Column: In Japan, masks and EVs are sad symbols of resistance to change

TOKYO — What do COVID-19 masks and electric vehicles have in common?

In Japan, maybe more than meets the eye.

Both are sad symbols of the country's resistance to change.

Long after the rest of the world ditched masks and declared victory over the pandemic, people in the Land of the Rising Sun still cling — almost perversely so — to their beloved face protection. On the train, in the office, at the store — masks are de rigueur.

Late at night, walking home alone, on a deserted street? Natch. Outside, inside; it barely matters. You'd be surprised how many Japanese still can't break the compulsion to mask up.

And that's despite the government giving the all-clear in March for people to take them off, and officially ending immigration quarantine restrictions on visitors from overseas April 29.

Indeed, if you spot someone brazen enough to bear their chin, you better bet it's a foreigner.

Meanwhile, consider Japan's reluctance to adopt EVs.

As the rest of the world rushes to roll out EVs, Japanese carmakers and their domestic customers cling stubbornly to hybrids and internal combustion — especially in ubiquitous minicars.

Full EVs account for barely 2 percent of new-car sales in Japan. That compares with about 5.8 percent in the U.S., 14 percent in Europe and a whopping 21 percent in China, according to data from France's InovEV.

And here's the telling detail.

In a notoriously finicky country where outside automakers find it hard to gain traction — imports command only 5 percent of the total market — foreign brands account for 21 percent of all full EVs sold in Japan. The share jumps to 46 percent when you cut out minicars.

It's not just fancy, premium marques such as Tesla, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche.

Brands such as South Korea's Hyundai and China's BYD are actually exporting EVs to Japan. They see an opportunity to fill the void of full EV offerings lacking from Japan's domestic players.

Even the likes of France's DS and Peugeot carry all-electric nameplates here.

Homegrown brands, by contrast, offer only a handful of low-volume EVs, such as the Mitsubishi eK X and Nissan Sakura minicars, the Nissan Ariya and Leaf, Subaru Solterra and Toyota bZ4X.

Japan has its reasons for moving slowly on EVs. The market is already saturated with gasoline-electric hybrids, which cut carbon emissions and save fuel. Charging is sparse, and lots of people live in apartments that don't provide garage plugs. Japan's electric grid is powered mostly by fossil fuels, which partly defeats the point of EVs. And many here fear widespread supplier job losses by quitting combustion and all the transmissions, piston rings and spark plugs that go with it.

But there is a parallel to be drawn.

Japan's reflexive fealty to masks and its entrenched reluctance on EVs illustrate how the insular island nation is sometimes out of sync with the rest of the world — or trailing in important trends.

It has happened before. Remember Japan's cool flip phones from the early 2000s, the first that could offer wide-ranging Internet access? They were state of the art. Until Apple came along, then Samsung. Japan's cellphone makers and their technology were soon left in the dust.

Japan, suffering a serious case of not-invented-here syndrome and stuck in a rut, didn't see that the rest of the world was marching forward in another direction. The blinders were on.

There's a Japanese term called gaiatsu, which translates as outside pressure.

Textbook episodes of gaiatsu include U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry's forced opening of Japan for trade in 1854 and the imposition of a new constitution by the U.S. military occupation following World War II.

In short, the idea is that Japan has a tendency to change only when forced to from outside.

Both on EVs and masks, Japan needs some gaiatsu to shift gears.

These days, gaiatsu may slowly be turning some wheels.

Toyota and Honda are among the carmakers ramping up EV rollout plans. It seems Japan is finally starting to wake up to the threat of Tesla and hungry Chinese rivals. In a recent interview with Japan's Nikkei newspaper, Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe dubbed it "Tesla Shock."

"We are saying, 'Hurry up, hurry up' within the company," Mibe said about Honda's pivot to EVs.

As foreign tourists now flood into the country after the spring cherry blossom season, some Japanese are finding inspiration in these fearless, maskless travelers from afar. More locals are bucking the peer pressure of their countrymen and daring to drop that old pandemic gauze guard.

As your faithful foreign correspondent stationed in Tokyo, I wish I could say that I serve as a brave example to the Japanese on the joys of mask-free living.

But as someone who has lived here for more than a decade, I also don't want to be "that guy" in the judgmental eyes of my hosts. In Japan, I feel my own kind of outside pressure.