Opinion | For Japanese, stigma of the sick is a much greater fear than the coronavirus itself

Those suspected of having Covid-19 are shunned and harassed, prompting the authorities to consider criminal prosecutions as people are discouraged from getting tested and companies hide infections for fear of losing business

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A family stands next to a sign in Tokyo on March 23. Anyone can get sick but everyone can be kinder. Photo: AFP

Published: 9:30am, 29 Apr 2020Updated: 9:55am, 29 Apr 2020

The Covid-19 pandemic has been spreading fear worldwide: fear of being infected and, in the worst case, dying; fear of losing loved ones; fear of being laid off or devastated financially, and; fear of being isolated for a long time. Wherever you are in the world, this pandemic evokes these fears.

Japan is no exception. Although my home country has so far escaped having a massive number infected and killed by the disease, people have been living with these fears since the first infection was detected in mid-January. And yet, for Japan and the Japanese, there is an additional, more insidious dread: the stigmatising and harassment of the sick.

The greatest fear for people in Japan is being stigmatised as infected or suspected of being infected. “I will kill you.” “You walking bacteria!” “Commit suicide!” These are just a few examples of the invective poured through social media on those infected or thought to be, in Toyama city.

Concerned that such threats and harassment of the sick are discouraging individuals from taking coronavirus tests, Toyama’s prefectural police have suggested prosecuting such instances.

Koriyama Women’s high school, whose connected college had a coronavirus-infected faculty member, asked its students not to wear the school uniform because they, though perfectly healthy, had started becoming the targets of nasty words and public abuse. Family members of healthy college employees were shunned in certain public activities.

A Diamond Princess passenger from Osaka twice tested negative for the virus, to his great relief. But, according to Tokyo Shimbun, one of Japan’s leading daily newspapers, when he returned home after being allowed off the troubled cruise ship, he found a rumour had spread that he was carrying the disease and should be shunned. The gym he was a member of refused him entry and his healthy wife’s doctor refused to see her for a check-up.