Japan Acted Like the Virus Had Gone. Now It’s Spread Everywhere.

Visitors to the Hot Spring Town of Kusatsu After Japan Lifts Domestic Travel Curbs. Experts say that Japan’s focus on the economy may have been its undoing. As other countries in Asia, which experienced the coronavirus earlier than those in the West, wrestle with new flare ups of Covid-19, Japan now risks becoming a warning for what happens when a country moves too fast to normalize -- and doesn’t adjust its strategy when the outbreak changes.