When prefectures post “keep out” signs against people from other prefectures, idealists and visionaries of universal human brotherhood must, failing indestructible reserves of courage, conviction and blind faith, acknowledge that their ideals are in retreat.
Race glowers at race, nation at nation, religion at religion — in defiance of the hopes of great leaders such as Martin Luther King (1929-68), who said, “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools”; or Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948): “Whenever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love.”
Japan now presents the spectacle (quite apart from anxieties stirred by the Go To Travel campaign) of prefecture glowering at prefecture. Iwate Prefecture in particular is circling the wagons. Alone among Japan’s prefectures, it has so far escaped the COVID-19 plague. It has no confirmed infections. It wants to keep it that way.