For Japanese, stigma of the sick is a much greater fear than the coronavirus itself

The Covid-19 pandemic has been spreading fear worldwide: fear of being infected and, in the worst case, dying; fear of losing loved ones; fear of being laid off or devastated financially, and; fear of being isolated for a long time. Wherever you are in the world, this pandemic evokes these fears. Japan is no exception. Although my home country has so far escaped having a massive number infected and killed by the disease, people have been living with these fears since the first infection was detected in mid-January. And yet, for Japan and the Japanese, there is an additional, more insidious dread: the stigmatising and harassment of the sick. The greatest fear for people in Japan is being stigmatised as infected or suspected of being infected. “I will kill you.” “You walking bacteria!” “Commit suicide!” These are just a few examples of the invective poured through social media on those infected or thought to be, in Toyama city. Concerned that such threats and harassment of the sick are discouraging individuals from taking coronavirus tests, Toyama’s prefectural police have suggested prosecuting such instances. Koriyama Women’s high school, whose connected college had a coronavirus-infected faculty member, asked its students not to wear the school uniform because they, though perfectly healthy, had started becoming the targets of nasty words and public abuse. Family members of healthy college employees were shunned in certain public activities. A Diamond Princess passenger from Osaka twice tested negative for the virus, to his great relief. But, according to Tokyo Shimbun, one of Japan’s leading daily newspapers, when he returned home after being allowed off the troubled cruise ship, he found a rumour had spread that he was carrying the disease and should be shunned. The gym he was a member of refused him entry and his healthy wife’s doctor refused to see her for a check-up. The Online Libel Victim Legal Support Café, a lawyer-run website in Japan, describes the atmosphere thus: “In recent days in Japan, people with coronavirus symptoms cannot consult others about their sickness for fear of some people seeing them as criminals … ‘Infection hiding’ is increasing – for fear that rumours may devastate business, organisations are keeping employees with coronavirus symptoms from getting tested or saying anything to anyone outside.” These threats and the fear of virus stigma are real. Today, most of Japan’s municipal government websites explicitly decry such treatment. For example, the Niigata prefectural government has released a statement warning that the abuse, harassment and scorning of people infected by the coronavirus have increased, and that these actions can promote the spread of the virus, by keeping those with symptoms from getting tested and those who had been in contact from reporting it. Of course, not everyone in Japan discriminates against the sick. Still, the evidence suggests that Japanese society cannot stop this widespread discrimination unless authorities punish it. People are too fearful of others. In a long interview with Nikkan Gendai DIGITAL on April 10, a 55-year-old coronavirus-infected patient said: “I am a target of prying eyes. Living in the countryside, I am ostracised … Sooner or later I will recover physically but I will continue to suffer mentally … I can tell you that we will see many suicides committed by current or former coronavirus patients.” Japan has seen this kind of plague of fear before. March 11, 2011, is a date the Japanese cannot and will not forget. The East Japan Great Earthquake and subsequent nuclear meltdown decimated Fukushima prefecture and devastated the population. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their loved ones and homes. They had to become strangers in other cities, where they were often stigmatised as being “radioactive”. A survey conducted by NHK, Japan’s public broadcaster, found that after the disaster, many students from Fukushima were shunned, isolated and, in some cases, assaulted for “transmitting radioactivity”. Hotels refused to accept people from Fukushima, gas stations declined to serve them, and colleagues bullied them, simply because they were from Fukushima. Chikara Sakaguchi, Japan’s former health, labour and welfare minister, compared the coronavirus-related discrimination to the wrongful treatment of Hansen disease patients by the Japanese public and authorities in the 20th century. Some speculate that common Japanese customs such as bowing instead of handshakes, washing hands often, using masks, not kissing in public, and taking shoes off at home may be helping to deter the community spread of the virus. But the fear of the stigma of being identified as sick continues to spread despite all efforts, and may be what is really plaguing the country. A society cannot be healthy unless it is free from fear. The Japanese people know this. They wish they did not have to be worried about being judged or the lack of compassion. Dreadful as it is, this pandemic can be an excellent opportunity to rid ourselves of this embedded habit of discriminating against those who are different. Anyone can get sick. All of us can be kinder. Fumiko Sasaki, PhD, teaches Asian politics-related courses at Columbia University graduate schools. She is the author of Nationalism, Political Realism and Democracy in Japan and earned her PhD from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, where she taught East Asian Security