long – almost three years, remember, and after all of the vaccinations and mutations of the virus to milder forms – that it’s really quite difficult to imagine circumstances in which they’ll stop, raising the question whether it will simply become yet another slightly odd thing that the Japanese do which sets them apart from other nations in perpetuity. (It’s worth bearing in mind that the mask-wearing is not and has never been due to a Government mandate, and the Government, indeed, has actually tried – tepidly – to encourage people to stop, beginning with the message that it is not necessary to wear masks outdoors. This has largely fallen on deaf ears.)
The second reason is related, and it is the Japanese people’s famous conformism. Non-Japanese people sometimes overestimate the extent of this phenomenon. Japanese society actually has a fairly high tolerance for weirdos, and conformity is only very rarely actually enforced, either verbally or physically. (The small minority of people who are non-mask wearers experience absolutely no negative consequences in doing so, for instance.) But it is a powerful force all the same. Japanese behaviour is dominated by unwritten customs that can baffle outsiders; I still to this day remain amazed that one can visit a beach in Japan in June or September in temperatures of 30 degrees and find not a single soul out swimming because Japanese people only go in the ocean in July and August. And most Japanese people are conditioned from an early age to, basically, do what everyone else is doing. It is perfectly normal, for instance, for the average Japanese person to decide to wear a coat when going out not on the basis of it being cold but because ‘everyone else’ is. This, of course, reinforces the mask-wearing tendency very strongly. The average Japanese person is not wearing a mask every moment from morning till night because they are scared of catching Covid or don’t want to spread it. And, indeed, the great majority are keen to drop the practice. (Anyone seeking visual evidence of this need only visit the departure gates for a JAL flight in any airport almost anywhere in the world outside Japan; the Japanese passengers, I guarantee, will almost all be unmasked and breathing the free air until the last possible moment before they have to mask up on boarding.) The masks are being worn for the most part because ‘everyone else’. And until everyone stops, nobody will.
The third reason is the Japanese obsession with health. We Brits are a notoriously unhealthy lot – eating nasty, oily, sugary beige foods; drinking too much; doing too little exercise; and engaging in all sorts of carcinogenic activities. In this regard we have a lot to learn from the Japanese, who generally eat wonderfully well, look after themselves, and avoid becoming a burden to the public purse through self-imposed illness or disability. It is undoubtedly the case that the relatively benign impact of the pandemic in Japan has been in part due to the Japanese habits of washing their hands and gargling when arriving home in the evening, and the very low rates of obesity and diabetes in the population. Yet any virtue taken to its extreme can become a vice, and the monomaniacal focus the Japanese apply to their physical health is no exception. When a Japanese person gets sick, they view it almost as a personal failing – or as the fault of some unconsiderate other person who themselves have failed in some important way. Avoiding catching a cold was always a significant feature of Japanese life, and Covid is no different. ‘Ripping off the plaster’, as happened in the U.K. in the summer of 2021, therefore just isn’t likely to happen in Japan, because people fundamentally don’t want to go through the experience of catching Covid if they can help it. ‘Stopping the spread’ really matters in Japan in a sense that it simply doesn’t elsewhere.
What, then, does the future hold? Covid has really put the Japanese establishment in a bind. Successive governments have made it a priority to boost tourism in an effort to help the economy to grow and finally dispel the doldrums the country has been in since the burst bubble of the early 90s – and you don’t need to be vaccinated to visit. At the same time, boosting the declining birth rate has been an obsessive focus of Prime Minister after Prime Minister. The ongoing pandemic mode, which long ago lifted in most countries, helps in neither respect. Tourists don’t want to get in a time-warp back to 2020. Most, particularly, don’t want to have to go around in a mask all the time. And it is clear from evidence all over the world that women don’t tend to want to have children when they are constantly reminded there is a pandemic on, for perfectly obvious reasons. The number of births registered in 2022 in Japan was the lowest on record. It seems highly unlikely to increase while Covid remains a concern.
The result of this is a strange, looking-glass version of what happened in the U.K. in 2020-21. Back then, our Government pulled out all the stops to make sure it was impossible to ever forget about Covid. The Japanese Government is in the strange reverse position of having to try to convince a recalcitrant population that the whole thing is over and life can go back to normal. Everything I’ve seen on this most recent visit suggests it’s going to have its work cut out in doing so – and one has to view the future of the country with concern as a result. This is a great shame, because for all that the Covid paraphernalia has annoyed me on this and previous visits, it still remains the case that Japan is a brilliant and beautiful place with lovely, polite, and considerate people. One can only hope that by some miracle the fog soon lifts and they are set free from the Covid obsession.
Dr. David McGrogan is Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School.
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Considering the allocation of levels – deep, middle, and shallow – are the medical, & tech (incorporating engineering) organisations really shallow? Or are they actually deep in many cases? After all, most of them really supersede democracy altogether. Most people just live with them with no thought at all, in the main. In this context, the “deep state” is global, in effect, with the USA being down the pyramid a bit.
“unconscionable forced shots that have not only killed and wounded many but demoralised and subjugated the population”
One bit of good news regarding that is the ‘uptake’ in all vaccines is down, making it harder when they next take orders from the WHO & IHR fascism.
What a surprise. Maybe they are not so good at marketing as some supposed. But yes, it is possible that the tactic used will have a negative effect.
It’s too late.
Even if Trump wins, he’ll be lucky to make it to the January 2025 inauguration. Even as a President he’ll be “minded” by reps of all three levels, who have infiltrated the fake Republican Party.
And they’ve had two strikes at him already, a third might do it.
If they have a go, it will be a bomb. I pray they are unsuccessful.
Take him out …. and they’ll get Vance.
“information machine controlled only by stakeholders. I’m not making this up. This is what they say!”
I know you’re not….”We own the science and I think they should know it”…WEF. The arrogance knows no bounds. The Free World rests on Trump!
It is not the politicians elected by the voters as such but the permanent state structures that exist on three levels: shallow, middle and deep.”
Why do you think the Dems kept FRK off the ballot, that’s why he joined Trump, other times they put him on a ballot when it would benefit the Dems where he would have to instruct them to remove his name. Ah democracy!
RFK FFS!
“400 agencies that imagine that they are the real and permanent rulers of America.”
You mean like Whitehall
Yes, Minister.
“. We need only draw on moral intuition and what we remember (if we can) of what normal life should be like.” Yes in the old days we could plan our future!
“On nationalism, I had never imagined the conditions in which that impulse would favour rather than oppose liberty…”
Nationalism like racism and far right, have been defined by the Left to convey their desired meaning to support their arguments.
Nationalism the way they mean it is more properly defined as Statism, in the model of Mussolini, and Hitler’s National Socialism – therefore tyranny and dictatorship and must be stamped out. Ironic since the Left is itself a Statist, dictatorial machine.
A Nation is built by monocultural society – shared values, morals, beliefs, manners, laws – bound by the culture, heritage, history, wider family, solidarity, unity, patriotism. Nationalism seeks to preserve this. It’s about the people. That is why it is a threat to Statism and the Left who want to get rid of National identity, destroy the concept of self-government and replace it with a global technocratic government.
He’s so got to win. The alternative is unthinkable, and I don’t even live in the States. I honestly cannot wait to see that maniacal, fake-ass smile wiped off that medicated muppet’s face, as well as all the rest of the Demtard globalist sh*tmunchers reactions before their tiny, toxic brains collectively implode as they try and fail to compute what just happened, with zero fraud or bribery required in order to get there. *Touch wood I’ve not just jinxed things!*
You don’t have to like him, but even with all his faults he’s the only real chance Americans have;
”We’re right on the cusp of – yes, it’s true and not just a hyperbolic cliché – the most consequential election of our time. What can you expect on November 5th – and then beyond?
First, the election itself. As things stand now, I personally do not see how Donald Trump can lose – even factoring in what will surely be widespread attempts at voter fraud including an unknown quantity of illegal aliens who have been registered to vote by the Democrats (which is precisely the reason, of course, that they threw open the southern border for four years). The Democrats know they’re going to lose, which is why activists have already started burning ballot boxes in Washington state and Oregon (and you can expect more ballot boxes in other states to begin meeting the same fate). I don’t see how the Democrats can even cheat their way to victory this time. We all know – and the Democrats especially are painfully aware – that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are a disastrous duo whom no one likes and they have run a terrible campaign that is floundering more and more each day.
Conversely, we also all know – and the Democrats especially are painfully aware – that Trump has been a rock star on the campaign trail and that YUGE crowds have come out for him everywhere. Kamala could only boost her crowds with a bait-and-switch, promising Beyoncé concerts that never materialized, for example. Kamala couldn’t even score a victory with a solo CNN town hall; CNN commentators afterward couldn’t cover for her disastrous performance. Her entire campaign has been based on lies and fear-mongering about fascism and democracy because she’s incapable of talking policy or differentiating herself from the decrepit, deposed Joe Biden.
If Kamala “wins,” her presidency will be the most radical in American history. It’s easy and tempting to dismiss her as an epically incompetent dim bulb, because that’s what she is. It’s easy and tempting to mock her pompous word salads, her nervous cackling, her Meryl Streep-level range of accents when addressing different demographics, but remember that she is also ruthless, ambitious, and cruel, and she enjoys destroying lives through political power. With her in the White House we can expect four years of vindictiveness and retribution against political opponents, in addition to the most radical imaginable policies.”
https://www.frontpagemag.com/what-to-expect-this-election-and-beyond/
“You don’t have to like him, but even with all his faults he’s the only real chance Americans have”
I actually find him very likeable. He may be a bit narcissistic, but still only scores around a 3 on the Barack Obama scale of 10.
And Obama is a prime example why people shouldn’t focus on the sex or the skin colour, only their policies.
Thank you Sir. This is why I subscribe to the DS.
It is one of the most balanced and considered articles that I have so far encountered on this matter. The Brownstone website which the writer established has many intelligent articles, often including British orientated opinion and information. The link given by Mogwai below is worth reading in its entirety.
https://brownstone.org/
“It has become clear, in addition, that the longing for a system of fiscal financing via tariffs rather than income taxes is on the table, as in the 19th century. That would certainly amount to an improvement over the current system.”
Really? Yet it was removal of tariffs and introduction of free trade that saw a huge surge in the British Economy and at that time there was no income tax so it wasn’t either/or.
Do people promoting tariffs really nto understand they are a tax on consumers? Paid by the importer and passed on and compounded through the supply chain, they increase consumer prices = less goods bought = less manufacture needed = fewer jobs needed = unemployment = reduction in economic activity = everyone made poorer.
Domestic manufacturing has not been lost, it has changed. We manufacture as much as we did 50 years ago just different things. Fewer people are engaged in it which is down to increased labour productivity which means higher wages.
The real problem is as the article states, a shift from productive to non-productive activity mostly in the public sector, which means more and more capital, labour and other resources are not available for development of the private sector hampered by the deadweight of taxation to pay for the non-producers. And now floods of non-productive, impoverished immigrants.
Tariffs are not the answer.
To be fair, when there was a huge surge in the British Economy from free trade, we didn’t have a great deal of international competition, certainly not what we have now. We have seen various foreign governments try to subsidise their industry by undercutting and product dumping, in which case some protectionism would be an obvious answer. If we all played by the rules then I agree, no tariffs.
My instincts are towards free trade and it has shown itself to give great benefits. But what has come to bother me about it is that it creates a dependence on other countries. Steel, food, energy, semiconductors. Being dependent on other countries might be OK if they are equally dependent on you, or you can trust them not to shaft you or gang up on you because you step out of line. I don’t know what the answer is.
I was thinking about the whole situation in the US the other day and musing about the tremendous divisions between the left and right, and whether or not the answer might just be to have a partition of the country into two. Do we have two sides of the argument that are so incompatible that division and political independence is realistically the only solution..?
Such a situation would absolutely never happen, of course. Not just because of the obvious practical and constitutional hurdles, but also because the juxtaposition would expose the comparative failure of the Dem state very starkly indeed.
I felt like that during “covid”. Just give us a small country somewhere and leave us the hell alone, youse lot can all go bonkers together, good luck.
The US was founded with the idea that people would be left to live their lives as they best thought, within the law which was at the time confined to a tiny proportion of what it is today. But there’s no more land left to do it again – no land anyone would want to live on, anyway.
Maybe that is the reason for the Billionaires bunkers in places like Hawaii. Some could already be in them, just in case!
He is more beautiful than ever now in terms of his actual beauty and the beauty of his presence. The man is in his seventies and he has the energy of ten young bulls and apparently he subsists on cheeseburgers alone. And perhaps he has gained wisdom from his years in the wilderness He isn’t really a demagogue apart from a few stylistic touches. He never plays the hard man really. His tone is usually ironic or self-mocking. More of a demigod than demagogue. He is a mystery to himself in terms of how his mind works. The demons in charge like predictability and algorithmic thinking and so perhaps a practitioner of chaos magic can slow down the decline.
Today is a rebirth. It may only mean a fifty year reprieve from a precipitous decline but now that we have him I think that we have learned how to love him. And we know that feeding him love and adoration brings out the best in him. He offers himself up as the slain deity and the sacrificial lamb. Our last hope.
They’ve already said that they won’t let him take power even if he wins and that is the beauty of it because it means a rumpus will ensue. He will win and if they to block him they will make a grave mistake. He is no more of a humanitarian than they are but at least it will throw the Anglo-Americans off kilter for the next couple of months which is exactly where you want them.
I hope we’re now going to experience a battle between democratic, nationalistic capitalism in the USA the anti-democratic, bureaucratic corporatism being implemented in Europe.
Sadly, we’re trapped on the wrong side.