Taiki has been home sick half the week. Normally that sort of thing doesn’t bother me, other than it means I’m not going to get much done, but these days there’s a mild sense of concern beyond that of the normal, “My five year old is sick yet again. Goddamn it, there goes my day.” The question nags, just on the edge of thought: “Could it somehow be COVID-19?”
Of course it probably isn’t, but that knowledge doesn’t quite leave the anxiety at bay. Not when the Japanese government has been so embarrassingly pathetic in their response up until a few days ago. Not that other countries, including the US and Canada, have been particularly stellar in their actions, but Japan has been so… Japanese about the whole thing, so wrapped up in their cherished bureaucracy and sense of superiority, that, since I live here, I thought I’d vent in the only medium I have available.
I, along with pretty much everyone else, including much of the Japanese public paying any attention, knew there’d be problems the day the government let hundreds of people off the cruise ship in Yokohama simply because they’d been there for 14 days and hadn’t gotten sick yet. They even went as far has handing out certificates officially stating they were guaranteed not to be infected before unleashing them into the biggest metropolitan area in the world on public transportation. Almost twenty of them were somehow failed to be tested at all.
Iwata Kentaro, infectious disease expert, has removed his now-infamous video from YouTube that derided Japan’s handling of the Diamond Princess, but, since nothing leaves the internet, it is easily available if you haven’t seen it. In defense of their handling, Japan’s vice health minister Tweeted the above picture, displaying “red” (infected) and “green” (uninfected) quarantine zones leading to the same room. He deleted it almost immediately, obviously realizing this didn’t help his cause, but, again, nothing leaves the internet once it’s out there.
His lengthy argument against criticism managed to not dispute anything that Kentaro said. Instead, he complained that Kentaro didn’t “build up trust” before offering suggestions on how to better handle the situation. The Japanese version of “building trust” seems to be to work somewhere for weeks or months or years, then possibly implement one tiny change at a time after dozens of meetings where nothing is resolved. Like an entmoot with fax machines and hanko stamps.
He also pointed out, supposedly in the Japanese government’s defense, that “On the ship, there wasn’t just DMAT, but also MLHW, JSDF, and what’s more, the cruise ship company including the ship captain – a multitude of decision making processes were involved.” In other words, four different bureaucracies, with no one definitively in charge, not one of them experienced in handling infectious diseases. And all likely concerned with their own image and making sure all the paperwork was done correctly.
This is just one of many examples of the Japanese government embarrassing themselves in their far flung attempt to not be embarrassed. It’s easy enough to find heaps of other examples, but quoting or linking it all here isn’t the intended focus of this post.
Instead, my point is Japan’s poor response is largely due to the unique blend of a massive bureaucracy and absurd work culture, combined with the prevailing attitude that everything Japan does is the correct way for Japan, and anyone who disagrees just doesn’t understand because they’re not Japanese. Oh, you don’t want to go to work sick? That’s ok. You’re a foreigner so you’re not expected to have the ganbaru attitude that would help you persevere teaching kids for 3 days with a fever of 38.5 like that woman who ended up having COVID-19.
Calling in sick to work? That will earn you the ire of your coworkers, because they all needed to work harder while you were gone.
The number of times I’ve seen or been told “This is the way we do things because that’s the way it’s done in Japan” is beyond count. If you try to explain flaws or a better way, you’re met with sadly shaking heads because it’s impossible for foreigners to understand why the Japanese way is always superior, even if they can’t explain why. I once saw a doctor on TV argue against medical marijuana because “doctors in Japan are the best in the world, and other doctors in countries where it’s become legal just don’t understand.” And everyone nodded in agreement, because Japan.
And when they’re proven wrong, as is now the case with letting people off the cruise ship without further testing, they apologize and act like nobody could have known it would be a problem, thereby learning nothing.
It happened at Fukushima. It’s happening again now. Shin-Godzilla and Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru weren’t documentaries, but they might as well have been.
There’s a lot of good things about Japan—things I miss a lot when I go back to Canada—but their convoluted bureaucracy and inane sense of superiority aren’t some of them.
Now, finally, someone has realized that refusing to test people to keep the numbers down isn’t going to halt the coronavirus’ spread. Schools are closed until after spring break and the start of the next school year (Taiki’s kindergarten is open but voluntary) , baseball games are played in empty stadiums, and even Tokyo Disney is shuttering its turnstiles for two weeks. We’ll see if that’s enough. There’s no confirmed cases in Hiroshima Prefecture yet, but there’s no reason to think it’s not here.
There was a time not long ago where I’d be pretty ambivalent about the whole thing. After all, odds are good Tomomi and I will survive infection if it comes to that. Hell, odds are good we won’t even know if we get it.
But having a kid changes things, and I find myself worried not about getting sick, but terrified of the idea of Taiki being in quarantine, alone and scared, while we’re on ventilators, unable to be there for him. Parenthood kind of sucks like that.