Life in Japan: The impact of COVID-19 isolationism

By David McNeill

This summer I returned to my native Ireland with my kids for our first trip out of Japan in over three years. Like many expats around the planet, the COVID-19 pandemic locked me out of my home country and stranded me from family: When my father was dying in October 2020, I said goodbye to him from my iPhone as my four siblings gathered around his hospital bed.

Japan began prohibiting entry by foreigners after the COVID-19 outbreak in February 2020, a ban that eventually extended to 159 countries, including Ireland. A year later, all travelers were still required to stay at designated hotels, test for COVID-19 on the third day, then self-quarantine for 14 days. I couldn't take this much time off work so I missed the first anniversary of my dad's passing too.

Millions of people around the world faced similar restrictions, of course. And Japan has weathered the pandemic better than most. Over 47,000 people have tragically died of the virus here but that is about 383 per million people, the lowest fatality rate of all the rich OECD countries, according to Our World in Data. And Japan, unlike Ireland, did this without draconian lockdowns.

Nevertheless, Japan's border controls -- among the strictest in the democratic world -- were dubbed irrational, xenophobic or even "neo-sakoku" or "sakoku 2.0" (after Japan's self-enforced seclusion from the world in 1603-1867). Some pointed out that while Japanese citizens were allowed to come and go (unlike Australia, for example, where citizens were kept at home), even permanent foreign residents in Japan, some of whom had lived a lifetime here, were shut out.

In October 2021, while borders in many parts of the world were reopening, more than 370,000 foreign nationals with pre-residence status, including international students and technical interns, were stranded outside Japan, according to the Nikkei newspaper. And there was of course a dramatic fall in the number of tourists, from a record high 31.88 million in 2019 before the pandemic arrived, to a record low of 246,000 in 2021.

Now that the restrictions have finally been lifted, much mainstream media coverage seems to be focused on the prospect of tourists returning. TV reporters have been sent to interview "gaijin" at the airports and film them struggling with kanji and eating sushi with forks in restaurants. The government has signaled it is back to business with a renewed target of 60 million visitors from overseas from 2030.

It's worth giving some thought, however, to the long-term impact of Japan's COVID-19 isolationism. In my case, the worst I can say is that I couldn't grieve properly for my dad, and my three bicultural kids could only meet Irish relatives through screens. But there are far sadder cases: foreign residents separated from families and friends for several years; lives disrupted, sometimes irrevocably. In academia, Japan's border restrictions "have brought immense, irreversible changes to what (academics) do for a living," says Tomoyuki Sasaki, an Associate Professor of Japanese Studies at the College of William & Mary in a new paper.

Well, so what? some might say. Academics suffered like everyone else, and are more pampered than many. Yet, the damage to Japan is "immeasurable," laments Sasaki, and will cause a shrinking of general interest in this country. The pandemic has already cost Japan many foreign students -- its future cultural bridge-builders, says The Economist. Sasaki predicts further declines in the numbers "studying Japan and Japanese studies, scholars specialising on Japan, publications on Japan, academic departments/programs that offer courses on Japan, and so on."

Sasaki continues, "Many researchers of Japanese studies, who care deeply about Japan and have contributed enormously to the growth of the field, have come to develop a deep sense of disappointment and distrust toward ... its government." Japan has spent years promoting soft power and openness to foreign visitors, he adds, but the pandemic response "revealed how superficial these policies are and how easily Japanese society can turn xenophobic and introverted." "This is a true crisis," he concludes.

Needless to say, those of us who care about Japan and have built lives here hope that analysis is mistaken. We academics probably have an inflated sense of our importance, given the ubiquity of social media, which is far more influential now. The cheap yen will make Japan more attractive and there is surely a lot of pent-up demand. Still, if the pandemic has taught us anything it is that we need each other. "Like it or not," said The Economist, "the world wants Japan, and Japan needs the world."

PROFILE:

David McNeill was born in the U.K. in 1965, and has Irish nationality. He received a doctorate from Napier University in Edinburgh, Scotland. He lectured at Liverpool John Moores University, and later moved to Japan in 2000. He was a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo, and has been a Tokyo correspondent for The Independent and The Economist newspapers, among other publications. He took up a position as professor in the Department of English Language, Communication and Cultures at University of the Sacred Heart, Tokyo, in April 2020. He is co-author of the book "Strong in the Rain: Surviving Japan's Earthquake, Tsunami and Fukushima Nuclear Disaster" (with Lucy Birmingham), which was published in 2012 by Palgrave-Macmillan. A Japanese version was published in 2016 by Enishi Shobo. He enjoys cycling and sometimes travels around the Miura Peninsula in Kanagawa Prefecture and Lake Biwa in Shiga Prefecture.