I remember clearly where I was when I first realized that the coronavirus might change my life. On 10th February 2020 I had just started what I thought would be a routine business trip to Tokyo. News sources there were covering the outbreak of a highly infectious virus on a cruise ship quarantined off the coast of Japan. Friends in Tokyo were nervous, fearful that the mysterious virus we had been hearing about had spread beyond China. When I boarded my flight from Haneda four days later I was handed a mask for the ten-hour flight. On landing in London and making my way to Paris for a few days vacation, no one there seemed concerned, but I had been in Asia and I knew what was coming.

This week, more than two and a half years later, I returned to Tokyo. Getting into Japan these days is harder than it was. Visas are now required in advance and visitor numbers are controlled. Landing in Haneda I was struck by the stringent document checks. Once out of the airport, I stayed where I always stayed in the past (Ebisu), explored the neighborhoods I have grown to love (Hiroo, Daikanyama, and Nakmeguro), and had a week of meetings in familiar places. On the surface things looked much the same. For sure I saw a few shuttered storefronts in fancy Daikanyama, more mask-wearing on the streets, and routine temperature checks in official buildings, but first impressions seemed to suggest “business as usual”.

Now I’m not so sure. The Japanese seem not to have reached yet that point of collective complacency about the virus that I see in parts of the West or attained that collective determination to consign it to the past. Many are still unwilling to have face-to-face business meetings, especially with foreigners. Others will permit meetings in large, well ventilated offices, but decline (politely, of course) the lunches and dinners that in earlier times they would have been happy to have. There is a palpable nervousness. This is perhaps surprising given the relatively low mortality rate from Covid-19 in Japan compared to other countries. (Japan has recorded 34 deaths per 100,000 of population, far lower than the 318 deaths in the US or 304 in the UK). Maybe all that nervousness has provoked cautiousness that has saved lives? Or maybe the Japanese just believe in collective responsibility, an idea the West seems to think quaint and old-fashioned.

An exhibition I saw at The TOP Museum during my short visit – The Illumination of Life by Death: Memento Mori and Photography – offered a clue to what might being going on. Beautiful pictures taken by both Japanese masters (Araki, Kojima, and Tomatsu) and Western greats (such as Capa, Atget, and Arbus) capture, sometimes directly and sometimes obliquely, the imminence of death in life. The program notes remind visitors of other pandemics throughout history and how the tragedies and privations brought by the coronavirus serve to remind today’s world of something that was all too immediate for our ancestors, the briefness of life and the nearness, suddenness, and finality of death.