Philip Patrick

A Japanese banker once told me that his company had opened an expensive showcase office block in the centre of Tokyo. The building had a rare employee-friendly additional space and large balconies on the upper floors, where staff could relax and enjoy the views. Despite this apparent sensitivity to their employees, in every other way the bank was a typical Japanese firm, expecting staff to work punishingly long hours in a highly-pressured environment. After a few months, it became clear the balconies might not have been such a good idea after all. Four people jumped to their deaths.

It’s not often that Japanese affairs get a mention in the EU, still less a condemnatory one. But that’s what happened last week when the EU petitions committee unanimously passed a motion censoring the Japanese government for failure to conform to international norms, and comply with international law, over the question of parental child abduction. The issue, provoked by a history of cases where Japanese nationals (nearly always the mother) remove their children and subsequently deny access to their estranged foreign national father, has long been festering. It has been raised by the French and Italian presidents, and the British ambassador in the recent past, though with few tangible results.

I experienced a novel, if fleeting, sensation last week when I was struck with a powerful urge to vote for Japanese PM Shinzo Abe in the next election, expected within the next 18 months. This warm glow was sparked by Abe’s decision to give every adult resident of Japan a one-off corona ‘compensation’ payment of 100,000 yen (£720). All we have to do to get the money is fill in a form and send it off. However, the document is curious as it contains an option to refuse the handout if you don’t want it. As confusingly arranged as one of those ‘tick this box if you don’t mind us sharing your details, etc, etc.’ options at the bottom of sign-up forms, it is genuinely easy to make an expensive mistake.

Japan’s Covid ‘State of Emergency’ is now officially over. Tokyo, the last of Japan’s 47 prefectures to be officially released from restrictions, was declared safe(ish) on Monday, meaning its cautious three-step programme of reopening all commercial premises and entertainment venues can begin. The war over Corona may have been won here, but with a host of competing theories and interested parties hoping to claim credit, the battle to decide how it happened is just beginning. Japan’s official death toll from Covid-19 has not yet reached 1,000. This is in a country of 126 million people with densely packed cities, where people live a cheek-by-jowl existence on public transport, in compact offices, snug bars and restaurants, and tiny living spaces.

There has certainly been no shortage of praise for the NHS over recent weeks, and the speed at which the service has moved to meet the coronavirus threat has undoubtedly been impressive. But it is always worth looking abroad to see how the NHS could improve. And Japan's own version offers a useful model. I had my first real experience of the Japanese health care system last year when I fell down a concrete staircase at my workplace. I was treated at one of Tokyo’s most prestigious hospitals (the one prime minister Shinzo Abe uses, apparently). The treatment I received was quick and efficient, if a little impersonal.

I’ll never forget an unusually frank conversation I once had with a Japanese acquaintance (let’s call him ‘Yoshi’). He was explaining how his marriage had failed, after only a few weeks: ‘I never had time to myself. Whenever I got home, she was always there.’ He stressed the words ‘always’ and ‘there’, drawing them out with a sad, weary, frustration. I remember wondering what exactly he’d been expecting, but it seemed rude to ask.

Soon after I began living in central Tokyo I got an unexpected visitor to my apartment – a police officer. He just turned up one day, asked some routine questions, made a few notes, and then left. Slightly alarmed by this – (was it just me? am I on some kind of watch list?), I mentioned the visit to a Japanese colleague, who put my mind at rest: ‘Oh, that’s just regular police work. They do that sometimes. They’re just checking that you’re OK.’ ‘Checking that I’m OK’? Is that what police are supposed to do? This was news to me.

The Japanese government has announced a state of emergency for Tokyo, Osaka and five other prefectures in response to escalating numbers of coronavirus cases. It comes after prolonged pressure was exerted by politicians, health care professionals and outspoken governor of Tokyo Yuriko Koike. The measures are intended to last a month and come with a £44bn (6 trillion yen) compensation package to help affected businesses. This was the first such announcement in the history of Japan. A ‘State of Emergency’ sounds dramatic, but it actually has few practical implications for citizens.

One of the first things you need to learn abut Japan is the concept of honne and tatemae. ‘Hone’ refers to one’s true feelings, and ‘tatemae’ is what one says in public. It doesn’t take very long to learn that the two are very rarely aligned. In a bizarre time warp moment the official Olympic countdown clock that stands outside Tokyo station was reset on Monday (it reads: 478 days to Tokyo 2020(?)). It will no doubt soon be reported that ‘the people of Tokyo’ have been devastated by the postponement, that they had, as one, been passionately enthusiastic about the event, eagerly anticipating the chance to welcome the world for a fortnight of history-making sporting excellence.

I got back to Tokyo on Friday morning having hastily rescheduled my flight from Britain to avoid new restrictions for entering Japan. When I landed, it was all quite normal: I wasn’t pounced on by men in hazmat suits at Haneda airport and forced into isolation. I wasn’t interrogated on my recent whereabouts, or even given extra forms to fill out. And it turns out that even if I had flown a few days as planned, all that the new restrictions amounted to was a ‘request’ (issued with extreme politeness no doubt) to self-isolate in your own apartment. Yet despite this relatively laid-back approach, Japan must be one of the best places in the developed world to be at the moment, as the impact of the coronavirus appears extraordinarily mild.

It is fair to say that preparations for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics have not being going to plan. In fact, the whole project has been beset by problems and scandals right from the start. The initial award of the games to Tokyo was controversial, with Japan Olympic committee chairman Tsunekazu Takeda forced to step down over corruption allegations connected to the bid. Then there’s the inflated budget, currently an eye-watering £9.8bn, which has led to drastic last-minute cost cutting. Concerns about the sweltering summer weather have also led to the banishing of the marathon to the inconvenient northern island of Hokkaido. Now to top it all off, or possibly finish it all off, we have the coronavirus.

Ant and Dec have done most things in their long careers in light entertainment. But the versatile duo broke new ground last week when they infringed on international diplomacy by wearing Japanese Rising Sun flags on their headbands in a skit with singer Anne-Marie. The use of allegedly offensive WW2 era imagery forced programme makers to edit the sequence for future broadcast. ITV and Anne-Marie were obliged to make hasty apologies. But is the Rising Sun really offensive? And is anyone really offended? The flag is of ancient origin, but it has been associated with the Japanese military since 1870, it is still the emblem of the Self Defense Force (as close as modern Japan gets to an army).

Most British people who watched Prince Andrew’s cringeworthy interview with Emily Maitlis this month will have done so with a certain amount of disbelief. But for Japanese observers, the spectacle of a crown prince being asked awkward questions about his private life by a forensic interviewer would have been totally incomprehensible. The Japanese royal family doesn’t really do big royal scandals. It's not because embarrassments never occur, or that individual members aren’t prone to all the usual human failings, it’s just that the institution as a whole is much better protected, the media far more carefully regulated, and the public has significantly less appetite for juicy tidbits of royal gossip.

Whenever I see pictures of Donald Trump and Shinzo Abe together I hear the theme music from the Neil Simon comedy The Odd Couple. For Trump and Abe are indeed the Felix and Oscar of global politics, a gently comic double act with starkly different but oddly complimentary personalities and all the appearance of a twilight years bromance. The pair met soon after Trump’s inauguration when Abe rushed stateside to be the first foreign leader to pay his respects to the new president. Since then the relationship has blossomed, and they’ve met frequently, and conversed on some 40 separate occasions. There have been some choice comic moments along the way.