Japanese Citizens Research Articles

Modern pension and health insurance systems in Japan

The article substantiates the relevance of issues related to the functioning of social protection systems for the population of developed countries. The review and analysis of the modern pension system in Japan is made. The mechanism of recognition of Japanese citizens and foreign citizens residing in it as insured persons of a certain category and the mechanism of functioning of individual subsystems of the pension insurance system (in particular, basic pension, employee pension insurance, optional (additional) pension insurance system) are considered. The data on the absolute amounts and rates of insurance premiums, the formulas by which the monthly pension is calculated, and the conditions that must be met by insured persons to acquire the right to a pension (for old age, for disability, for the loss of a breadwinner) are given. The conditions for receiving and the amount of benefits for dependents and child benefits are indicated. The review and analysis of the modern health insurance system in Japan is made. The mechanism of functioning of individual subsystems of the pension insurance system (in particular, insurance at the place of work, insurance at the municipal level, insurance for persons aged 75 and over) is considered. The data on the absolute amounts and rates of insurance premiums, on the specifics of fi nancing the activities of public and private organizations, which, on the basis of the principles of non-commercial activity, provide medical services to the population of Japan are presented. The conditions for receiving and the amount of benefits for the birth of a child, for a funeral, for temporary disability are indicated. Attention is drawn to the distinctive features of the pension and health insurance systems in Japan. It is proposed to use the Japanese experience to reform the national systems of social protection of the population.

Policy borrowing of the Common European Framework of Reference for languages (CEFR) in Japan: an analysis of the interplay between global education trends and national policymaking

ABSTRACT This paper aims to show the complex overlapping and interaction with exogenous influences in the processes of national policymaking by analysing a case of policy borrowing in Japan. Specifically, it explores the political circumstances under which the Council of Europe Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) was introduced to foreign language education policy at the national government level in Japan. The results suggest that the CEFR was borrowed selectively as a practical solution to achieve prolonged educational and political agendas promoted by multiple actors such as academics, the Ministry of Education (MEXT), and a group of politicians and business associations. This study moreover shows that the CEFR borrowing occurred under manifold interplays between multiple global education trends and domestic needs for Japanese citizens to acquire a practical communicative command of English to strengthen their international economic competitiveness.

Japan's "Priests' Bars": "Bad Buddhism" or Hope for the Future?

For a telling example of allegedly “Bad Buddhisms” in the contemporary world, one need look no further than urban Japan and its numerous “Priests’ Bars” ( Bōzu bāzu ) that allow a heady interaction of Buddhism and alcohol. While listening, lecturing, and sometimes even mixing drinks, priests of various denominations are proprietors for a new type of upāya practice (or “skillful means”) for disseminating the dharma . They have the opportunity to encourage their clientele towards solving personal problems and perhaps even awakening as they violate the fifth Buddhist precept which warns monks of the dangers of intoxication. The priests in charge of these bars are well aware of the prohibition against alcohol, and yet, given a variety of social problems facing Japanese workers and citizens, feel compelled to experiment in delivering the teachings of their traditions. Though “bad” from the perspective of Buddhist practitioners outside Japan (as well as that of traditional Buddhist studies), these bars remain a constructive means for moving Japanese Buddhisms into the twenty-first century.

Zainichi Koreans Invited to Home Base: Building Ethnic Identity and Its Impact on the Development of Korean Baseball (1956–70)

Zainichi Koreans are a unique political product of the Korean Peninsula. They were taken to Japan under the Japanese occupation (1910–45) of Korea and stayed there without becoming naturalized Japanese citizens. Baseball was a mechanism for the children of Zainichi Koreans, who were oppressed on Japanese soil, to overcome the discrimination they were experiencing in their daily lives and assimilate into Japanese society. From 1956 to 1970, South Korean newspapers invited Zainichi Korean children playing baseball to their home country for regular national baseball exchanges. This event provided nourishment for the growth of Korean baseball and served as the only cultural bridge for Zainichi Korean children to experience and understand their motherland, which they had previously only imagined.

Determining Public Opinion of the COVID-19 Pandemic in South Korea and Japan: Social Network Mining on Twitter.

ObjectivesThis study analyzed the perceptions and emotions of Korean and Japanese citizens regarding coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). It examined the frequency of words used in Korean and Japanese tweets regarding COVID-19 and the corresponding changes in their interests.MethodsThis cross-sectional study analyzed Twitter posts (Tweets) from February 1, 2020 to April 30, 2020 to determine public opinion of the COVID-19 pandemic in Korea and Japan. We collected data from Twitter (https://twitter.com/), a major social media platform in Korea and Japan. Python 3.7 Library was used for data collection. Data analysis included KR-WordRank and frequency analyses in Korea and Japan, respectively. Heat diagrams, word clouds, and rank flowcharts were also used.ResultsOverall, 1,470,673 and 4,195,457 tweets were collected from Korea and Japan, respectively. The word trend in Korea and Japan was analyzed every 5 days. The word cloud analysis revealed “COVID-19”, “Shinchonji”, “Mask”, “Daegu”, and “Travel” as frequently used words in Korea. While in Japan, “COVID-19”, “Mask”, “Test”, “Impact”, and “China” were identified as high-frequency words. They were divided into four categories: social distancing, prevention, issue, and emotion for the rank flowcharts. Concerning emotion, “Overcome” and “Support” increased from February in Korea, while “Worry” and “Anxiety” decreased in Japan from April 1.ConclusionsAs a result of the trend, people’s interests in the economy were high in both countries, indicating their reservations on the economic down-turn. Therefore, focusing policies toward economic stability is essential. Although the interest in prevention increased since April in both countries, the general public’s relaxation regarding COVID-19 was also observed.

Impacts and implications of English as the corporate official language policy: A case in Japan

Abstract Increasing numbers of corporations are now operating across national borders as a result of globalization. The “language barrier” is the first and foremost challenge they encounter when starting a business in a foreign market, and many companies are trying to solve the problem by adopting a common corporate language. Using English as an official corporate language is the most common solution for those corporations. The present study explored the impacts of English as a corporate official language policy implemented at a company, a rapidly developed high profile IT Company with 20,000 employees, in Japan, a country often perceived to be relatively monolingual and monocultural. When I started studying the company, I first found that the company’s motive to use English as the official corporate language was different from other instances of corporate language policy making I had come across. In previous studies (e.g., Feely & Harzing 2003; Marschan-Piekkari, Welch, & Welch 1999), the companies implemented common corporate language to solve problems caused by language barriers between employees with diverse linguistic backgrounds. However, the company in this study implemented the corporate language policy to prepare for globalization and recruit talents globally. When the company introduced the English-only language policy, most of the employees of the company were Japanese. Therefore, at the time of implementing the language policy, there was no compelling reason for them to use English. The language policy did not work effectively except for a few departments with non-Japanese employees who spoke different first languages. English functioned as a lingua franca in those departments with multinational employees. The findings indicate that for NNESs (non-native English speakers) to communicate with each other in English, the environment has to be more multilingual, less dominated by a single first language. Although almost all Japanese citizens are required to take intensive English courses in compulsory schoolings, the average level of English proficiency is considered to be relatively low in the advanced economies. The present study indicates that it is not for linguistic competence but a lack of interaction with other ELF speakers. Therefore, for learners of ELF in an intensely monolingual society such as Japan to become competent communicators in ELF, providing multilingual learning environments would be more effective than the prevailing teaching practices of classroom learning in L1 Japanese speaker only environments.

Consumer preferences for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in Japan

After the successful adoption and deployment of electric vehicles in Norway with the support of generous government-led incentives, several other countries began introducing policy incentives for environmental-friendly vehicles. In light of Japan’s goal of becoming a hydrogen society, this paper examines the preferences of Japanese citizens for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs) through a stated preference discrete choice experiment involving carefully chosen vehicle attributes and incentives. To this end, it uses mixed logit model on the choice scenario data to elicit the behavioral responses. Governmental incentives such as free public parking and free public transport significantly impact the preferences for HFCVs. In terms of socio-demographic characteristics, education and apartment parking remarkably affect the adoption of HFCVs. Although the preference of Japanese consumers for HFCVs is significantly lower than that for conventional vehicles, a well-designed package of policy incentives involving free public parking and public transport can drive Japan’s push for HFCVs in the long run.

Radiocesium concentrations in mushrooms collected in Kawauchi Village five to eight years after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident.

Following the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident in March 2011, radionuclides such as iodine-131, cesium-134 and cesium-137 were released into environment. In this study, we collected wild mushrooms from the Kawauchi Village of Fukushima Prefecture, located less than 30 km southwest of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, to evaluate their radiocesium (134Cs+137Cs) concentrations and the risk of internal radiation exposure in local residents. 342 mushroom samples were collected from 2016 to 2019. All samples were analysed for radiocesium content by a high-purity germanium detector. Among 342 mushroom samples, 260 mushroom samples (76%) were detected the radiocesium exceeding the regulatory limit of radiocesium (100 Bq/kg for general foods in Japan). The median of committed effective dose from ingestion of wild mushrooms was in the range of 0.015-0.053 mSv in 2016, 0.0025-0.0087 mSv in 2017, 0.029-0.110 mSv in 2018 and 0.011-0.036 mSv in 2019 based on the assumption that Japanese citizens consumed wild mushrooms for 1 year. Thus, our study showed that although radiocesium is still detected in mushrooms collected in Kawauchi village even after 5 to 9 years later, the committed effective dose due to consuming mushrooms was lower than 1 mSv per year. Long-term comprehensive follow-up should monitor radiocesium concentrations in wild mushrooms to support the recovery of the community after the nuclear disaster.

Australia’s Minor Concessions to Japanese Citizens under the White Australia Policy

This paper explores concessions made by Australian authorities concerning Japanese immigration during the era of the White Australia Policy in the early twentieth century. Australia’s Immigration Restriction Act was introduced in December 1901. As the major piece of legislation in the White Australia Policy, the act made it virtually impossible for non-Europeans to migrate to Australia. However, Japanese people enjoyed a special position among non-Europeans under the White Australia Policy thanks to Japan’s growing international status as a civilised power at the time, as well as its sustained diplomatic pressure on Australia. While the Commonwealth was determined to exclude Japanese permanent settlers, it sought ways to render the policy of exclusion less offensive to the Japanese. In the early 1900s, two minor modifications to the Immigration Restriction Act were implemented in order to relax the restrictions imposed on Japanese citizens. Moreover, in the application of Commonwealth immigration laws, Japanese people received far more lenient treatment than other non-Europeans and were afforded respect and extra courtesies by Australian officials. Nevertheless, these concessions Australia made to Japanese citizens were minor, and the Commonwealth government maintained its basic policy of excluding Japanese permanent settlers from Australia. This paper shows that, despite continued diplomatic efforts, Japan was fundamentally unable to change pre-war Australia’s basic policy regarding the exclusion of Japanese permanent settlers.

The Relationship between the COVID-19 Pandemic and Nursing Students' Sense of Belonging: The Experiences and Nursing Education Management of Pre-Service Nursing Professionals.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the orders and structures of societies, particularly in the fields of medical and nursing professions. The researcher aims to understand the experiences, sense of belonging, and decision-making processes about Japanese pre-service nursing students and how the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing, and lockdown has influenced their understanding as pre-service nursing professionals in Japan. As this study focuses on the issues of pre-service nursing students, the researcher invited forty-nine pre-service nursing students for a virtual interview due to the recommendation of social distancing. To increase the coverage of the population, the researcher employed snowball sampling to recruit participants from all over Japan. Although the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the overall performance of the medical and nursing professions, all participants showed a sense of belonging as Japanese citizens and nursing professionals due to the natural disaster of their country. More importantly, all expressed their desires and missions to upgrade and improve the overall performance of the public health system due to the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results discovered that many Japanese nursing students advocated that Japan’s national development, the benefits and advantages of their country, were of a greater importance than their own personal development and goals.

Ethnocentrism and support for nuclear armament in Japan

The goal of this study is to examine factors determining Japanese citizens’ attitudes toward nuclear armament. Previous studies have suggested that Japanese citizens have been strongly opposed to the idea of nuclear armament. However, this study questions the robustness of the anti-nuclear stance among the Japanese population. More specifically, I contend that ethnocentric tendencies among Japanese citizens significantly boost their support for nuclear armament. The statistical analysis relying on the survey data in Japan verifies this hypothesis. Findings from this study are essential in understanding the current discourse surrounding nuclear armament in Japan. Dissecting the process through which Japanese citizens develop their attitudes toward nuclear weapons, this study significantly advances our understanding of Japan’s identity issues in the security arena.

Somatic attunement/self-cultivation: Japanese immigration and the performing arts

Contemporary theorists, Schechner, Fisher-Lichte, Bharucha, Holledge and Tompkins and others, have written extensively on the global discourse of intercultural performance and its attempt to intermingle such cultural traditions as the textual borrowing of Peter Brook’s Mahabharata or Tadashi Suzuki’s Trojan Women, the integration of physical styles of Ariane Mnouchkine and the conscious cultural negotiations of such productions as Ong Seng’s Masterkey, a collaboration between Japanese and Australian performers. While these theorists acknowledge that the performer’s body is an integral part of intercultural performance, the majority of their discussion has centered on materialist readings of colonialism, race, gender, authenticity, cultural ownership, and the political empowerment of post-colonial subjects. At the margins of their discussion has been the subjective knowledge or phenomenological experience of the ethnic communities, in some cases immigrant communities, whose expertise, directly or indirectly, contributes to the style of performance. This essay examines the role of Japanese Americans, as immigrants and citizens, in the evolution of cultural life and performance training in the United States.

Policymaking Process for Foreign Care Workers in Contemporary Japan

This paper analyzes recent policy reforms made to foreign care work in Japan. The two policy reforms discussed in this paper are 1. The expansion of categories in the Technical Intern Training Program (TITP) and 2. The inclusion of domestic workers into the Japanese labour sector through the use of National Strategic Special Zones. By analyzing these policymaking processes, the following four observations were made salient. 1. That policy reforms were largely driven by economic motivations; 2. That the policymaking processes that determined the nature of these reforms were led by politicians who were acting on behalf of the interests of business leaders; 3. That the Japanese government continues to utilize policies that deny labourers permanent residency or citizenship status, such as temporary worker programs, in order to avoid implementing migration practices that allow workers to become Japanese citizens; and 4. That the government holds contradicting attitudes towards care work, whereby eldercare is increasingly considered professional/skilled work, while domestic work is regarded as low/semi-skilled labour. These findings suggest that Japan’s foreign care immigration policies are designed to recruit temporary workers in ways that violate their human rights for the purpose of exploitation, in addition to the original goal of transferring skills to sending countries. With this in mind, I conclude my paper by arguing that these policymaking processes reproduce a gendered, racialized, and classed international division of labour and a global care chain

Japanese citizens' behavioral changes and preparedness against COVID-19: An online surveyduring the early phase of the pandemic.

The Japanese government instituted countermeasures against COVID-19, a pneumonia caused by the new coronavirus, in January 2020. Seeking “people’s behavioral changes,” in which the government called on the public to take precautionary measures or exercise self-restraint, was one of the important strategies. The purpose of this study is to investigate how and from when Japanese citizens have changed their precautionary behavior under circumstances in which the government has only requested their cooperation. This study uses micro data from a cross-sectional survey conducted on an online platform of an online research company, based on quota sampling that is representative of the Japanese population. By the end of March 2020, a total of 11,342 respondents, aged from 20 to 64 years, were recruited. About 85 percent reported practising the social distancing measures recommended by the government including more females than males and more older than younger participants. Frequent handwashing is conducted by 86 percent of all participants, 92 percent of female, and 87.9 percent of over-40 participants. The most important event influencing these precautionary actions was the infection aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which occurred in early February 2020 (23 percent). Information from the central and local governments, received by 60 percent of the participants, was deemed trustworthy by 50 percent. However, the results also showed that about 20 percent of the participants were reluctant to implement proper prevention measures. The statistical analysis indicated that the typical characteristics of those people were male, younger (under 30 years old), unmarried, from lower-income households, a drinking or smoking habit, and a higher extraversion score. To prevent the spread of infection in Japan, it is imperative to address these individuals and encourage their behavioural changes using various means to reach and influence them.

The Evolution of Nuclear Fear in Post-Occupation Japanese Film

The Evolution of Nuclear Fear in Post-Occupation Japanese Film Kelly Burton In the wake of the first use of atomic weapons against the Japanese people, the people of the United States were generally pensive about the decision that had just been made on their behalf. Historian Paul Boyer has stated that, “for a fleeting moment after Hiroshima, American culture had been profoundly affected by atomic fear, by a dizzying plethora of atomic panaceas and proposals, and by endless speculation on the social and ethical implications of the new reality.”1 Faced with the almost instant death of two hundred thousand Japanese people, most of them civilians, Americans were forced to examine the morality of their leaders’ choice to engage weapons of such indiscriminate power. The appearance of American journalist John Hersey’s Hiroshima, a collection of firsthand accounts of the attack, just one year after the bombings showed the level of misgiving that many in the country had regarding the government’s decision to end the war at the cost of civilian lives, and the book’s subsequent success further displayed the level of U.S. introspection regarding Japanese victims.2 Boyer’s “fleeting moment” ended on August 29, 1949, however, when the Soviet Union successfully conducted their first atomic test in Semipalatinsk, Kazakh. “By the end of the 1940s,” Boyer remarks, “the cultural discourse had largely stopped. Americans now seemed not only ready to accept the bomb, but to support any measures necessary to maintain atomic supremacy” over the Soviet Union.3 With civilization-destroying weapons now in the hands of two acknowledged adversaries, the American public – and, indeed, the world – then turned their attention to the new concept of “mutually assured destruction.” A morally disturbing question about mass murder had turned to an existentially disturbing question about mass extinction. While humanity at large was becoming vocally anxious about the international implications of the Cold War, particularly about the “trauma” Susan Sontag saw in the constant threat of “collective incineration,”4 the Japanese people were struggling to give expression to their unique status as firsthand witnesses to the very same. After suffering a tremendous loss under the guidance of what proved to be bellicose leadership, Japanese citizens began to view their recent wartime militarism as “a light that failed.”5 In addition [End Page 41] to this re-examination of recent military aggression, Japan was also coping with the deeper physical and psychological ramifications of the nuclear attacks that had ended the war in the Pacific. As with virtually all the dialogues that took place in Japan from August 1945 to April 1952, discussions pertaining to the atomic bomb and its aftereffects were heavily mediated by the offices of the Allied occupation, which issued rules to temper dissenting voices, especially in Japan’s film industry: “In the Occupation years it was strictly prohibited to criticize America’s role in the tragedy, and the only way the subject could be broached in film” was through “sentimentality.”6 Mental and corporeal issues that arose after the dropping of the A-bombs were similarly scrutinized by Allied censors, and the only way to address these themes on film was also in a sentimental manner. When media restrictions were lifted after the Allies withdrew their forces in 1952, politically-minded filmmakers in Japan began to use the medium to discuss the bomb in more realistic terms, but do the films before this withdrawal nonetheless bear the marks of the trauma? Historian Anirudh Deshpande has argued that the various sociological elements that are inherently captured in cinema – such as behavior, topography, infrastructure – can provide scholars with “valuable source material for social history,” and this is particularly true in the case of these post-Occupation films,7 which offer historians a more nuanced view of the nuclear fears that were otherwise suppressed in the media by American forces directly after World War II. Japanese Cinema to 1952 When seeking to explain the importance of Japan’s cinematic output as historical evidence, it first is useful to examine how film has integrated itself into the country’s collective consciousness. From the first appearance of the Kinetoscope in the late nineteenth century, the medium of...

Courts and the Executive in Wartime: A Comparative Study of the American and British Approaches to the Internment of Citizens during World War II and Their Lessons for Today

Author(s): Tyler, AL | Abstract: This Article compares and contrasts the legal and political treatment of the detention of citizens during World War II in Great Britain and the United States. Specifically, it explores the detentions as they unfolded, the very different positions that President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill took with respect to the detention of citizens, and the manner in which British and American courts reviewed challenges brought by those detained during the war. Comparing the experiences of the two countries reveals that in both cases the courts deferred extensively to the political branches when it came to reviewing challenges to the wartime detention policies, essentially staking out roles that left them largely relegated to the sidelines of public debates over the propriety of internment policies. A comparison of the British and American experiences also reveals that, as the war continued, the two chief executives struck decidedly different positions as to the wisdom and lawfulness of detention policies directed at citizens. In the United States, Roosevelt ignored the legal advice of many of his key advisers regarding the unconstitutionality of the detention of Japanese American citizens and-again against the advice of his advisers-later delayed the closing of the internment camps until after the 1944 election. By contrast, Churchill-who operated in a different legal context that granted him greater powers than his American counterpart-came to view such policies as inconsistent with British constitutional tradition and became a crucial voice urging the termination of such detentions. The Article then attempts to understand both why the two executives charted different courses on this issue as the war unfolded and whether there are any lessons to be drawn from these events with respect to how we should think about the separation of powers during wartime today. Focusing on the British experience during the war, Churchill's change of course suggests that the executive can and sometimes will take the lead in declaring and protecting a country's constitutional values without prodding by the courts, even in wartime, and even in the absence of legal compulsion. But as is explored in the pages that follow, the British experience may be a particularly British story and more generally one that differed in significant ways from the American story. This, in turn, calls into question just how much the British experience during the war should inform debates over the separation of powers in American constitutional law. The American experience during the war, moreover, proves a cautionary tale. Specifically, it reveals a series of failings on the part of the executive branch to acknowledge and engage with the facts on the ground and honor long-accepted constitutional traditions in formulating wartime policies. This example therefore suggests that the executive branch is ill equipped to self-regulate on this score in times of war. These failings in turn call into question the common practice of courts to defer extensively to the executive on matters of national security and more generally implicate fundamental questions about the judicial role in a constitutional democracy. Although grounded in events that took place over seven decades ago, this study is undertaken for a very timely purpose. Once again, we live in a time in which the executive branch has argued that its decisions ostensibly predicated upon heightened concerns about national security should receive extensive, if not complete, deference from the Supreme Court. In addressing such arguments now and in the future, the Court would be wise to remember how judicial deference to executive branch assertions on matters of national security played out during World War II.

Changes in implementation of personal protective measures by ordinary Japanese citizens: A longitudinal study from the early phase to the community transmission phase of the COVID-19 outbreak

ObjectivesTo clarify changes in the implementation of personal protective measures among ordinary Japanese citizens from the early phase of the COVID-19 outbreak to the community transmission phase. MethodsThis longitudinal, internet-based survey included 2141 people (50.8% men; 20–79 years). The baseline and follow-up surveys were conducted from February 25–27, 2020, and April 1–6, 2020, respectively. Participants were asked how often they implemented the five personal protective measures recommended by the World Health Organization (hand hygiene, social distancing, avoiding touching the eyes, nose and mouth, respiratory etiquette, and self-isolation) in the baseline and follow-up surveys. ResultsThree of the five personal protective measures’ availability significantly improved during the community transmission phase compared to the early phase. Social distancing measures showed significant improvement, from 67.4% to 82.2%. However, the prevalence of avoiding touching the eyes, nose, and mouth, which had the lowest prevalence in the early phase, showed no significant improvement (approximately 60%). Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that men and persons of low-income households made fewer improvements than women and persons of high-income households. ConclusionsThe availability of personal protective measures by ordinary citizens is improving; however, there is potential for improvement, especially concerning avoiding touching eyes, nose, and mouth.

Realist Concerns or Economic Interdependence? Japanese Citizens’ Policy Preferences Toward China in the Issue of the Senkaku Islands

Realist Concerns or Economic Interdependence? Japanese Citizens’ Policy Preferences Toward China in the Issue of the Senkaku Islands

SARS-CoV-2 infection among returnees on charter flights to Japan from Hubei, China: a report from National Center for Global Health and Medicine.

Due to the significant spread of a new type of coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) infection (COVID-19) in China, the Chinese government blockaded several cities in Hubei Province. Japanese citizens lost a means of transportation to return back to Japan. The National Center for Global Health and Medicine (NCGM) helped the operation of charter flights for evacuation of Japanese residents from Hubei Province, and this article outlines our experiences. A total of five charter flights were dispatched, and the majority of returnees (793/829 [95.7%]) were handled at NCGM. A large number of personnel from various departments participated in this operation; 107 physicians, 115 nurses, 110 clerical staff, and 45 laboratory technicians in total. Several medical translators were also involved. In this operation, we conducted airborne precautions in addition to contact precautions. Eye shields were also used. The doctors collecting the pharyngeal swab used a coverall to minimize the risk of body surface contamination from secretions and droplets. Enhanced hand hygiene using alcohol hand sanitizer was performed. Forty-eight persons were ultimately hospitalized after the triage at NCGM operation, which was more than the number of persons triaged at the airport (n = 34). Of those hospitalized after NCGM triage, 8.3% (4/48 patients) ultimately tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, significantly higher than the positive rate among subjects not triaged (4/48 [8.3%] vs. 9/745 [1.2%]: p = 0.0057). NCGM participated in a large-scale operation to evacuate Japanese nationals from the COVID-19 epidemic area. We were able to establish a scheme through this experience that can be used in the future.

Risk factors for pre-diabetes in Japanese workers on long-term overseas assignments: A retrospective cohort study

AimJapanese may experience detrimental changes in lifestyle during their overseas assignment. This study analyzes the incidence and risk factors of pre-diabetes in 445 Japanese citizens returning to Japan from overseas work assignments. MethodsA retrospective cohort study was conducted using medical records and lifestyle data of Japanese who returned from living overseas on assignment. They had returned from eight regions, which were combined into four areas: Asia and Oceania; Africa; North, South, and Central America; and the Middle East and Europe. Kaplan-Meier survival curves were used to describe the incidence of pre-diabetes among the subjects. A Cox proportional hazards regression model was used to compare the risk of developing pre-diabetes at follow up by gender, age, BMI, and region of assignment. Results15.1% of this cohort was in the prediabetes stage, which had a mean duration of 39.7 ± 9.2 months. Subjects who developed pre-diabetes were older (mean: 40.8 years vs 45.0 years; P < 0.001). They had higher weight (mean: 63.6 kg vs 68.0 kg; P = 0.002), BMI (mean: 22.1 kg/m2 vs 23.2 kg/m2; P = 0.003) and abdominal circumference (mean: 79.1 vs 82.6; P < 0.001) at follow-up. However, the changes among body weight, BMI, and abdominal circumference were not significantly different between normal and pre-diabetes subjects. Relative to Asia and Oceania, the hazard ratio for those assigned to the Middle East and Europe was 2.1 times higher (95% Cl 1.3–3.4), and the hazard ratio for those assigned to North, South, and Central America was 1.8 times higher (95% Cl 1.2–2.8). A hazard ratio in the 45-year and over age group was 2.7 times that of the 25 to 34 age group. ConclusionLifestyle changes from working assignments in other cultures necessitate regular health monitoring and advice for people over 45 years old upon returning to Japan. This is especially important for people assigned to work in the Middle East, Europe, North, South and Central America.