Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Coronavirus is revealing uncomfortable truths about Japan

I’ll never forget an unusually frank conversation I once had with a Japanese acquaintance (let’s call him ‘Yoshi’). He was explaining how his marriage had failed, after only a few weeks:

‘I never had time to myself. Whenever I got home, she was always there.’

He stressed the words ‘always’ and ‘there’, drawing them out with a sad, weary, frustration. I remember wondering what exactly he’d been expecting, but it seemed rude to ask. Yoshi’s words came back to me this week when I read that, in an impressively opportunistic move, a firm in Tokyo is capitalising on the Covid-19 lockdown by letting out rooms for people who are finding prolonged exposure to their partners in small gardenless dwellings rather more stressful than potential exposure to the virus.

The firm Kasoku is offering short-term rental units, with facilities for tele working. The object, they say, is to prevent a surge in the numbers of ‘Corona rikon’ (Corona divorce) the new trending phenomenon here in Japan.

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