TOKYO — To understand how Japan has outperformed most of the world in managing the dire effects of the coronavirus pandemic, consider Mika Yanagihara, who went to buy flowers in central Tokyo last week. Even when she walked outside in temperatures in the mid-90s, she kept the lower half of her face completely covered.
“People will stare at you,” said Ms. Yanagihara, 33, explaining why she was afraid to take off her mask. “That pressure is there.”
Japan’s Covid death rate, just one-twelfth that in the United States, is the lowest of the world’s richest countries. With the world’s third largest economy and 11th largest population, Japan also tops the global vaccination rankings and has consistently had one of the world’s lowest infection rates.
While no government agency has ever imposed masks or vaccinations or put in place lockdowns or mass surveillance, the people of Japan have largely evaded the worst ravages of the virus. Instead, in many ways, Japan let peer pressure do the work.
Even now, as average daily cases have fallen to just 12 per 100,000 population — about a third of the United States average — a government survey in May found that nearly 80 percent of people who work in offices or are enrolled in school , wear masks and about 90 percent do so on public transport. Movie theaters, sports stadiums and shopping malls continue to require visitors to wear masks, and for the most part, people abide by them. The term “face pants” has become a buzzword, implying that dropping a mask would be just as embarrassing as taking your underwear off in public.
Many factors have undoubtedly contributed to the impact of the coronavirus in Japan, including a nationalized health care system and strict border controls that take longer than those in many other countries.
But social conformity — and a fear of public shame instilled from an early age — has been a key ingredient in Japan’s relative success in Covid prevention, experts say. Unlike many other countries, Japanese law does not allow the government to order lockdowns or vaccinations. The majority of the population followed advice from scientific experts who encouraged people to wear masks and avoid situations where they would be in closed, unventilated areas with large crowds.
After a slow start, as Japan ramped up vaccine distribution, most people followed the advice to get them. Even without a mandate, nearly 90 percent of all over-65s, the most vulnerable populations, have received booster shots, compared to 70 percent of seniors in the United States.
In Japan, “if you tell people to look good, they all look good,” said Kazunari Onishi, an associate professor of public health at St. Luke’s International University in Tokyo.
“In general, I think being influenced by others and not thinking for yourself is a bad thing,” added Dr. Onishi to it. But during the pandemic, he said, “It was a good thing.”
Unlike in the United States, wearing a mask or getting a vaccine never became ideological litmus tests. While confidence in government has failed during the pandemic, in a country where the same party has ruled for nearly four years since 1955, the public has placed pragmatism over politics in dealing with Covid.
Often people kept an eye on each other or businesses were seen as violating municipal requests to close early or stop serving alcohol during periods of emergency.
“We got so many reports of stores being open that we started to joke about the ‘self-control’ police,” said Yuko Hirai, who works in the emergency department in Osaka, Japan’s third-largest prefecture. “People were absolutely aware that the eyes of society were on them.”
The practice of staying aligned with peers is instilled in schoolchildren, who wear uniforms in most public schools and are embarrassed to follow institutional expectations. “Just being removed from the group is such a big deal for Japanese kids,” said Naomi Aoki, an associate professor of public management at the University of Tokyo. “They always want to belong to a social group and don’t want to feel isolated.”
Children are taught to act for the collective benefit. Students clean classrooms and school grounds and take turns serving lunch in cafeterias.
Japanese culture also depends on an ethic of public self-control that can be translated into group action. When Emperor Hirohito died in 1988, pop singers postponed weddings and canceled school festivals.
After the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster led to severe power shortages, the public voluntarily cut back on electricity consumption. (With temperatures soaring in Tokyo over the past week, residents are being asked to do so again.)
During the pandemic, politicians took advantage of “this collective idea of self-restraint for the common good,” said James Wright, an anthropologist at the Alan Turing Institute in London who has studied Japan’s response to the coronavirus.
With few legal options to enforce the guidelines, authorities hoped the population would voluntarily heed pleas to stay at home, said Hitoshi Oshitani, a professor of virology at Tohoku University in northeast Japan and a government adviser. .
Despite the Japanese culture of collectivism, Dr. Oshitani surprised when businesses closed quickly and people refrained from going out. Companies that had never allowed telecommuting sent employees home with laptops. Families canceled visits to older relatives. Nearly 200 industry groups representing theaters, professional sports teams, and venues hosting weddings and funerals represented lengthy protocols to prevent infection.
The public embraced the guidelines and the overall death rate actually fell below that of the year immediately prior to the coronavirus outbreak.
Those who tried to ignore the leadership were subject to public condemnation. Toshio Date, which operates an Osaka location dedicated to the Go and shogi board games, initially tried to stay open when the city called for restaurants, bars and other entertainment establishments to be closed.
When local television stations started asking for the club to be filmed as an outlier, Mr. Date, 58, the message and closed it quickly. Even after infections descended on Osaka, which recorded the highest death rate in Japan, and businesses reopened, he said strangers often scold him for having too many customers.
Although the public has provided most of the sticks, the government has offered carrots in the form of economic subsidies for businesses.
According to statistics from Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, in 2020 the country paid out more than $40.5 billion to more than 4.2 million small to medium-sized businesses and individual entrepreneurs.
Larger companies received “partnership money” based on their pre-pandemic earnings, as much as 200,000 yen — just under $1,500 — per day.
The incentives were not equally effective everywhere. In the first summer of the pandemic, clusters of infections began to appear in entertainment districts in central Tokyo as visitors to bars and cabarets ignored the experts’ advice.
When companies flaunted advice on ventilation, masking and sanitizing alcohol, city officials were sent to convince them to queue. Only as a last resort, companies were funded or cut off from economic subsidies. According to the city’s Bureau of Industrial and Labor Affairs, in Tokyo, between 96 and 98 percent of companies eventually agreed to follow the rules.
Experts warn that voluntary compliance does not guarantee unlimited success.
“The reaction is like an Othello game,” said Dr. Oshitani, as he compared Japan’s coronavirus results to the board game where one move can turn a winning outcome into a losing one. “All of a sudden, the most successful countries can become the worst countries in the world,” he said.
For the time being, the residents continue to bow to peer pressure.
Kae Kobe, 40, a receptionist at an office in Shibuya, said she always wears her mask at work because her work focuses on the customer.
“Everyone in the neighborhood still wears it,” she said. “So it’s hard to get rid of it.”
Hisako Ueno and Hikari Hida reporting contributed.