May 15, 2020 (Japan Today) - With the world's oldest population and one of the most crowded megacities on the planet as its capital, Japan should have provided a fertile breeding ground for the deadly coronavirus.
Images of salarymen crammed into Tokyo commuter trains fuelled warnings that Japan's capital could become the "next New York City" if the virus took hold.
Yet the country of 126 million has recorded 16,024 cases and 668 deaths, according to the health ministry -- rates so far below comparable nations that many have been left scratching their heads and others suspicious that authorities are not giving the full picture.
Mask-wearing, removing shoes, bowing not shaking hands, low obesity levels and even consuming certain foods have all been advanced as possible cultural reasons for the puzzlingly slow spread.
And with reported new cases dropping sharply in recent weeks, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is expected later Thursday to lift a state of emergency for most of the country.
But against this backdrop of apparent success, critics say the true extent of the crisis in Japan is unknown given relatively low rates of testing.
As of May 11, the health ministry said there had been 218,204 tests, by far the lowest per capita rate in the G7, according to Worldometers.
Even the government's own coronavirus expert, Shigeru Omi, has admitted "nobody knows" whether the true number of coronavirus cases "could be 10 times, 12 times or 20 times more than reported."
