News On Japan

No port in a storm: Cruise ships left adrift over coronavirus

Feb 08 (Nikkei) - The coronavirus outbreak in China is wreaking havoc in the cruise industry, turning luxury Asian vacations into voyages to nowhere as the ships are denied entry at multiple ports.

All 21 large cruise ships that have visited China since January remain in the Asia-Oceania region, and some have been unable to confirm their next port calls, a Nikkei analysis of tracking data shows. A few vessels apparently have nowhere to go after being rejected by more than one destination.

Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and Vietnam have all turned ships away.

Concerns about cruises becoming floating vehicles for the viral pneumonia have grown this week as Japan faced a mini-outbreak aboard a ship quarantined off Yokohama, near Tokyo. As of Friday morning, the number of infections found on the Diamond Princess was up to 61, after a startling surge of 41 from the previous day.

One of the ships now struggling to find a place to drop anchor is the Westerdam, operated by Holland America Line, a unit of U.S.-based Carnival.

The ship, which can carry about 1,960 passengers and about 800 crew members, left Hong Kong on Feb. 1, according to data provided by Refinitiv and Japan's IHI Jet Service. On Thursday, it came within 100 km of the port of Ishigaki in Okinawa but did not stop.

The Japanese government said on Friday that it had asked the Westerdam not to dock in Ishigaki. Originally, the cruise had been scheduled to call at Naha, also in Okinawa.

Data shows 11 of the 21 ships that had called in China since January stopped in Japan as well. These ships, together, were capable of carrying an estimated 35,000 passengers, or about 50,000 people including crew. Some called at the ports of Fukuoka, Nagasaki and Naha more than once.

News On Japan
POPULAR NEWS

A fire that scorched the exterior wall of a company operated by a Pakistani national was discovered in Ebetsu, Hokkaido, on March 1st, just one day after a mosque located about 400 meters away caught fire, prompting police to investigate the possibility that the two incidents may be connected.

Police plan to arrest a Japanese doctor in his 60s who lives in the United States and is suspected of spraying an oil-like liquid at Naritasan Shinshoji Temple in Chiba Prefecture in 2015, with the suspect expected to arrive in Japan as early as March 4th, investigators said.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism has announced plans to draw up guidelines for the introduction of a so-called dual pricing system that differentiates between foreign visitors and local residents.

Kyoto City significantly raised its lodging tax from March 1st, increasing the maximum charge per person per night from 1,000 yen to as much as 10,000 yen, in a move aimed at tackling overtourism and funding the preservation of cultural assets, even as questions remain about its impact on visitors and the local economy.

A former emergency responder and foreign tourists worked together to rescue a woman in her 80s who was trapped inside an overturned light vehicle in Hakuba Village, Nagano Prefecture.

MEDIA CHANNELS
         

MORE Society NEWS

Five people have been arrested after repeatedly performing dangerous drift driving on a road in Tokyo’s Ota Ward, sending up clouds of white smoke in the middle of the night and drawing police scrutiny.

Large amounts of what appear to be illegally dumped garbage line the roadside at the Tokyo Metropolitan Kirigaoka Danchi in Kita Ward, where a decline in residents has left fewer eyes to monitor the sprawling public housing complex that first opened in the 1950s.

A former emergency responder and foreign tourists worked together to rescue a woman in her 80s who was trapped inside an overturned light vehicle in Hakuba Village, Nagano Prefecture.

A site supervisor at Fuji-Q Highland in Fujiyoshida, Yamanashi Prefecture, was referred to prosecutors on March 2nd over a fatal accident in February 2025 in which an employee died during maintenance work.

A 48-year-old woman who works as a lecturer at an Osaka prefectural high school was arrested on suspicion of assaulting a man in Osaka, with the man later confirmed dead at the hospital where he was taken.

The Konomiya Hadaka Festival, an unusual Shinto ritual dating back more than 1,250 years in which men wearing only loincloths collide violently with one another, was held on March 1st at Konomiya Shrine in Inazawa, Aichi Prefecture, drawing around 10,000 participants who surged toward a designated “sacred man” believed to absorb misfortune through physical contact.

An avalanche struck an advanced-level course at Madarao Kogen Ski Resort, which spans Niigata and Nagano prefectures, on February 28th, leaving four people injured, including two family members.

A man in his 50s died after falling while ice climbing in Gero, Gifu Prefecture, on March 2nd, after a report was made shortly after 9 a.m. from a person at the scene in Osakacho stating that he had fallen along with a sheet of ice and become trapped beneath the collapsed mass.