Deaths in Japan fell last year for the first time in more than a decade, a jarring contrast to the huge death tolls suffered by many countries in the pandemic and a signal that Japan’s coronavirus measures have had positive spillover effects.

The health ministry reported this week that deaths in Japan had dropped by more than 9,300 in 2020 to around 1.4 million. The decrease — seven-tenths of 1% from the year before — was a surprising turnabout for a nation with the oldest population in the world.

When the coronavirus first began spreading early last year, many feared that Japan’s large cohort of older people would make the country especially vulnerable. But case numbers and deaths have stayed much lower than in the United States and Western Europe.