I love how this is another of those ‘laws with no penalty for breaking them’ which Japan seems to be so fond of.
Remember that Japan had some of the highest rate of mask compliance during COVID-19 without there being any penalties other than harsh stares. Japanese people are still human with all the ups and down, but some aspects of society truly are different here.
As a regular visitor to Japan for $work for many years, my impression is the reason for mask compliance during COVID is because wearing masks during cold/flu season BEFORE COVID was normal.
My understanding is that part of it is to do with the fact that Japan had "been there, done that, got the postcard" when they dealt with SARS. So COVID was "just another" SARS and the Japanese knew what they had to do.
Japan's handling of COVID was, from a western perspective, exemplary. Japan is a country with 2x the population of the UK. Japan is a country that lives and works in MUCH higher density than the UK. And yet it only had something like 1/10th of the COVID cases/deaths the UK did. Given the immense population density, COVID should have spread like wildfire in Japan, but it did not.
The other part is the Japanese cultural thing where, by and large, you understand you are part of a larger picture and coughing/spluttering/sneezing all over your fellow countrymen is very much not cool. So wearing a mask is simply understood to be the right thing to do. On this subject, see also the famous images of Japanese fans clearing up rubbish from football stadiums during world cups ... I didn't see many drunken western fans doing that.
To be clear, I am not insinuating Japan is perfect, far from it. But there is a lot the West could and should learn from Japan ... if it ever wanted to. :)
* I’m 40 and most people my age have a story of when they were forced by a manager to beg a customer or client for forgiveness for a “mistake” that often existed only in the customer’s head.
** IANAL but pressuring your subordinate to do something illegal sounds like a textbook case of power harassment
Fear of jail time. Fear of fines. Fear of (unfortunately) death (ie, pretextual traffic stops).
Have read about some countries (Netherlands?) where they don’t even have turnstiles to check your ticket. You just board the train. It’s expected that you bought the ticket, why waste time checking it? Additionally, I suppose the idea here is that the cost of ticket checkers far outweighs the benefits.
It’s true that there’s some smaller stations that just have a few ‘scan your card’ poles and no entry/exit block.
Japan is more or less the same, except that the turnstiles won’t physically block you from entering, and are open by default.