O-bon and Franz Kafka

August in Japan is the season of O-bon, when people travel back to their home towns to gather with family and honor their ancestors. It’s kind of like Dia de Los Muertos and Thanksgiving rolled into one and yes, it usually means packed trains and airplanes and jammed freeways.

Then came COVID-19 and all that changed. So what to do?

Well, it seems that the government of Japan has taken inspiration from Frank Kafka in providing travel advisories to its citizens:

1. Prime Minister Abe’s cabinet created a program called “GO TO travel”. Kicked off a few weeks ago, this program gives financial rebates for people to travel around Japan and boost the tourism industry.

2. Unfortunately, around the same time as the GO TO travel program launched, the number of new cases of people in Tokyo infected with COVID-19 started to peak at around 400 per day.

3. Prime Minister Abe then announced that residents of Tokyo (that includes me) are now excluded from the campaign and are not eligible for travel rebates for fear of spreading COVID-19 anew throughout Japan.

4. However, everyone else in Japan who doesn’t live in Tokyo is permitted to travel to Tokyo if they wish and be entitled to a travel rebate. Some, if not many, of these visitors may well contract COVID-19 and, when O-bon ends in mid-August, carry the virus back to their hometowns.

Kafka would be proud.