Bump in support for PM Kishida as tough border restrictions cheered in Japan

TOKYO - Japan's tough border restrictions have been decried by foreign businessmen and exchange students as draconian, but the measures have given Prime Minister Fumio Kishida a domestic bump in support.

Amid global unease over the Covid-19 variant Omicron, Mr Kishida's government has barred all non-resident foreigners from entering the country except in exceptional circumstances.

Two media polls over the weekend, by the Yomiuri Shimbun and the Japan News Network (JNN), peg Mr Kishida's Cabinet approval at above 60 per cent for the first time since he took office in October.

Support stood at 62 per cent in the Yomiuri survey - up 6 percentage points from last month - while approval came in at 64 per cent in the JNN poll, up 4.7 points.

The surveys will give Mr Kishida, whose Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) won resoundingly in a general election on Oct 31, the momentum to push through a record-breaking supplementary budget package in the Diet, which is in session until Dec 21.

Also significantly, many Japanese respondents have cheered Mr Kishida's border measures that have been compared to the feudal "sakoku" (isolationist) policy during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868, when the Tokugawa shogunate shut borders and severely limited foreign relations and trade.

Some 89 per cent applauded Mr Kishida's border restrictions to bar non-resident foreigners in the Yomiuri survey, with 84 per cent cheering the move in the JNN poll.

Mr Kishida's support does not seem to have been hit by the fiasco last week when his government urged airlines to stop taking new reservations this month, only to reverse the guideline within 72 hours after an outcry over how it would also affect Japanese nationals.

Instead, the transport ministry has asked all airlines to submit data every day on new bookings for inbound international flights, with border entries now capped at 3,500 people a day.

Media editorials have contrasted Mr Kishida's decisiveness to pre-emptively shut borders, against the dithering under his predecessor Yoshihide Suga, whose hesitation was blamed for letting the Delta variant run amok in the country.

"It is a cast iron rule that countermeasures should be severe at the current stage where a virus' characteristics are not known," the Mainichi Shimbun said in an editorial last week.

The Asahi Shimbun added: "The nation paid huge social and economic costs for policymakers' failure to accurately recognise the risks posed by new variants, which allowed them to spread widely in the nation."

In line with fears over Omicron, Mr Kishida has also said he will accelerate the roll-out of Covid-19 vaccine booster shots, with 77 per cent of the population already having received their second dose.

The JNN poll found that six in 10 respondents evaluated Mr Kishida's Covid-19 response positively. Mr Kishida has also benefited from an ebb in cases, with Japan recording fewer than 200 cases a day nationwide since Nov 18.

Mr Kishida's border restrictions - likely for domestic consumption - have nonetheless been criticised by the World Health Organisation (WHO), which is urging nations not to impose blanket travel bans as these are ineffective.

"Epidemiologically, I find it hard to understand the principle there," Dr Michael Ryan, who heads the WHO's health emergencies programme, told a news conference last week in response to a question over Japan's measures.

"Does the virus read your passport? Does the virus know your nationality or where you are legally a resident?"