TOKYO, March 29, 2020—Japan is asking for a second wave of soft lockdown to its people, asking them to voluntarily avoid gatherings, visits to closed spaces, and observe social-distancing to prevent further spiking of coronavirus infections. Surreptitiously, there is one segment that remains intact from the lockdown, and it relates to Kim Jong-un’s North Korea.
What has become a daily televised briefing recently, prime minister Shinzo Abe March 28 said reiterated that people should take extra precautions against the pandemic at the current crucial time. Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike March 26 asked the city’s 11 million residents to stay away from enclosed, crowded places and avoid close contact with each other until-April 12, and that the March 28-29 weekend was a test for whether her request would help reduce infection spikes. Tokyo earlier asked its residents to voluntarily observe those steps but in a vague way.
Neither Abe or Koike did not offer details of what kind of places were subject to the voluntary visit restraint. A Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare commission on infectious diseases earlier, however, identified them as ‘live houses, sports gyms, meal-serving river boats, buffets, mahjong parlors, enclosed tents, karaoke rooms, etc.’ So the two politicians did not need to cite examples.
So, from March 27 through March 29, Tokyo’s streets spanning business district of Marunouchi to a major entertainment area of Shinjuku were sparsely populated, a far cry from a month ago when they were flooded shoulder-to-shoulder with tourists from the world over and locals. There were no lines in front of a famous tempura restaurant in Asakusa, and inside a luxury hotel bar, clients were few. The soft lockdown was observed in earnest, so it looked.
But, but! There seemed to be no change at many Pachinko pinball game parlors: People were seen queuing to wait the 10:00 a.m. opening times, and when the doors opened at 10:00, the people rushed into the parlor, looking for their favor machines that are lined barely 60 feet apart.
The riddle that the Pachinko industry was excluded from the soft lockdown reg is easy to solve: Many retired cops are hired by pachinko machine makers and and parlors as ‘advisors.’ Plus the industry is one of key foreign exchange earning operations run by North Korea.
On March 29 morning, North Korea launched missiles into the Sea of Japan, probably a warning to Abe and a knell to the industry to wire money to Pyongyang where more than 100 North Korean soldiers reportedly died of coronavirus and far more civilians.
–Toshio Aritake