Without delving into the semantic discourse over definitions of a lockdown and an emergency, there is an exceptional facet to the emergency that has been declared by Japan’s Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, on Tuesday. Chiefly, Governors of States can ask residents to refrain from going out, but the request is not mandatory.

Inherent is a remarkable degree of grace and civility on the part of the authorities and a sense of discipline on the part of the populace. Most particularly, in the moment of a national crisis, the average Japanese is a stranger to defiance. There is distinctly a liberal underpinning that marks the emergency in Japan. However critical the coronavirus scenario, the authorities have not imposed what they call an “urban lockdown” as the one imposed in China’s Wuhan, where the potentially killer virus germinated last December.

The emergency does not envisage a ban on leaving home as in Europe, the United States and also, of course, India. In certain respects, therefore, the emergency is far less stringent than a lockdown. The Japanese model presupposes a remarkably disciplined citizenry with a sense of responsibility towards other citizens in matters pertaining to public health. Mr Abe’s model is in refreshing contrast to the nationwide lockdown in India, where offenders have had to be lathicharged (as in West Bengal) or threatened with the bullet (as by the Chief Minister of Telangana).

Upon a state of emergency, no penalties can be imposed for disobedience, and small facilities and stores are not subject to the law, in principle. Vehicular traffic and the running of trains are not immediately blocked, once again a far cry from what obtains in India where the collapse of connectivity, almost total, has exacerbated the privation of the migrants.

But this was perhaps inevitable in a country where disobedience and lack of consideration for others are by and large integral to the national psyche. In the case of Japan, no less critical is the economic perspective. Implicit in Tuesday’s announcement is the degree of planning. Mr Abe has unveiled a stimulus package that he describes as among the “world’s biggest” to soften the economic blow. The emergency will be in force till 6 May and will be imposed in Tokyo and six other prefectures, accounting for about 44 per cent of Japan’s population.

“The most important thing now is for each citizen to change our actions,” the Prime Minister said. “If each of us can reduce contact with other people by at least 70 per cent, and ideally by 80 per cent, we should be able to see a decline in the number of infections in two weeks,” he said. Shinzo Abe has prescribed a blueprint for Japan, one that countries in general would be proud of, but few able to claim.