Photo/Illutration Morning commuters at JR Shinagawa Station on July 12 (Shiro Nishihata)

The arrival of a fresh state of emergency in Tokyo was greeted with a nonchalant shrug by many residents weary of the ongoing pandemic and habitual yo-yoing of government countermeasures.

On the morning of July 12, the first day in the capital under the six-week state of emergency issued by the central government--Tokyo's fourth since the health crisis began--commuters at JR Shinagawa Station hurried off to work. Station speakers blared out an announcement urging people to refrain from going out and work from home instead.

A 34-year-old company employee who lives in Saitama Prefecture arrived at the station on his way to a sales meeting with a company in Tokyo.

“I couldn’t find a seat at all,” he said of his commute. “It was packed, the same as before.”

His employer recommended that he work from home, but he had no choice but to grant his client’s wishes by attending the in-person meeting.

“There have been many times now where we have been placed under a state of emergency,” he said. “It is too hard to get work done with the constant voluntary restraint and postponement.”

A woman in her 30s who came to the station to send her child off to an elementary school also noted that a state of emergency has become a mundane event.

“It seems the number of adults (in town) is growing larger and larger, as if we are not under a state of emergency,” she said. “With the COVID-19 pandemic prolonged for so long, it can’t be helped that (the state of emergency) has become a regular event and nothing special.”

An estimate of pedestrian flow during the morning commute time, gleaned from locations of NTT Docomo Inc. mobile phone users, showed practically no change at five sites surveyed in the capital on July 12, compared with a week earlier.

Between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. that day, the decrease in pedestrian traffic was less than 1 percent at JR Tokyo Station and in the Ginza district.

It was a mere 1.7 percent at JR Shibuya Station, and 1.3 percent at JR Shinjuku Station.

But at JR Shinbashi Station, the pedestrian flow increased slightly.

The total decrease in foot traffic across the five locations was less than 1 percent.

(This article was compiled from reports by Natsumi Nakai and Ryoma Komiyama.)

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