Is the Japanese Media Hampering Voluntary Self-Quarantine Efforts in Tokyo?

Yesterday, in a dramatic press conference, Yuriko Koike, the governor of Tokyo, noted that the city is on the cusp of a major spike in the number of new cases of coronavirus infections. As a measure to prevent further spreading of the virus, Koike called on the city's residents to voluntarily refrain from unnecessary outing over the weekend. As an additional measure, she announced the closure of the city's major parks to prevent people from gathering to view cherry blossoms that are blooming at the moment. The country's major news outlets duly reported Koike's press conference as headline news.

But the attitude with which the news was reported was laced with a kind of flippancy and passive-aggressiveness that is not common with the country's often staid and formulaic reporting styles. When one news reporter was told that the Tokyo municipal government noted that the city's major parks will only reopen after the cherry blossom season ends, she, without any hesitation, blurted out "wow, that sucks" to the quiet agreement of others next to her. The crew on-air then proceeded to debate whether walking the dog or jogging should be included in the scope of "unnecessary" outings.

The lack of seriousness that the reporters take to the news of Koike's request for voluntary self-quarantine is further amplified by the news outlets' decision to interview young people who are out for a walk and dining in cafes and restaurants in some of the city's most trafficked neighborhoods. Interspersing Koike's terse words to ask young people to especially avoid outings with the young interviewees' comments that they are becoming stressed out by being holed up at home, the news outlets inadvertently acknowledged the young people's concerns and played up an image of Koike's authoritarian ways of telling people to stay home.

Whether intentional or unintentional, the way that these news outlets presented this piece of news and the general public's (and their own) reactions to it creates an impression that the preventive measures have disrupted the daily lives of normal people, caused them emotional damage, and in failing to observe the yearly cherry blossom season, even eroded the sense of Japanese identity. Without explicitly saying so, the news reports cast doubt on the effectiveness and the meaningfulness of the voluntary self-quarantine mulled by Koike and other government officials largely without consultation of the general public.

Such an attitude of the Japanese media reinforces an increasing number of foreign media outlets' criticism that Japan, as a whole, is not taking the coronavirus seriously enough. Citing that the Japanese government has hitherto been more concerned about ensuring that the Tokyo Olympics is still on track and the lack of mass testing in a country that should have the medical and financial resources to do so, foreign media outlets have suggested that the Japanese government may have deliberately created a sense of normalcy by suppressing information that the coronavirus is more widespread in the country than the official tally.

Japanese media outlets' relaxed way of reporting on Koike's now serious calls for self-quarantine only helps to show that the foreign assessments of Japanese attitude toward the coronavirus were correct. Even as a few in government has now realized the urgency of the epidemic, the general public, along with the media, continues to see the virus is somebody else's issue, one that, like many other woes around the world, is bound to mean nothing to the average Japanese. To eradicate this attitude, it seems, will take much more than an announcement from the governor of Tokyo.

Of course, it is unfair to single out Japan for denial and complacency in the face of the growing epidemic. Governments from the US, UK, and Brazil, among others, are equally guilty of playing down the threat of the virus in their respective countries. And China's reporting of no new local transmissions in the past several days, despite foreign media's note that crematoria and nurses are observing irregularly high numbers of deaths, only strengthen outside belief that real numbers of infections are being censored. A culture of what the Chinese call 家醜不能外揚 (domestic ugliness should not be discussed outside) may be taking hold across a swath of the infected world in a bid to bring a semblance of normalcy to this extraordinary time.

That almost reflexive culture of suppressing ugly news will be most unhelpful for stopping the epidemic. Feigning that there is no problem to save face makes no sense when the problem is not something that is to be blamed on human errors but on an unstoppable virus with no effective treatment and high mortality rate. As such, major media outlets, both in Japan and elsewhere, should err on the side of caution, emphasizing the seriousness of the situation and urge, even more so than authorities, for people to adhere to self-quarantine. A panic caused by too much concern is certainly better than infections of an extra few million people at this point.