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KYODO

Japan’s economy nearly halted its down-ward trend as it began to reopen following the complete lifting of a nationwide state of emergency over the coronavirus pandemic, the government said in its monthly eco-nomic report for June released Friday.

The government, which said the economy was “worsening rapidly” in its May report, revised its monthly assessment upward for the first time since January 2018.

“The Japanese economy is still in an extremely severe situation due to the novel coronavirus, but it almost stopped dete-riorating,” the Cabinet Office said, citing improving private consumption in line with the reopening of economic activities across the country.

The upward revision in consumer spend-ing assessment was also the first since Janu-ary 2018.

In May, the government said that private consumption was “decreasing rapidly,” with many people refraining from going out for nonessential reasons under the govern-ment’s stay-at-home request.

The government had described the coun-try’s economy as recovering moderately since January 2018 but downgraded its view in March as the pandemic began taking its toll.

Out of 11 main components of the assess-ment, the government revised upward its view of private consumption and corporate judgments of business conditions.

Japan fully lifted on May 25 the nation-wide state of emergency first declared in sev-eral densely populated prefectures in early April, calling for voluntary restrictions on social and economic activities.

Effective Friday, restrictions on travel across prefectures were also called off.

But with consumption recovering only slowly and businesses still facing a long road to full recovery, the government maintained its cautious view on corporate capital spend-ing, exports, production and employment, among others.

“The current economic condition is far from what we can describe by using the word ‘recovery’ and its direction is still downward, but we are no longer seeing a situation where the economy is expected to continue worsening,” a government official told reporters.

Economy nearly halts downward trajectory

Restrictions on interprefectural movement lifted

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KYODO

Japan lifted its final restrictions on interpre-fecture travel on Friday, as the government said it believes the spread of the novel coro-navirus has been kept in check.

Long-distance passengers started return-ing to railway stations and airports while a number of entertainment venues across the country reopened.

Although the government lifted the nationwide state of emergency in late May, people had been advised to avoid all nones-sential travel to and from Tokyo and its sur-rounding prefectures of Chiba, Kanagawa and Saitama, as well as Hokkaido.

With travel restrictions already lifted elsewhere, Friday’s opening up of these prefectures paves the way for a recovery in domestic tourism as the government seeks to revitalize the struggling sector.

At Tokyo Station, many passengers lined up on shinkansen platforms that had been deserted in recent weeks.

“I appreciate that the travel advisories have been lifted,” said Takahiro Okamoto, a 33-year-old resident of Chiba, as he prepared to travel with his family to Osaka, where his wife is due to give birth.

“As (my wife) has been requested by her hospital to stay home for two weeks before admission, we still need to be careful,” he said.

Station workers using alcohol-based disin-fectant could be seen wiping down sections of automated gates where passengers insert tickets or place smart cards.

“I hope passengers will be able to use (the station) with peace of mind as we carry out frequent disinfection,” said Yas-uhiro Sato, a Central Japan Railway Co. employee.

Tokyo has the largest number of con-firmed coronavirus cases among the coun-try’s 47 prefectures, and close economic links with its neighboring districts, while Hokkaido was recently hit by a fresh wave of infections.

For all departing domestic and interna-tional flights, All Nippon Airways Co. has started splitting passengers into six groups and inviting those seated at the rear of the aircraft to board first. At Tokyo’s Haneda Air-port, ANA ground staff wearing face shields asked passengers to keep their distance from each other.

“I think airline companies have responded appropriately,” Teruo Anase, a 71-year-old from Hokkaido, said before boarding a flight to Sapporo.

Under the state of emergency, declared ahead of the Golden Week holidays between

late April and early May, the government had asked people to refrain from cross-ing all prefectural borders.

It has tried to strike a balance between expanding economic activity and adopting stronger precaution-ary measures, while

health experts have warned Japan could see a second wave of infections if people let their guard down.

The number of people now allowed at events such as concerts has been raised to 1,000, from 100 for indoor venues and from 200 for outdoor sites.

However, indoor venues are allowed to fill only half their capacity, while those out-doors have been asked to ensure sufficient distancing.

Professional sports have been allowed to resume — without spectators — with this year’s Nippon Professional Baseball sea-son starting Friday, while business closure requests for establishments such as night-clubs have also been lifted.

Meanwhile, Tokyo lifted all restrictions on businesses on Friday amid signs that the coronavirus pandemic is waning in the Japa-nese capital, although concerns remain over a potential second wave of infections.

Freedom of travel returns to the nation

Experts have warned Japan could see a second wave of infections if people let their guard down. MAGDALENA OSUMI

STAFF WRITER

Annamaria, a 27-year-old Slovakian stu-dent of environmental engineering at one of Japan’s top universities, worries she may not be able to submit her thesis before the dead-line if she doesn’t return to Japan by Septem-ber. When she left Japan on March 3 to visit her family during her spring break, Slovakia had no reported COVID-19 infections and Japan had not yet seen a major coronavirus outbreak, either.

What stops her from traveling back to Tokyo is a strict coronavirus-induced entry ban Japan has imposed on travelers from 111 countries and regions, which applies to all foreign residents with valid student visas.

The restriction, which has been met with strong criticism from Japan’s international community, has left many international students stranded abroad, in financial limbo and in fear of an uncertain future.

The measure targeting only foreign nationals, which was introduced to curb the

spread of the coronavirus on April 3 and sub-sequently updated through May 27, poses a challenge for colleges and universities with high acceptance rates of international stu-dents, and they are at risk of losing student admissions once the coronavirus subsides.

In the Slovakian’s case, a second-year stu-dent in Tokyo’s Ochanomizu University’s master’s program who was considering pursuing a doctoral degree in Japan, a leave of absence from school could jeopardize her plans. She worries the duration of her scholarship may not be renewed for the two-year-period required for graduation. She also worries that if she misses her deadline for submitting her thesis, she may need to return the full scholarship grant to her sponsor. The woman requested not to use her last name due to privacy concerns.

“I never would have imagined (students) could be treated like this ... international stu-dents and researchers are put in the same category as tourists,” she lamented.

Students overlookedThe ban has left several dozen undergrad-uate and graduate students at one of the country’s most elite private universities, Keio University in Tokyo, unable to return to Japan and forced 20 other students to take a leave of absence. The university’s records

for May also indicate a loss of some 230 non-regular students compared with figures in previous years.

Immigration authorities have said they are allowing in some foreign nationals who left before the imposition of the entry ban. In theory, foreign nationals who left before the country they were visiting was put on Japan’s re-entry ban list may be exempted from the restriction if they left the country on humanitarian grounds, for instance to attend the funeral of a deceased relative, regardless of their visa status.

In practice, however, humanitarian grounds are not an option for students seek-ing such an exemption. According to the Immigration Services Agency, a student’s plea may be rejected. An official from the agency’s section overseeing re-entry proce-dures said that a wish to continue studies in Japan is not viewed as a circumstance of a humanitarian nature that would allow those stuck abroad amid the pandemic to return to their Japanese homes.

The central government has announced that international students will be allowed to return during the second stage of relaxed entry restrictions, following business trav-elers. The planned move is largely triggered by economic concerns, given that many

Lack of exemption affects scholarships and admissions

Travel ban hits foreign studentsPeople wait to board a shinkansen at Tokyo Station on Friday. Japan lifted its final restrictions on interprefecture travel the same day. KYODO

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We will be living with the virus well into ’21AAnalysis

MICHELLE CORTEZBLOOMBERG

The virus is winning. That much is certain more than six months into a shape-shift-ing pandemic that’s killed 450,000 people worldwide, is gaining ground globally and has disrupted lives from Wuhan to Sao Paulo.

While promising, fast-moving vaccine projects are underway in China, Europe and the U.S., only the most optimistic expect an effective shot to be ready for global distribu-tion this year.

If, as most experts believe, an effective vac-cine won’t be ready until well into 2021, we’ll all be coexisting with the coronavirus for the next year or longer without a magic bullet. And this next phase of the crisis may require us to reset our expectations and awareness and change our behavior, according to pub-lic-health professionals.

In their view, success isn’t defined as returning to life as it was in 2019. Rather, it’s about buying time and summoning the stay-ing power and policy flexibility to limit the

destructive capacity of an expanding pan-demic, which may result in global deaths of more than 1 million according to one esti-mate, until there are medical tools to effec-tively treat and immunize against the virus.

“People are fatigued. They mistakenly feel that things were going away,” said Cam-eron Wolfe, an infectious-disease doctor and associate professor of medicine at Duke University.

“We’re going to have to figure out a way to live with this.”

Complicating matters, the perceived threat varies from neighborhood to neighborhood, let alone country to country. Much depends on the severity of local outbreaks and the effectiveness of testing, contact tracing, social distancing, hospital systems and public-health messaging that is free of political shading.

Leaders such as U.S. President Donald Trump, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson or Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro have seen their poll numbers crumble at least in part because of high infection rates and deaths from COVID-19, the disease spawned by the virus. In many instances, messages from the top have seemed to conflict with the advice of experts, or drowned out the guidance of government agencies. That has created confusion and mistrust and invited people to view public-health information through a partisan lens.

Not all the news is grim. In the first half of the year, governments worldwide resorted to emergency measures like forced busi-ness closures, stay-at-home rules and bans

If, as most experts believe, an effective vaccine won’t be ready until well into 2021, we’ll all be coexisting with the coronavirus for the next year or longer. AP

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