Weekly Update: News on Japan & the Netherlands – Week 32, 2020

Japan has already agreed with Vietnam and Thailand to allow businesspeople to resume visits between the countries and has started accepting long-stay visa applications. Arrivals of those people in Japan are expected in August. For more information on re-entry, we refer to the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan.

Hotel and shop operators at popular tourist sites complained of confusion surrounding the campaign, which has seen a slew of changes since its formal announcement on 10 July, as well as concern about the spread of infections. The 1.35 trillion yen travel campaign was initially slated to begin in August but was brought forward to start ahead of the four-day long weekend from Thursday.

In the Hokkaido town of Urahoro, local residents have donated about 200 items to a public museum in response to a request in February. The items include a flier informing residents of the cancelation of a festival, coupons for takeout meals and cloth face masks distributed by the central government

“Our daily lives will be part of history. We’d like to collect as many items as possible before they are thrown away,” said Makoto Mochida, the 47-year-old curator at the town museum on the northernmost main island.

“When we look back on this era in the future, those materials will help us objectively examine it,” he said. In the western Japan city of Suita, a museum displays medical gowns and face shields to protect against the virus and a photo showing a long line of people at a drug store to purchase face masks.

“We would like to record what was happening (during the pandemic) and provide ways for future generations to learn about the current era,” said Kenji Saotome, the 46-year-old curator at Suita City Museum.

The National Diet Library in Tokyo archives virus-related online data of public offices. The Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum at Waseda University in Tokyo has been asking theaters and drama groups to donate leaflets and scripts of the plays that were canceled or suspended due to the pandemic.

Akihiro Morihara, a 54-year-old senior official at the Yamanashi Prefectural Museum, which also collects materials related to the pandemic, said, “If there had been records of the Spanish flu at the grassroots level, they might have provided a clue as to how to combat the current infection. Disasters and epidemics repeatedly occur, but people soon forget them. We would like to create opportunities to look back on the current era through exhibitions.”

Boeing has partnered with MHI in the defense arena since the 1950s. MHI produced under license the current Japan F-15J fleet of over 200 aircraft between 1980 and 2000, and will serve as prime contractor for the upgrade. Sojitz Corp, a trading company that works with Boeing’s team in Japan, will support this effort.

“Through this agreement, Boeing is honored to further our long-standing tradition of support for Japan’s Ministry of Defense, the Japan Air Self-Defense Force, and MHI,” said Boeing Japan President Will Shaffer. “These upgrades will deliver critical capability for national and collective self-defense, in which the F-15J plays a key role. At the same time, they will provide MHI and our partners in Japan’s aerospace defense industry with an opportunity to enhance their own extensive engineering capabilities.”

This DCS contract lays the foundation of the modernization program. MHI will develop the detailed modification plan for the jets and prepare the facilities and workforce for the induction and upgrade of up to 98 aircraft beginning in 2022.

The items include textiles, wood crafts, glassware, leather goods, metalwork, ceramics and washi paper products. The organization will launch online sales negotiations this month with 17 e-commerce buyers from such countries and regions as France, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the United States, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

After deals are reached, the Japanese products are expected to be sold via the e-commerce buyers’ websites and pop-up stores, according to JETRO. “This fiscal year, we’ve taken advantage of the coronavirus pandemic and set up the platform, which will connect producers across the country,” said Emi Teshima, director of the organization’s Digital Promotion Division and who is in charge of the project.

“We’ll support their overseas expansion in terms of management, sales and public relations,” she said. The Takumi project started last year to promote sophisticated Japanese products made with traditional techniques and in rich cultural contexts, with JETRO endorsing 260 products by 101 companies for the first year. All of them had to negotiate with buyers face-to-face.

In fiscal 2019 that ended in March, a total of 133 business deals were expected to be struck between the producers and buyers. This year, around 180 crafts producers applied for the project and the 121 companies from 36 prefectures whose items fit the image of “Japan luxury” were selected, according to JETRO.

JETRO will also form a community of crafts makers on a social media platform so they can collaborate to develop new products and discuss countermeasures when mutual issues emerge.

The mask rule is only for people on the streets and in shops, and does not apply to catering facilities, museums, casinos, gyms, private homes, offices or sex work locations. The area may be expanded in the future, and the city said it will re-evaluate the effectiveness of the pilot program in three to four weeks. Shops in these areas will be given posters regarding the mask obligation to put up in their stores. During busy weekends, extra workers will be on the streets to remind people to wear masks and hand out free masks to those who do not have one.

In Rotterdam, the mask obligation applies to shopping areas in the city center, including Lijnbaan, Meent, Nieuwe Binnenwegplein and Coolsingel, at the markets in Delfshaven, Afrikaanderwijk, and Binnerotte, and the roofed shopping centers Alexandrium and Zuidplein. The measure applies from 6:00 in the morning to 22:00 daily. For the markets, the mask obligation only applies on market days. City officials will be handing out free non-medical masks at these locations on Wednesday.

The mask obligations do not apply to places like gyms, restaurants and museums, as national measures already apply in these places aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus. Both municipalities stressed that the mask obligation comes on top of – and not instead of – measures already in place, such as social distancing and the instruction to avoid crowds.

Last week, The Cabinet of the Netherlands already said not to make wearing masks in public a national obligation, but that locally, different rules could be implemented experimentally by the country’s 25 different regional security councils.

Ahmed Aboutaleb, mayor of Rotterdam and chairman of Veiligheidsregio Rotterdam-Rijnmond, is pleased with this experiment. “In my view, masks can increase the urgency in some places, in addition to the golden rule of keeping 1.5 meters apart, hygiene measures and enforcement. We are ready to start the experiment and hope it helps people to stay safe in the city and keep enough distance from each other.”

The holiday can also play a role, he says. “We had the impression that people got tested before they went on vacation to make sure they didn’t have it.”

However, De Gouw does not know the exact causes. “We regularly ask people about their willingness to get tested, but of the people who don’t call us, we can’t figure out why they don’t,” he says.

In the last two weeks, the daily number of detected infections rose steadily. Monday is the fifth consecutive day that more than three hundred people tested positive for the coronavirus.

The American accommodation booking site is one of the largest employers in Amsterdam. Around 6 thousand people work at the Booking.com head office and ten other offices in the Dutch capital. The spokesperson could not tell NOS how the layoffs would affect its Dutch workers.

Booking.com made use of the government’s NOW regulation and received 64.5 million euros in subsidy so it could continue to pay its workers in the Netherlands. The spokesperson told NOS that without this NOW regulation, the number of employees affected by this reorganization would be much higher.

But according to consumers’ association Concumentenbond, this only applies to bookings made before 16 March. ANVR CEO Frank Oostdam confirmed this to the Telegraaf. “This was not known to all our members, so an unknown number of vouchers for bookings made after mid-March are not guaranteed,” he said.

Figures from the Ministry of Economic Affairs showed that some 400 million euros of ‘covered’ ANVR vouchers have not yet been claimed, despite holidays being possible in most of Europe since June.