After two years of almost closing its borders to foreigners, Japan is slowly emerging from its isolation. Following long negotiations between different ministries (immigration, education, health, economy), the Japanese Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, is due to announce on Thursday February 17 a relaxation of the rules for entering the country for non-resident foreigners. He would also consider abandoning the very strict quarantine rules imposed so far for all arrivals on Japanese soil.
5,000 foreigners should be able to enter Japan every day
Concretely, the number of foreigners authorized to enter Japan each day would increase from 3,500 to 5,000 at the beginning of March. In addition, the Japanese government plans to announce the end of the seven-day quarantine imposed so far on all foreigners. arriving on national soil. It will now be sufficient to present a negative PCR test and a complete vaccination certificate of three doses. There would no longer be mandatory quarantine, neither in a hotel nor at home.
Since the beginning of the coronavirus epidemic in January 2020, Japan has imposed the strictest control measures of all the G7 countries (Germany, Canada, United States, France, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom). Reciprocity was not appropriate because the Japanese had the right to travel anywhere in the world. Their borders were completely closed to tourists and only a few very special cases obtained a visa. In addition, upon arriving in Japan, a two-week hotel quarantine was mandatory for non-residents. For the Japanese, there were three days of quarantine in selected hotels and the rest at home with daily checks through several applications downloaded to mobile phones.
Another 400,000 foreigners on the waiting list
Visiting a vaccination center at Tokyo’s Haneda airport on Wednesday (February 16), the prime minister said authorities “were going to take into account all the new studies on the Omicron variant, the evolution of infections in Japan and abroad and the border control system in other countries”.
He did not, however, say a word about the enormous pressure exerted by the bosses of the large Japanese conglomerates, which lack manpower, and by university circles, which saw the disappearance of 150,000 foreign students and their tuition fees. registration… The fact remains that, despite these new measures, it will take several months before the 400,000 foreigners who had obtained their residence permit can return to Japan.