Japan’s Never-Ending Germophobia

March 23, 2025 by Bruce W. Davidson

Some in the independent Internet news media world seem to have the misconception that most Japanese people now reject the Covid narrative of the last five years. The truth is the opposite. Japan’s leaders, the news media, and the public still mostly adhere to the Covid lies that large numbers of people in the rest of the world now admit were false.

For example, consider the following article and its headline from September 2, 2024: “Japan Warns COVID Vaccines Causing Global Population Collapse.” The article gives the impression that Japan as a whole is warning the world. Unfortunately, such is not the case. Nor is the Japanese news media as a whole warning the population about the Covid injections, as the article implies in claiming that “Japanese media begins to approach the issue with honesty…”

On the contrary, the vast majority of mainstream Japanese news stories continue to depict opposition to Covid vaccines as irrational fear. On October 7, 2024, The Japan Times ran an article titled “Experts move to allay replicon Covid shots fears in Japan amid backlash,” which unsurprisingly depicted well-founded anxiety as irrational fear that goes against enlightened “expert opinion.”

Of course, they neglected to mention Japanese experts and researchers who hold the opposite opinion about mRNA injections – especially about the newer, self-replicating variety. Moreover, they ignore the existing mountain of evidence that mRNA injections in general are unsafe and ineffective. Instead, they praise the self-replicating shots as superior to the older shots, which “can only keep infection or development of symptoms at bay for a few months.”

Strangely enough, that last admission about effectiveness for only “a few months” obviously contradicts a lot of previous government/news media messaging about the effectiveness of the older mRNA shots. What a pathetic “vaccine!” And they want us to believe in the newer version?

Whenever the mainstream news media in Japan (especially the government-funded NHK) reports anything related to Covid injections, it is almost always to promote the shots and allay justifiable fears. They often use the tactic of showing large percentages of the population as Covid injection recipients, since the consensus-oriented Japanese dislike being in the minority.

Regrettably, in general the disease hysteria continues, though somewhat dampened down compared to the days of lockdowns, mass injections, and mandatory masking. Nor is there any widespread rethinking about that recent period of harsh measures. Instead, mainstream news commentators simply describe Japan’s current inflation and economic woes as part of koronaka, meaning “disasters caused by Covid.” But diseases do not infect economies.

During one popular morning news program from one of our local Sapporo stations, a station executive praised Hokkaido governor Suzuki for his handling of the Covid “crisis.” On another occasion recently, the four main announcers on that program asked one another if they would get the most recent Covid booster. Three said “yes,” but one (bless her) said that she would not because of side effects she experienced the last time she got a shot. Fortunately, she did not get fired for that admission.

The general belief among most news media people seems to be that Japan’s government-led Covid policies were a great success, though in reality, they were a disaster. The best that can be said is that the government did not officially force people to get injected and did not resort to putting the “infected” (testing positive on the PCR) and non-compliant in internment camps (as happened in Australia), so things were probably better here than elsewhere.

However, as Guy Gin has often pointed out, the Japanese government does not need heavy-handed decrees, given the immense power of peer pressure and conformity in Japan. They let companies, schools, and other institutions prod the herd into getting injected, masking, and closing their shops. In the words of Dave Barry, “it would be easier to get the entire population of Tokyo to wear matching outfits than to get any two randomly selected Americans to agree on pizza toppings.”

Over two full years have passed since the Japanese government lifted its soft-power masking mandates, but masks are still everywhere in my own city, Sapporo. Restaurant and convenience store staff usually wear them, though some unmasked people can be spotted among them. Government officials who interact with the public always wear them (Until this year they were also behind clear plastic sheets). In public, at least half of the people out and about continue to wear masks, even outdoors. Larger numbers of the elderly do.

Doctors on TV shows can still be seen recommending mask-wearing, though plenty of evidence has now accumulated that masks are ineffective and harmful.

Here in Sapporo, every hospital that I am familiar with requires masks for everyone on the premises. At some, doctors and nurses still wear face shields in addition to masks. This is probably not only to prevent Covid transmission but also to prevent infection by other diseases, such as measles, SRV, and the flu.

Not long ago I had to help admit a nauseated person to one such hospital, and I was afraid they would force her to wear a mask, leading to vomiting in the mask (and choking). Thankfully, they made an exception.

The simple reason for all this is that Japanese people generally believe their government, doctors, and mainstream news sources. In contrast to the vast majority of Americans, who no longer trust the mainstream news media, most in Japan continue to believe the legacy media.

Those news outlets are continually fear-mongering about Covid and other diseases like the measles, SRV, and “pdm 09” (a reappearing strain from the exaggerated swine flu outbreak of 2009 – pdm stands for “pandemic”). Much of it is second-hand, dubious content, uncritically lifted from sources like CNN and the New York Times.

However, skeptics and medical dissidents in Japan continue to speak out against the news media/government disease narratives. One book attracting attention is We Don’t Want to Sell It (Watashitachi wa Uritaku Nai”), published in September 2024 anonymously by employees of Meiji Seika Pharma.

In the book, the company employees declare their strong aversion to selling their own company’s product – the replicon mRNA vaccine. They also mention that one of their colleagues passed away immediately after getting a standard mRNA injection. The book explains many of the serious problems related to the mRNA shots.

A number of Japanese medical researchers continue to publish studies undermining confidence in the mRNA injections. In one involving small and medium-sized businesses, the authors noted “a higher incidence of COVID-19 infection among vaccinated individuals, escalating with the number of vaccine doses received.”

In another study, researchers found an apparent connection between the Covid mRNA injections and increases in certain types of cancer deaths in Japan, confirming observations and predictions by cancer specialists such as Professor Angus Dalgleish. Such findings have been widely reported outside Japan, perhaps leading to the mistaken impression abroad that Japan in general was turning against the mainstream Covid narrative.

Regrettably, as independent journalist Masako Ganaha has observed, both conservatives and left-leaning people in Japan usually fail to realize the damage being done here as a result of the Covid measures (and other things) promoted by globalist entities. However, Japanese Covid dissidents are still keeping up their heroic struggle to make the truth known. Still more are learning from them, thanks to greater freedom of speech worldwide.

Bruce Davidson is professor of humanities at Hokusei Gakuen University in Sapporo, Japan.