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How Joe Biden handles China will be one of the defining issues of his presidency. He inherits a Sino-American relationship that is at its lowest point in 50 years. Some people blame this on his predecessor, Donald Trump. But Trump merits blame for pouring fuel on a fire. It was China’s leaders who lit and kindled the flames.

Over the past decade, Chinese leaders abandoned Deng Xiaoping’s moderate policy of ‘hide your strength, bide your time’. They became more assertive in many ways: building and militarising artificial islands in the South China Sea, intruding into waters near Japan and Taiwan, launching incursions into India along the countries’ Himalayan border, and coercing Australia economically when it dared to criticise China.

On trade, China tilted the playing field by subsidising state-owned enterprises and forcing foreign companies to transfer intellectual property to Chinese partners. Trump responded clumsily with tariffs on allies as well as on China, but he had strong bipartisan support when he excluded companies like Huawei, whose plans to build 5G networks posed a security threat.

At the same time, however, the United States and China remain interdependent, both economically and on ecological issues that transcend the bilateral relationship. The US cannot decouple its economy completely from China without enormous costs.

During the Cold War, the US and the Soviet Union had almost no economic or other interdependence. In contrast, US–China trade amounts to some US$500 billion annually, and the two sides engage in extensive exchanges of students and visitors. Even more important, China has learned to harness the power of markets to authoritarian control in ways the Soviets never mastered, and China is a trading partner to more countries than the US is.

Given China’s population size and rapid economic growth, some pessimists believe that shaping Chinese behaviour is impossible. But that isn’t true if one thinks in terms of alliances. The combined wealth of the developed democracies—the US, Japan and Europe—far exceeds that of China. This reinforces the importance of the Japan–US alliance for the stability and prosperity of East Asia and the world economy. At the end of the Cold War, many on both sides considered the alliance a relic of the past; in fact, it is vital for the future.

US administrations once hoped that China would become a ‘responsible stakeholder’ in the international order. But President Xi Jinping has led his country in a more confrontational direction. A generation ago, the US supported China’s membership in the World Trade Organization, but there was little reciprocity; on the contrary, China tilted the playing field.

Critics in the US often accuse presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush of naivety in thinking that a policy of engagement could accommodate China. But history isn’t that simple. Clinton’s China policy did offer engagement, but it also hedged that bet by reaffirming its security relationship with Japan as the key to managing China’s geopolitical rise. There were three major powers in East Asia, and if the US remained aligned with Japan (now the world’s third-largest national economy), the two countries could shape the environment in which China’s power grew.

Moreover, if China tried to push the US beyond the first island chain as part of a military strategy to expel it from the region, Japan, which constitutes the most important part of that chain, remained willing to contribute generous host-country support for the 50,000 US troops based there. Today, Kurt Campbell, a thoughtful and skilled implementer of Clinton’s policy, is the key coordinator for the Indo-Pacific on Biden’s National Security Council.

The alliance with Japan enjoys strong support in the US. Since 2000, former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage and I have issued a series of bipartisan reports on the strategic relationship. In our fifth report, released on 7 December 2020 by the non-partisan Center for Strategic and International Studies, we argue that Japan, like many other Asian countries, doesn’t want to be dominated by China. It is now taking a leading role in the alliance: setting the regional agenda, championing free-trade agreements and multilateral cooperation, and implementing new strategies to shape a regional order.

Former prime minister Shinzo Abe spearheaded a reinterpretation of Article 9 of Japan’s post-war constitution to strengthen the country’s defence capabilities under the United Nations Charter, and, after Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, he preserved the regional trade pact as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. Abe also led quadrilateral consultations with India and Australia on stability in the Indo-Pacific.

Fortunately, this regional leadership is likely to continue under Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who was Abe’s chief cabinet secretary and is likely to continue his policies. Common interests and shared democratic values form the bedrock of the alliance with America, and public opinion polls in Japan show that trust in the US has never been higher. It’s not surprising that one of Biden’s first calls to foreign leaders after his inauguration was to Suga, to assure him of America’s continued commitment to strategic partnership with Japan.

The Japan–US alliance remains popular in both countries, which need each other more than ever. Together, they can balance China’s power and cooperate with China in areas like climate change, biodiversity and pandemics, as well as on working towards a rules-based international economic order. For these reasons, as the Biden administration develops its strategy to cope with China’s continued rise, the alliance with Japan will remain a top priority.

Shinzo Abe was born into Japan’s political royalty. His maternal grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, barely escaped trial as a Class-A war criminal yet he served as prime minister from 1957 to 1960. His paternal grandfather, Kan Abe, served in parliament and his father, Shintaro Abe, was foreign minister. With two terms, 2006–07 and 2012–20, Abe was Japan’s longest-serving prime minister. When he resigned on 28 August for health reasons, his popularity was sliding, he was mired in a succession of scandals, and his vim and magic touch had deserted him.

The next general election is due in October 2021. New prime minister Yoshihide Suga doesn’t hail from a political dynasty and has no powerful factional base. His ascent reflects the priority given to stability and continuity in these turbulent times in domestic and global affairs as geopolitical tensions, the coronavirus pandemic and economic downturns roil most countries.

Abe’s foreign-policy and national-security accomplishments will be key parts of his enduring legacy. Few countries have benefited as much as Japan from the post-1945 liberal international order. Abe worked hard to position his country as a solid pillar of that order, its economic weight providing ballast to the order and its commitment to a rules-based world operating as a stabiliser.

Abe memorably declared in Washington in February 2013 that Japan was back, saying: ‘Japan is not, and will never be, a tier-two country.’ He was fully vested in efforts to revive Japan’s ailing economy; stand up to China on disputed island territories while trying to engage with Beijing to address mutual concerns; deepen the US alliance; increase defence spending; and change the peace constitution by stealth. His conservative vision was tempered by a pragmatic streak that put a premium on advice from trusted experts.

Abe had to contend with the nationalistic, protectionist, transactional and erratic Donald Trump; the relentless rise of China; the transformation of the US–China relationship from strategic engagement to full-spectrum confrontation; and the expansion of strategic horizons from the Asia–Pacific to the Indo-Pacific. To navigate these shifting cross-currents without capsizing the Japanese ship of state, Abe also had to nudge the people into accepting a continual reinterpretation of the constitutional limits on Japan’s security preparedness and policies.

The alliance with the US is Japan’s pre-eminent national security priority. Kishi was instrumental in revising the US–Japan security treaty in 1960 to strengthen the military alliance. Kishi’s dream of restoring Japan’s full independence continued to motivate Abe’s vision of strengthening military links with Washington to insure against a collapse of the Pacific military balance. Abe worked to ensure modern Japan played what he regarded as its proper part in Asia and the world by amending the constitution to permit a more active national and collective defence role, and generally ending Japan’s defensiveness and apologetic pursuit of a foreign policy that advanced its national interests.

Abe invested more heavily than any other world leader in cultivating a personal relationship with America’s notoriously mercurial president and became known as the ‘Trump whisperer’. Conversely, Japan is the linchpin of the Indo-Pacific security order and a critical component of the US’s rebalancing strategy for the region. Abe was the first world leader to meet Trump after his surprise election and joined India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the only two democratic leaders to establish a personal rapport with the volatile president. Yet the ‘bromance’ yielded few tangible rewards, as Tokyo University’s Kiichi Fujiwara noted.

The unchecked nuclearisation of North Korea and the rise of China increased the salience of the US–Japan security treaty. The fear of abandonment by the US is a powerful and constant undercurrent in Japanese foreign policy. Consequently, good relations with China are a hedge against an unreliable US ally in the future.

An unintended outcome of Trump’s weaponisation of tariffs and sanctions to prosecute proliferating US trade disputes was to increase Japan’s leverage at the intersection of geoeconomics and geopolitics. Beijing needs access to Japanese trade, investment and markets to offset US decoupling, while Washington can harness Japan’s potential to check China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific.

As the China–US conflict intensifies, Suga will find it hard to maintain Abe’s balancing act. An early test will come with the need to decide on the postponed April state visit by President Xi Jinping. A heavily publicised visit would showcase the failure of US efforts to contain China and hand Beijing a major PR coup, but it would also cause disquiet in Japan’s ruling party. Yet, further postponement would be a public humiliation for Xi and hurt Sino-Japanese ties.

The foreign ministers of the Quad nations—Australia, India, Japan and the US—are scheduled to meet in Tokyo in early October and Suga is expected to meet with them. The Quad has served to highlight the values, interests and priorities that Japan shares with the other three.

In an influential essay in 2012, Abe was the first leader to introduce the conceptual vocabulary of a free and open Indo-Pacific as a way of integrating geography, geopolitics, democratic political values and freedom of navigation around the Indian and Pacific Oceans. On 10 September, India signed a mutual logistics support agreement with Japan, complementing its earlier agreements with the US, France, South Korea and Australia. Australia’s 2016 decision to purchase French instead of Japanese submarines was a major disappointment for Abe, as was India’s defection from the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership last year.

Abe is likely to remain a key influence on the conduct and contours of Suga’s foreign policy, ensuring policy continuity and exuding reassurance to diplomatic partners. As chief cabinet secretary, Suga was very much part of the inner circle of all key policymaking and thus already has part ownership of the Abe legacy.

The domestic-policy-focused Suga will have his mind concentrated by the need to steer Japan through the coronavirus crisis back to economic prosperity. With only limited foreign policy expertise, he’d be foolish not to utilise Abe’s experience, skills and personal connections around the Indo-Pacific and the world. In dealings with the likes of Trump, Xi, Modi, Scott Morrison and other G20 leaders, Abe will be a diplomatic asset abroad without constituting a political liability at home. Few world leaders can boast such a political epitaph on leaving office.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s announcement that he is standing down for health reasons is worrying many across the Indo-Pacific. The US, Australia and Southeast Asia have grown accustomed to Japan’s stronger and ‘sturdier’ leadership under Abe. In turbulent times, many major powers often disappoint with their leadership styles, but Abe stood out as a pillar of stability and even sanity.

Abe’s eight-year second term as prime minister is a central, positive reason why Japan is the most trusted major power in Southeast Asia. Japan is the first country most Southeast Asian states look to for assistance in navigating between a more aggressive China and an unpredictable America. In the escalating US–China competition, when it comes to Southeast Asia, Japan is the winner.

Abe has been most effective when leading ‘quietly’, yet meaningfully, on issues of shared interest. This was not always the case. Abe’s engagement with Southeast Asia over the past eight years exemplifies the benefits of second chances. In his one-year first term as prime minister in 2006 and 2007, Abe’s approach to foreign policy left many in Southeast Asia uneasy. His desire to make Japan a ‘beautiful country’ again and his patronage of Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo stirred painful memories of Japan’s conduct in Southeast Asia during World War II.

Current deputy PM and former foreign minister Taro Aso’s 2007 vision of a Japan-led ‘arc of freedom and prosperity’ from northern Europe through Southeast Asia to Japan and Taiwan was widely viewed as a campaign to gain Southeast Asian support to encircle China. Any proposal, real or inferred, to collaborate in directly challenging China unifies the diverse states of the region in opposition.

In his second term as prime minister, with a few exceptions, Abe has engaged with Southeast Asia more effectively. In 2012–13, despite the difficulties Japanese prime ministers face leaving parliament, Abe visited each of the 10 Southeast Asian states, some more than once.

While the foreign policy beliefs and goals haven’t changed, the second Abe administration has been better than the first at gaining Southeast Asian support for the policies developed to advance them. Japan’s Partnership for Quality Infrastructure, which is focused on Southeast Asia and backed by significant concessional financing, presents an attractive alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

The free and open Indo-Pacific, or FOIP, concept coined by the Abe administration, and promoted also by Australia, India and the US, has had a lukewarm reception in Southeast Asia since the Trump administration adopted it in 2017. But of all the different versions of the Indo-Pacific concept, Southeast Asians align closest with the one championed by Japan. Though marked by comparatively fewer declaratory pronouncements and policy papers, Japan’s FOIP has been the most advanced in terms of action. Released last year, the ASEAN outlook on the Indo-Pacific refers, similarly to Japan’s FOIP, to the UN development goals and building connectivity and prosperity.

Japan remains the key balancing actor in the Mekong subregion where China dominates its smaller neighbours. Japan’s help through bilateral development assistance, multilateral institutions and energy and infrastructure investment is critical for overcoming the subregion’s sustainability challenges.

Under Abe, Japan also has become a champion of free trade. The US and China are engaged in a trade and technology war that undermines the global supply chains that gird Southeast Asian trade. Among Donald Trump’s first decisions as president was to withdraw the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the world’s largest trade deal. Japan has taken the leadership in continuing the TPP after the US withdrawal, now the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. This support was not only greatly appreciated by the Southeast Asian members of the TPP, but also asserted Japan’s leadership globally.

Japan has also advanced its critical role at sea, actively supporting Southeast Asian nations with maritime awareness capacity-building. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei have all hosted regular naval visits and training, engaged in exercises and, in some cases, received patrol boats from Japan, all very well received amid mounting challenges in the South China Sea.

All of that has earned Japan solid trust in the region. Surveys have found that Japan is by far the most trusted major power by people in the 10 Southeast Asian countries. Confidence in Japan continues to strengthen, while confidence in both China and the US sharply declines—testimony to the fact that long-term efforts and commitments are needed to earn trust. Abe’s approach to Southeast Asia stands out from more transactional ones favoured by Beijing and Washington.

Abe’s diplomatic acumen is another reason why many in Southeast Asia, and South Asia and Oceania, look up to him. He is among very few global leaders who have dealt with both Xi Jinping and Trump with some success—two relationships that are vital for Japan and are asymmetric and fragile for different reasons.

Abe’s most important legacy may be in the foreign policy arena: he strengthened Japan’s international reputation. Today, Japan is the partner of choice of most countries in the Indo-Pacific, with exception of some of its Northeast Asian neighbours, and has positioned itself as a credible, reliable pole in the evolving multipolar world.

Today, on the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, questions remain about what stopped the Japanese from invading Australia, and how it was that many of our personnel came home alive and unwounded despite the dreadful conditions they faced.

The answers largely define an achievement of Australia’s World War II generation.

Although Australia had thousands of airmen serving Britain in Europe and the Middle East, and three infantry divisions in Egypt and Palestine, these contributions to the British war effort were a down-payment for British protection against Japan, the only nation with the capability and intent to directly threaten Australia.

The fall of Britain’s defence shield, Singapore, to Japanese forces in mid-February 1942 has convinced Australians that their nation was left defenceless, and was only saved from invasion because of American assistance and a Japanese agenda to finish the war in China.

In reality, the opportunity to secure the southern flank, of all their conquests, would have been irresistible to the Japanese, and good military strategy. The only aid that Britain and the US were able to send was General Douglas MacArthur. No significant American forces reached Australia until well past that critical phase of the war (February to June 1942).

Something was happening in Australia that caused Japan to reject invasion, as it did in late February 1942. The opportunity to invade a defenceless Australia would never have looked more viable.

Australia had just completed its industrialisation in 1939. From 1919, Australian governments had fought off the determined efforts of the great economic powers to prevent that happening. But by combining with industrial companies such as BHP, and Collins House, and using its own technical organisations such as the Munitions Supply Board of the Department of Defence, Australia created the key industries required.

By December 1941, the nation had been in a full war economy for 18 months, and by March 1942 had created enough armaments to fully equip six infantry divisions. These units were equipped to fight German panzer divisions, and were twice as powerful as Japanese divisions and much more mobile. Their artillery was twice the strength of Japanese field artillery and outranged it. The Australian 2-pounder anti-tank guns outranged all Japanese tanks in Southeast Asia and could penetrate their armour, making it disastrous for any tank force.

The scale of Australia’s armament program is recorded in the monthly reports of the director-general of munitions and backed up by similar monthly reports from the army on what it was receiving from the department. Both were war cabinet documents. By June 1942, Australian production had equipped eight infantry divisions with modern weapons.

Having had diplomatic representation in Australia until December 1941, Japan was most likely well informed, in general terms, about Australia’s burgeoning industrial war economy, which, apart from its own, was unique in the Pacific and Southeast Asia.

In late February 1942, the Japanese army and navy discussed an invasion of Australia. Although the navy was enthusiastic, the army put forward a military appreciation which dismissed the idea as far too dangerous.

It recognised that Australian forces were likely to be better armed than the Japanese divisions, and more mobile. The appreciation said an invasion would require a minimum of 12 divisions. This force could not be provided from existing resources without weakening Japan’s hold on its conquests, and it might still be defeated by the aggressive Australians defending their homeland. The Japanese army rejected the navy’s suggestion. The idea was never considered seriously again by the Japanese.

Australian scientists, technocrats and industrialists had created so much equipment that Japan could not supply the volumes of its own materiel to overcome it. Japanese airpower could not redress this imbalance because it had not developed effective close air-to-ground support for its troops and had to face heavy Australian anti-aircraft defence. The Japanese were also aware that Australian strength in fighter aircraft was increasing steadily, and that radars were spread up the east and north coasts of Australia. Thus, Australia’s greatest strategic victory in World War II was achieved by science, technology and secondary industry.

The US naval victory at the battle of Midway, in early June 1942, removed the Japan’s capability to invade Australia by destroying its main aircraft carriers. This made it safe for Australia to begin to transfer military power to fight the Japanese in Australian Papua and New Guinea. Australia had to re-equip its army to cope with the corrosive jungle environment and extremely steep and rugged terrain. The battles took place in terrible conditions, which should have favoured the Japanese defenders. A stalemate was the most likely result, with heavy casualties on both sides, which the Japanese were willing to accept.

The early battles followed this pattern. But Australia had organised its scientific and technical resources far more efficiently than Japan. By mid-1943, Australia had become, for the allies, the centre of research into jungle organisms and jungle-proofing of all weapons and equipment. A flood of new equipment, specially treated clothing and food, and a vastly superior medical support system with Australian-made drugs and antibiotics swung the struggle in the jungle decisively in Australia’s favour.

Japanese battle casualties in the Southwest Pacific inflicted by the Australians were well over 50,000, whereas Australian battle casualties were 14,700. Japanese deaths from disease and starvation in the same area were over 100,000. Australian deaths from the same causes were about 1,000.

At this ratio of 1:3, Australian battle losses were the opposite of the classical ratio for an attacking force encountering a well-prepared defence, in rugged, well-covered terrain. The Australians reversed this loss ratio through better-designed weapons, better communications, better-quality ammunition and flexible battle tactics. Japanese weapons were poorly designed for jungle warfare in equatorial regions, their ammunition and communications were degraded by jungle organisms, and their battle tactics were often inappropriate for the conditions and terrain in which they fought.

The extraordinary imbalance in deaths caused by disease and starvation was a direct consequence of the Japanese army’s lack of logistic and medical support for its troops. Before World War II, Japan had conducted nearly all its campaigns in well-populated and productive environments such as China and Manchuria. These environments were not particularly unhealthy, so it could get away with a rudimentary medical system. Similarly, food could be taken from the local populations, so Japanese forces did not need an elaborate logistic support system.

When Japan began its Kokoda campaign, it needed to sweep away the opposition quickly, before disease took hold in Japanese troops and they exhausted their rudimentary food supplies. They could not rely on getting food from the sparse local population.

Although it took some time to organise, by early 1943 the Australian logistic system provided good medical support and increasing amounts of food.

The result was devastating, because nearly all of Japan’s post-Kokoda campaigns in Southeast Asia were conducted in jungle environments with sparse populations, which dramatically exposed logistic and medical deficiencies.

The impact of Australian science, technology and secondary industry on the survivability of Australian troops can be calculated roughly. Australian forces might have expected a minimum of around 45,000 casualties, given that they were trying to drive the Japanese out of very formidable defensive positions. If the Japanese had been able to prolong their resistance, this would have produced a situation like many World War I campaigns and caused Australian casualties as high as 80,000. The impact on Australia would have been enormous.

Australia’s war economy also provided vast amounts of clothing to hundreds of thousands of American service personnel in the Southwest Pacific. Huge quantities of basic materials for road and base building, as well as armaments, transport and signal equipment, were also supplied. In 1943, Australia supplied 95% of the food for 1,000,000 American servicemen. In commenting on this wartime support, President Harry Truman wrote in his 1946 report to the US Congress on the Lend-Lease Act, ‘On balance, the contribution made by Australia, a country having a population of about seven millions, approximately equalled that of the United States’.

This extraordinary result highlighted the monumental achievements of Australia’s World War II generation. Clearly, Australian governments of the 1930s regarded defence preparations as being more than the accumulation of armaments, which then rapidly became obsolete. They chose to put their effort into the development of secondary industry, which advanced national development and immigration, but also provided a huge amount of flexibility in what could be produced to arm the nation in an emergency.

They did this in a way that deserves much greater recognition.

If the Japanese government’s performance in dealing with the threat of the novel coronavirus Covid-19 is any indication, the upcoming Tokyo Olympic Games are doomed to fail even before they begin. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is preparing emergency legislation and a majority of schools are now closed, as Abe requested, for around a month in an effort to contain the spread of the virus. But the move is too little, too late.

The scary truth is that no one is in charge of managing Japan’s response to the coronavirus.

Bureaucrats have failed to put together a competent team or provide transparent reports about decision-making processes. Meanwhile, political leaders have made themselves look busy by jumping from meeting to meeting and repeating experts’ statements to the press instead of making the difficult decisions that are becoming increasingly urgent.

The contrast between Beijing and Tokyo is striking and unflattering to Japan. Downtown Beijing is deserted as people try to avoid spreading the virus by staying home. Tokyo looks like business as usual, with trains and subways still packed.

The Japanese government has shifted its efforts to contain the spread of the virus from seaports and airports to focusing on communities and asking people to stay at home. But the messages have been mixed. The media remains optimistic, reporting that the virus is mild and will likely taper off as summer arrives. As a result, not all local communities are adhering to Abe’s request to close schools. There’s little detailed symptom data available from authorities and doctors. Only healthcare workers are voicing real concern, while the public struggles to judge how to protect itself from this ‘very mild’ yet deadly virus.

This is not to downplay the efforts of the individual authorities who are engaged at the frontline. The emergency budget of US$138 million—though far less than emergency funding in the United States—is a significant step forward, helping to produce more testing kits, secure more beds in health facilities and fund research about the virus. But what’s lacking is coordination and leadership.

Bureaucratic silos have resulted in parallel taskforces and meetings convened by the prime minister’s office, the cabinet office, the ministries of health, labour and welfare, and the Tokyo metropolitan government. Health experts and officials from various agencies debate the same topics repetitively in multiple meetings, while Abe has put no one in charge.

Arbitrary bureaucratic interference is preventing authorities from implementing a desperately needed nationwide effort that includes the best experts from academia, research centres and industry. The National Center for Global Health and Medicine—one of the main research centres for infectious diseases—wasn’t invited to be part of a crucial taskforce. There have also been delays in rolling out favipiravir, the antiviral drug being developed by Fujifilm that could be effective against the virus, because it was approved only as a treatment for influenza and not Covid-19.

Lessons learned from past crises in Japan such as the 2011 tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster appear to have been forgotten. Japan’s civil service lacks institutional memory as the system circulates bureaucrats from one position to another every two years and prioritises internal incentives on addressing domestic issues rather than on building global networks. The recommendations from the first-ever independent investigation committee of the Diet haven’t improved the system, and nor have they changed the mindset of the policy elite.

This time of crisis is a chance for Japan to develop innovative solutions to these complex challenges. But the authorities are blindfolded within the existing jurisdiction-based framework and continue to misallocate resources and prevent cross-sector collaboration.

The National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID) was solely designated to produce diagnosis kits and to handle testing because it sits under the Health Ministry’s supervision. But NIID is not the most productive device maker and its testing method takes at least six hours to produce a result. The institute originally had the capacity to conduct only 200 tests per day. It was able to increased that to over 400 tests per day when it introduced three-shift operations to run 24-hour testing. But by early February NIID was crying out for help to increase its capacity, prompting the government to finally go to the private sector to produce faster testing devices in late February.

The authorities could have turned to the private sector for help from the beginning; there are many efficient device makers in Japan that would have responded to incentives for quick and effective diagnosis kits. The hesitation to give the antibody to private makers has resulted in a severe shortage of testing capacity across the country.

The absence of appropriate risk communication is feeding confusion and even hysteria in foreign media coverage of Japan’s response to the crisis. The chain of command is vague and bureaucrats have incentives to cast aside things that are not written in the rules, further delaying responses.

The good news is that despite all the mishandling and delays, the majority of Japanese people still trust the government and try to follow its instructions. Local institutions and individuals are taking serious prevention measures, even as the Japanese leadership is failing to manage the situation.

Before it’s too late, the authorities need first to designate a person in charge, and second, to provide reliable data and patient symptom information in a timely manner so that communities can fight the virus effectively.

The world is watching to see if the Japanese government can step up and show the commitment needed to overcome this enormous challenge ahead of the Olympics.