SNA (Tokyo) — This month Japan finally lifted its Covid restrictions and reopened its borders to tourists. Well, whoop-de-doo.

For now, foreigners will no longer suffer entry caps, or go through extra procedures just because they’re foreign, such as being sequestered in foreigner-only floors of hotels with tour-minders so they don’t wander off and contaminate the rest of Japan.

Never mind that Japanese entrants, barely subjected to these strictures put on foreigners, had all this time predictably infected Japan quite freely.

Remember how this whole thing started back in 2020, when cases were found in Yokohama Port aboard a luxury liner called the Diamond Princess? It soon became mired in Japan’s bureaucratic politics, the ship’s patients counted by no country as part of their Covid case total. This was the bellwether for Japan’s future Covid border policies of incompetence and racism.

Thanks to Japan’s poor quarantine measures, the Diamond Princess became a fast-breeder reactor for the disease–at the time the largest coronavirus outbreak outside of China. Japan bungled things so badly that its international passengers had to be rescued from this modern-day “hell ship” by their own countries!

Not to worry: the Japanese media excused itself by treating the ship like a leper colony of foreigners—even though the manifest was one-third Japanese. Down this case went into the memory hole, lessons unlearned.

Ignoring Science as Standard Operating Procedure

The root of the problem is that science, particularly social science, is simply not one of Japan’s strong suits.

Remember that Japan is a society which sells a gullible public bestselling books on blood types that allegedly determine personality, regular calendars with rotating weekly bad-luck days (ryokuyo), and snake-oil solutions, like soap that makes you lose weight, “healthy” Japanese food overladen with additives and salt, complemented with unhealthy levels of alcohol consumption, and an entire pseudoscience called Nihonjinron that sustains delusions of ethnic superiority.

Pseudoscience similarly infected Japan’s Covid policy, with scientists from otherwise-accredited institutions selling the government and media a bullshit bill of goods. They alleged things such as that Japanese were less infectious due to Japanese linguistics involving less spitting (remember the ludicrous “This is a PEN!” video?), that overseas cultures had latently unhygienic practices (as echoed in politician claims of their low mindo, cultural level), and that foreign residents had to be tracked because they were more likely to congregate in contagious “clusters” (not at all like any evening in any Japanese city’s party district).

The most stupefying was the underlying sentiment that Japan’s island nation once was, and could be again, hermetically sealed from the outside world. Just ignore the fact that Japan is fully integrated into the global economy, and thousands of people daily are crossing the border as both citizens and residents.

Foreigner as Covid Scapegoat

In the face of a moral panic affecting the ruling party’s popularity, hasty decisions had to be made, so they took the lazy racist route: assume that Japanese passports give holders automatic Covid immunity, and refuse entry to all “foreigners,” regardless of their legal status in Japan.

Suddenly, even Permanent Residents, who had spent their entire lives living in and contributing to Japan, had the same status as any motley tourist.

No other major country enforced the “foreigner as contagion” stereotype with as much practicality, duration, and verve as Japan. Foreign residents and students were stranded overseas separated from their families and friends for years, their lives and livelihoods upended and sometimes destroyed.

No amount of entreaty or appeal to adopting common-sense quarantine measures, such as those enforced (however haphazardly) upon Japanese re-entrants, made any difference. Calls by Japanese universities, businesses, and families for easing of restrictions were ignored month after month.

Yet foreigners in the diplomatic or business communities were quietly let in, as were Tokyo Olympic athletes (who were, again, sequestered like lepers).

The point is that Covid policy was always about politics and never science–because who in power in Japan considers the human and civil rights of foreign residents? Nobody, really. They’re only foreigners. Their lives don’t matter.

That is, except when foreigners are needed for a grander scheme; as such they have been a political football since at least the early 1990s. This was when the government realized Japan needed imports of cheap labor to keep domestic manufacturing competitive in a global market.

Nevertheless, policymaking was never crafted to treat foreign workers like human beings. They would only be tolerated as long as they were useful. Their status would be revocable at any time regardless of how much they invested or how hard they tried to assimilate into Japan.

Japan’s racist Covid border policies provided evidence beyond all doubt.

Plus Ça Change?

So now Japan has re-opened its borders. But has it really?

Never one to acknowledge it might have made a mistake, or demonstrate that they might have learned something from this border policy debacle, the Japanese media has already reverted to its standard “us-and-them” tropes.

Kyodo News and Japan Times (October 12) have already run headlines like “Japan’s lifting of Covid-19 entry cap may keep citizens wearing masks,” noting that foreigners “could increase the spread of infections at home.”

Really? There’s been plenty of Covid going around regardless of foreigners–as well as plenty of irrational public fear from broadcasting bad science.

For example, this summer, as I traveled around trying to visit friends, I saw plenty of Japanese in rural areas unwilling to receive people from urban areas. Some even said they couldn’t leave their own prefecture.

As for foreigners forcing Japanese to wear masks, they’re doing that just fine on their own. Despite notices from the government to unmask outdoors, folks were willing to risk heat stroke in a beastly hot Tokyo summer by keeping them on. (I even saw people on bicycles wearing masks!)

Yet they would unmask for the evening just as soon as they were eating and drinking in claustrophobic and contagious izakaya!

No matter: next time the Covid numbers rise, the foreigners will again be scapegoated.

Think Hard About Your Future Here

So I advise you: think carefully about investing your life in a society like this. Japan is a place that is willing to disregard everything you’ve done for it and revoke your legal status overnight.

Any time Japan has a public panic, bad science targeting foreigners becomes the norm.

Never memory-hole the fact that Japan fought Covid with racist policies, and it will do so again. Because it can.

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