The mask will not be compulsory in Japanese nurseries. At the beginning of February, the government’s commission of experts on the coronavirus decided: the little ones must wear it ” when it’s possible “, but there was no question of responding to the call of the Minister of Health, Shigeyuki Goto, who wanted to impose it on children over two years old. Japan is facing a sixth wave of Covid-19 bringing contamination to unprecedented levels and the main populations affected in recent weeks have been children and the elderly. Hence the debates around the mask for toddlers. They were following the recommendations for the most vulnerable people to wear two masks on top of each other. A practice, which was rather followed.
These discussions confirm the importance of the mask in the prevention of Covid-19 in Japan, as in South Korea, China or Taiwan, countries in East Asia where the assessments of the pandemic remain much lower than those of the European or American nations: Japan deplored “only” 20,000 deaths from Covid-19, South Korea less than 7,000, when China would not have exceeded 5,000 and Taiwan 900.
Combined with compliance with basic hygiene rules and effective tracing of contamination routes, the mask has been strongly recommended in Japan since the start of the pandemic and imposed in South Korea, Taiwan and China. After the shortages of the first months, its wearing became widespread and the habit remained. In the fall of 2021, when the number of daily contaminations did not exceed a few dozen per day in Japan and no restrictive measures were in place, everyone continued to wear them in transport as in the streets, at the office or in classrooms.
Against the seasonal flu
This adoption, which has never been debated, is due to an ancient presence of the mask in the daily lives of populations. Its use in East Asia would have started in the second half of the 19th century.and century with the importation of “Jeffreys respirators” – a model of mask developed by the British surgeon Julius Jeffreys (1800-1877) – promoted against respiratory diseases and temperature changes, responsible for colds.
The first major campaign encouraging the population to wear the mask, however, dates from the Spanish flu, the first known Japanese victims of which were sumo wrestlers on tour in 1918 in Taiwan, then a Japanese colony (between 1894 and 1945). The disease was therefore initially called the “sumo cold”. Inspired by the obligation imposed by the city hall of San Francisco to “wearing the gauze mask as a means of preventing the spread of the flu”, Japan advised as early as February 1919 to do the same. It also did so in its Taiwanese and Korean colonies. Afterwards, “Like their colonizer, Koreans began to wear seasonal flu and dust masks,” explains Hyun Jaehwan, historian of science at the University of Busan (South Korea), on the site “The Mask-Arrayed”, of the German Max-Planck Institute.
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