Apr 28, 2020 (Japan Times) - A Nikkei Asian Review article last Friday reported that it took an average of 5.5 days to get a positive COVID-19 test result in Japan but that the time it takes has grown to 7.3 days because Japan was “slow to get businesses involved†in the testing.
The article, subtitled “Capacity fails to catch up to outbreak as private labs remain unutilized,†pointed out that hospitals “tend to rely on government-run testing facilities,†quoting a testing company representative who said that “There’s a strong sense that infectious diseases should be handled by the government.â€
The Japan Medical Association warned against simpler, private-sector COVID-19 tests, saying that “Improperly administered tests may not give reliable results, potentially causing confusion.†This is yet more proof that Japan will not change its own system unless gaiatsu (external pressure) forces it to do so.
In fact, over the past 170 years, gaiatsu has played a decisive role in determining the course of Japan. When either the government or the general public are bitterly divided on critically important issues, final decisions always seem to be give into requests by external pressure groups. The following are examples:
The famous Black Ships under the command of U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew Perry triggered the 1854 Treaty of Peace and Amity between Japan and the United States. The gunboat diplomacy convinced the last Tokugawa shogun to end Japan’s period of isolation after more than 200 years.
Another was the 1945 defeat of Japan in the Pacific War, which forced the nation to fundamentally change its government and foreign policy as well as to return to the state of democracy that had existed in the 1910s and 1920s. Many Japanese at the time, including my father, knew that they were losing the war, but nobody dared to speak out.
The “Nixon shock†of 1971, Japan-U.S. trade frictions and the Plaza Accord of 1985 altered Japan’s economic policies. Conservative decision-makers had to change their traditional monetary, trade and other policies so Japan could cope with the changing environment.
Last but not least was the Senkaku maritime collision incident of 2010, in which a Chinese trawler operating in the waters around the Senkaku Islands collided with Japan Coast Guard patrol boats. This led to popular criticism against China in Japan and a long-awaited modernization of Japan’s armed forces.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, however, the above examples neither symbolize Japan’s backwardness nor mean that Japanese decision-makers have been excessively passive or much less action-oriented. Rather, those examples all suggest prudence and circumspection on the part of the decision-makers.
