Coronavirus: Japan has dropped its outdoor mask mandate, but the message has not filtered through to the public
- A Laibo survey found just 30.3 per cent of people would stop wearing masks because the government said it was OK to do so
- It was common to wear a mask before the pandemic, as people could put on a face cover after catching a cold, rather than to avoid one
On May 23, the ministry of health changed its advice to approve removing face coverings outside provided people maintain 2 metres distance from each other and do not converse. Quiet, spacious indoor environments can also be used mask-free, it said.
But Tokyo’s streets have since shown few signs of a mass unmasking, in an outcome anticipated by a survey released the day after the relaxation. A sample of 708 employed adults taken between May 11 and 16 by polling firm Laibo found just 30.3 per cent of people would unmask because the government said it was OK to do so.
Kazuya Nakayachi, a psychology professor at Kyoto’s Doshisha University specialising in trust and risk perception, says that rather than following government advice, people wear masks because they see others with them on.
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More likely to be effective in changing behaviour, he said, is encouragement to unmask from employers and other organizations closer to people’s lives. Then, he said, the domino effect that saw people quickly don masks in large numbers could suddenly go into reverse.
In the meantime, though, unlike in some Western countries, Japan’s patience with mask wearing is unlikely to run out soon. Tomohisa Sumida, a mask historian and visiting research fellow at Tokyo’s Keio University, for instance, notes that mask-wearing is deeply ingrained in Japanese society.
Masks are present in people’s lives from as early as junior school, he says. At lunchtime, class lunch monitors wear masks to avoid contaminating food served to classmates.
The early lesson is that “mask wearing isn’t for the wearer, but for others,” he said. Before the pandemic, for instance, people tended to don masks after catching a cold, rather than to avoid one.
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Japan’s pandemic mask usage has therefore been high enough to see it top 14 countries and regions in a May 26 survey by the Nippon Research Center with British market research firm YouGov. In April 2021, 89 per cent of people were masking up, with the proportion down by just 2 percentage points in April 2022.
Out on the streets of Tokyo, opinions diverged even among the maskless on how far to acknowledge the government’s latest guidance.
Yoshifumi Mizuno, 73, who often takes barefaced strolls along the Sumida River with his wife, was critical of people’s reliance on masks, including when alone in their cars, and said government messaging “hasn’t been clear enough” to get people to take them off.
But Masahide Inoue, 65, whose face was also uncovered when no one was nearby, is nevertheless reluctant to see further easing.
“Whether infections rise or fall, droplet infections are what matters. Even if the government said you can go without masks, droplet infections are still possible, so I’m going to keep wearing one [when around others],” he said.
The Laibo survey suggested that, rather than government advice, people place far more importance on the development of effective Covid-19 treatments when deciding whether to wear masks, with 48.5 per cent saying they would be happy to unmask under such circumstances.
Yoko Yoshida, a Tokyo resident who only goes maskless to walk her dog, expressed such a view. “I think it would be fine to remove our masks if there was some official medication. After that it’s an individual judgment. The government’s view is an individual judgment, too. You can’t just accept everything they say,” she said.
Nakayachi, meanwhile, warned against simple contrasts ascribing Japan with a collectivist mentality to masks as opposed to a Western, individual-choice approach. The conformist argument, rather, can be made regardless of country.
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Sumida, the mask historian, suggested choosing to eschew masks in countries unused to them is itself a manifestation of local social pressures.
“It’s often said social pressure to conform is partly why Japanese people wear masks. But if we think about the world before coronavirus, couldn’t we say there was also social pressure in Western countries to not wear masks in daily life?”
But he added, “I do wish personally that people were a little less worried about what those around them think, and that more people would take off their masks. I don’t have mine on outside, and I do think people use them too much.”