Has Japan cracked coronavirus?

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. What’s more, government intervention in everyday life has been minimal, to the point of imperceptibility. There have currently been 900 reported cases and around 50 deaths in Japan, which in a country of 126 million, close to China, and with densely-packed cities and a high proportion of elderly people is remarkable.