On the 25th of May, after little over a month and a half since a state of emergency was declared, the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has announced the end of his state of emergency declaration.

The relative success of Japan is extremely surprising, considering the lack of stringent lockdown measures as seen in other countries, yet only resulting in 851 deaths. The country reported 16,628 confirmed cases of the coronavirus as of Monday, and Tokyo, the 14 million strong capital city, was the hardest-hit part of the country. On Monday, however, only eight new infections were reported in Tokyo.

Japan’s measures never resulted in a total lockdown, instead barring travellers who had visited many hard-hit countries, as well as urging citizens to respect social-distancing measures. Without a vaccine, the best method of prevention is indeed distancing, and the success of the country may have been down to how well its people adhered to them. Restaurants and shops were required to close earlier than normal, and karaoke bars, live music venues as well as gyms were shuttered and will remain closed in the coming weeks, despite the national emergency being over. Abe has pointed out that whilst they may have stemmed the virus, it was still in Japan and they hadn’t totally defeated it yet.

Public health officials in Japan have warned the population to wear masks in public and continue to work from home if possible. They also advocated a ‘new lifestyle’ to limit the extent of infections, such as staying clear of crowded places, washing hands frequently, avoiding public transport at rush hour and not sitting side-by-side when eating meals. It appears as though this lifestyle has paid off, but it is exceedingly similar to that advocated by Western nations who aren’t doing nearly as well as Japan. The likelihood remains that Japanese citizens may have adhered to them far better than any other nation, thus not required a complete lockdown.

Mikihito Tanaka, a professor at Waseda University specialising in science communication, and a member on the novel coronavirus told Bloomberg that “even experts don’t know the reason” for Japanese success. Despite this, Abe has come under significant criticism for not instigating more hard-core lockdown measures, and would have been the subject of public uproar had the measures not been so successful. Nonetheless, Japan is a success story by its low death toll alone, and will hopefully continue to remain this way for the foreseeable future.