Service without a smile: Japanese businesses to continue with mask mania

In a recent study, 4.6% and 6.7% of healthcare workers who wore surgical and N95 masks suffered headaches. In contrast, about 99% of companies in Japan’s service sector seem to be suffering headaches from the government’s announcement that masking should become an individual’s decision to coincide with Covid finally being downgraded on 8th May. The general mood is summed up by the hotelier below.

I want [the government] to set mask rules, not leave it to individual judgment.

The lady above and other worried business operators want the government to provide clear rules in order to prevent trouble and confusion. In other words, they’re mainly concerned about complaining Covidians, not Covid infections. Unfortunately for them, if customers don’t want to mask up, there’s nothing they can legally do about it since masking is optional even now. The only difference will be that businesses won’t have the government’s support to request that customers mask up.

On the other hand, whether staff will unmask is a different issue. And that decision is effectively made by the customer.

Service sector, where customer “psychology” is top priority, struggles with mask policy.

The “psychology” here is explained in the below headline.

75% of elderly anxious about relaxing mask rules.

In the Kyodo survey, 75% of over 60s said they were “anxious” or “somewhat anxious” about mask requests being relaxed. This seems like a legitimate result considering that 70% of over 65s have had the mouse-tested Omicron booster, strong evidence of belief in the Covid narrative. Their anxiety is shared by 65.2% of respondents aged 40-59 and 48.3% of those under 40.

Japanese businesses will take note of such results and act accordingly. Service sector companies that want to show they prioritise customers’ “safety and piece of mind” won’t allow customer-facing staff to unmask because it would suggest the opposite. All company representatives interviewed for the Jiji article above assume that their staff will keep masking as long as their customers do, and not one of them mentions the word “infection”. Masks have firmly become reputation preservation measures. The majority of Japanese negatively view unmasked people as weirdos and potential troublemakers, and that won’t change overnight.

Majority masking in Japan has become self-reinforcing. Much of the anxiety felt by respondents to the Kyodo survey has been generated by people walking around with signs of danger strapped to their faces for the last 3 years. But the widespread belief in mask effectiveness means that many risk-averse Japanese are made more anxious by the thought of people unmasking. The obvious cure for this is for everyone to take off their masks so that worriers can see that their fears were unfounded. But that’s not going to happen, so we’re stuck waiting for the status quo to slowly change.

Although the government won’t change its unpopular decision to stop requesting 24/7 masking, it will provide information about situations in which masking is effective to help people decide when and where to mask up. Luckily for them, I’ve already put together all the info anyone could ever need. It’d also help people overcome their anxiety. But that’s one reason the government will never use any of it.

Why has Japan had so few Covid deaths (Part 3)? Was it masks? (Updated 30 January 2023)