A conservation scientist enlists Colombia’s ex-guerrillas in a new cause: preserving their country’s biodiversity

Plant biologist Dairon Cárdenas López from the Sinchi Amazonic Institute of Scientific Research teaches ex-combatants how to collect samples from plants. LILIANA HEREDIA

By Rodrigo Pérez Ortega Jul. 8, 2020 , 12:35 PM

For more than 50 years, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) fought a civil war sparked partly by social inequities from the remote jungles of Colombia. In 2016, FARC and the Colombian government signed a peace agreement. Suddenly, a question loomed: How to reincorporate 14,000 former combatants back into society?

Jaime Góngora, a wildlife geneticist at the University of Sydney, saw an opportunity. A native of Colombia, “I saw how many people were being impacted directly and indirectly by the conflict,” he says. But he also believed in the potential of conservation to give the ex‑combatants a new purpose. After all, they had spent years in the jungle and knew it better than anyone.

Colombia is considered one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, but its jungles and forests remain largely unexplored by scientists, thanks in part to FARC’s occupancy. Since the peace agreement, surveys in these regions have found close to 100 new species. Góngora now leads a group of researchers from the United Kingdom, Australia, and 10 Colombian institutions who are working with ex‑combatants to study Colombia’s native plants and animals

Since 2017, Góngora has gone back to Colombia three or four times a year to organize workshops with more than 100 ex‑combatants and train them in conservation science skills. Science sat down with Góngora in Washington, D.C., in early March, before the coronavirus pandemic slowed his project, which has suspended in-person training but plans to continue virtually.

This interview, translated from Spanish, has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Q: How did this project start and how did you establish the relationships with the ex-combatants?

A: Federica Di Palma, an evolutionary genomicist at the Earlham Institute invited me to partner in a capacity-building project called GROW Colombia. Supported by the Global Challenges Research Fund with £6.5 million, it aims to build bioscience and biodiversity conservation both in Colombia and the United Kingdom.

However, I identified that the project was missing something important for Colombia’s post‑conflict situation: the ex-combatants. So, I proposed training programs, which I named Peace with Nature, that seek to empower these ex-combatants with citizen science skills.

The initial contact through the Colombian embassies in the United Kingdom and Australia, and the consultation with stakeholders, including FARC, took 15 to 18 months—it’s been a lot of work.




Jaime Góngora leads a citizen science workshop in March. COURTESY OF JAIME GÓNGORA

Q: What are the main goals of Peace with Nature?

A: It aims to drive sustainable development and empower former members of FARC to become conservationists. This is a vital step to enable them to contribute to environmental projects, improve their livelihoods, and reincorporate into society. We teach them to undertake inventories of biodiversity and protect it, as well as come up with sustainable environment-based business ideas.

These workshops have also increased awareness of potential ecotourism projects where they live. We are providing opportunities to develop connections with regional and national institutions to implement their projects.

Q: Training ex-combatants to do citizen science is not something you hear about every day. What has been their response so far?

A: Very positive. We built on their traditional knowledge, interest in environmental aspects, and connection to nature as they spent many years in the most remote parts of the jungle, forest, savannas, and mountains.

They engaged in designing the methodologies, identifying the routes where the inventories would take place and could be used for ecotourism purposes. They shared with us their traditional knowledge, how they live in the jungle, what medicinal plants they used and bush food they consumed. Along with this, they explained the ecological aspect embedded in their stories.

In the workshops, which last three to five days in remote areas of Colombia, they learn techniques for biodiversity inventories. They now have excellent skills—they obtain samples and walk in the bushes without making noises so they can see birds, monkeys, and other animals. They also learn to use iNaturalist—and app and online repository for biodiversity used by citizen scientists around the globe—to document part of the inventories and inform potential ecotourists of attractions in their communities.

The response of Colombia’s government agencies, research institutes and academia has also been very positive.

Q: Right after the peace deal was announced, researchers started to venture into previously unexplored territories to study them. Why include ex-combatants in research and not, for example, undergraduate students?

A: If we are talking about biodiversity as part of the post-conflict situation, this is not only for academics and researchers. The main participants there are ex-combatants. A socioeconomic survey of more than 10,000 FARC ex-combatants showed that their ages range between their 20 to 60 years, with 77% men. Most of them know how to read and write and half of them have a primary education. When asked about what jobs they wanted to do now that there’s peace, 84% of them were interested in terrestrial and river environmental restoration.

Q: What kind of workshops and inventories have you carried out so far?

A: I led a major Peace with Nature workshop in a former guerrilla village in the Caquetá province. Thirty ex-combatants, 20 men and 10 women, took part, representing 16 villages. As a result, we did the first inventory, but the main goal was to do a nationwide training so we could build on these skills and knowledge for subsequent workshops at the regional level.

We did the first regional workshop last March in a remote ex-combatant village named Charras in the province of Guaviare at the interface of three major ecosystems in Colombia: Andes, Orinoquia, and Amazon. There, we did a more comprehensive workshop and inventory of an ecotourism trail identifying more than 120 plant and animal species, which were uploaded to iNaturalist.

Q: What has surprised you the most working with the ex-combatants?

A: In some of the workshops, we have the presence of the police and military forces along with the ex-combatants. I think what has surprised me most is the opportunity that biodiversity offers for reconciliation and healing after an armed conflict. These workshops have been spaces for a respectful dialogue about biodiversity and nature.

Ex-combatants and soldiers were fighting each other some years ago, and now they work together and learn together—it’s all-around biodiversity.

(Watch a video about Peace with Nature here.)

doi:10.1126/science.abd7316

Rodrigo Pérez Ortega is a science journalist covering life sciences, medicine, health, and academia.

Polynesians on Nuku Hiva, an island in the North Marquesas, carry traces of Native American ancestry. 

Polynesians steering by the stars met Native Americans long before Europeans arrived

 DMITRI ALEXANDER/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

By Lizzie WadeJul. 8, 2020 , 11:00 AM

By about 1200 C.E., Polynesians were masters of oceanic exploration, roaming 7000 kilometers across the Pacific Ocean in outrigger canoes. Guided by subtle changes of wind and waves, the paths of migrating birds, bursts of light from bioluminescent plankton, and the position of the stars, they reached and settled islands from New Zealand to Rapa Nui, or Easter Island, the closest Polynesian island to South America.

So it’s natural to wonder: Did these world-class explorers make it the last 3800 kilometers to South America? A genomic study of more than 800 modern Polynesians and Native Americans suggests they did.

The work strengthens earlier evidence that somewhere—perhaps on the northern coast of South America—the two groups met and mixed well before the era of European colonialism. And it shakes up the most popular model of where Native American genes first took root in Polynesia, shifting the focus from Rapa Nui to islands farther west

“This is an excellent, exciting study,” says Lars Fehren-Schmitz, an anthropological geneticist at the University of California (UC), Santa Cruz. Expanding genomic research to islands beyond Rapa Nui “was what was missing from the whole picture.”

Earlier hints of contact between the two regions included the sweet potato, which was domesticated in the Andes but grown and eaten all over Polynesia for hundreds of years before Europeans arrived. And a 2014 study of 27 modern people from Rapa Nui found they had Native American ancestry dating back to between 1300 C.E. and 1500 C.E.—at least 200 years before the first Europeans landed there in 1722 C.E. But a 2017 ancient DNA study, led by Fehren-Schmitz, found no sign of Native American ancestry in five people who lived on Rapa Nui before and after European contact.


Population geneticist Andrés Moreno-Estrada and anthropologist Karla Sandoval, both at Mexico’s National Laboratory of Genomics for Biodiversity, traveled to Rapa Nui in 2014 and invited the community to participate in a study. They analyzed genome-wide data from 166 people from the island. Then they combined those data with genomic analyses of 188 Polynesian people from 16 other islands, whose genetic samples had been collected in the 1980s.

“It’s an amazing data set,” says Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas, a population geneticist at the University of Lausanne who led the 2014 work that found evidence for contact.

Moreno-Estrada, Sandoval, and their team found that people on many islands had both Polynesian and European ancestry, reflecting their colonial histories. But they were also able to detect a small amount of Native American ancestry in people from the eastern Polynesian islands of Palliser, the Marquesas, Mangareva, and Rapa Nui. The Native American sequences were short and nearly identical—seemingly a legacy of one long-ago meeting with a Native American group, rather than sustained contact over generations, Moreno-Estrada says.

Comparing those sequences with genomes from people from 15 Indigenous groups from the Pacific coast of Latin America, researchers found most similarity to the Zenu, an Indigenous group from Colombia, the team reports today in Nature.

Analyses of the length of the Native American sequences show this ancestry appeared first on Fatu Hiva in the South Marquesas roughly 28 generations ago, which would date it to about 1150 C.E. That’s about when the island was settled by Polynesians, raising the possibility the contact happened even earlier. The genetic legacy of that mixing was then carried by Polynesian voyagers as they settled other islands, including Rapa Nui.

Where exactly the first encounter took place, the team can’t say. Modern Latin American fishermen lost at sea have been known to drift all the way to Polynesian islands. “It could have been one raft lost in the Pacific,” Moreno-Estrada says.

But it’s more likely that Polynesians traveled to the northern coast of South America, says Keolu Fox, a genome scientist at UC San Diego. Polynesian voyagers frequently traveled between islands and could have journeyed to South America and back, perhaps multiple times, Fox says. “In the process, these Polynesians bring back the sweet potato, and they also bring back a small fragment of Native American DNA” from relationships on the mainland. “The ocean is not a barrier” for Polynesians, he says.

Fehren-Schmitz and other researchers agree contact is likely, but stress that only ancient DNA can provide direct evidence of an encounter. But DNA degrades quickly in the tropics—and Polynesian communities that remember being disrespected by Western scientists in the past may be reluctant to grant permission for genetic studies of their ancestors, says Fox, who is Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian). To move forward, he says, researchers need to deeply engage on an ongoing basis with descendant communities on many islands.

For now, “This study shows us a new path to follow,” says Francisco Torres Hochstetter, an archaeologist at the Father Sebastian Englert Anthropological Museum in Hanga Roa on Rapa Nui. “It opens our minds.” 

doi:10.1126/science.abd7159 


Lizzie Wade is Science's Latin America correspondent, based in Mexico Cit

Japan supercomputer finds ways to cut risk of airborne virus infection

Operating trains with windows open and limiting number of passengers

 may help reduce risk of infection

REUTERS

Supercomputer-driven models simulated in Japan have suggested that operating commuter trains with windows open and limiting the number of passengers may help reduce the risk of novel coronavirus infection, as scientists warn the virus may spread in the air.

In an open letter published Monday, 239 scientists in 32 countries outlined evidence they say shows floating virus particles can infect people who breathe them in.

The World Health Organization (WHO) acknowledged “evidence emerging” of airborne transmission, but said it was not definitive.

Even if the coronavirus is airborne, questions remain about how many infections occur through that route. How concentrated the virus is in the air may also decide contagion risks, said Professor Yuki Furuse of Kyoto University.

In the open letter, scientists urged for improvements to ventilation and the avoidance of crowded, enclosed environments — recommendations Japan broadly adopted months ago, according to Shin-ichi Tanabe, one of the co-authors of the letter.

“In Japan, the committee for COVID-19 countermeasures insisted on the 3Cs at an early stage,” said Tanabe, a professor at Waseda University in Tokyo, referring to Japan’s public campaign to avoid closed spaces, crowded places and close-contact settings. “This was ahead of the world.”

As the nation tamed the pandemic, with over 19,000 confirmed cases and 977 deaths so far, Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura credited its success to the 3Cs and its cluster-tracing strategy.

The recent study by Japanese research giant Riken using the world’s fastest supercomputer, the Fugaku, to simulate how the virus travels in the air in various environments recommended several ways to lower infection risks in public settings.

Makoto Tsubokura, the study’s lead researcher, said that opening windows on commuter trains can increase ventilation two- to threefold, lowering the concentration of ambient microbes.

But to achieve adequate ventilation, there needs to be space between passengers, the simulations showed, representing a drastic change from the custom of packing commuter trains tightly, for which the nation is notorious.

Other findings advised the installation of partitions in offices and classrooms, while hospital beds should be surrounded by curtains that touch the ceiling.

A-bomb survivor Setsuko Thurlow calls for early enforcement of nuke ban pact

Setsuko Thurlow speaks at a peace event in Hiroshima in a photo taken on Nov. 9. | KYODO

KYODO

NEW YORK – Atomic bombing survivor and peace advocate Setsuko Thurlow on Tuesday called for more countries to join a nuclear ban treaty so that the U.N.-adopted pact can enter into force at an early date.

In an online gathering hosted by Japanese nongovernmental organization Peace Boat, Thurlow, who survived the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima at age 13, shared a vision of denuclearization and disarmament so as to prevent further tragedies.

“That massive killing of human beings — it is not acceptable behavior, it’s totally illegal, and that’s something we can avoid,” Thurlow said. “Our resources should be to enrich human life, not to destroy our lives.”

The 88-year-old also welcomed recent international momentum for abolishing nuclear weapons.

“Maybe I won’t live long enough to see the total elimination of nuclear weapons, but it would be nice if that happened,” she said.

Her speech comes ahead of the 75th anniversary of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki just days before Japan’s surrender in World War II.

This year also marks the third anniversary of the adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in July 2017. “We can’t just let it stand, doing nothing. We have to make it work by bringing in 12 more nations,” Thurlow said, referring to the total of 38 countries that had ratified the pact as compared to the 50 required for it to enter into force.

Later in the day, Fiji completed the process of ratification, becoming the 39th country to do so.

But the potential effectiveness of the treaty remains uncertain as all five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, all of which possess nuclear weapons — as well as Japan and others have declined to ratify the nuclear ban treaty.

A longtime resident of Canada, Thurlow has been actively involved in antinuclear movements, offering her personal account in English.

For her advocacy work with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, or ICAN, Thurlow was one of the representatives who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the campaign in 2017.

HERE’S WHY INTRODUCING A UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME MUST BE PART OF THE UK’S POST-COVID RECOVERY

 JONATHAN RHYS WILLIAMS 8TH JULY 2020


“A system that is humane, rapid and above all, simple.” Not words you’d expect a Tory MP to use when describing a policy that redistributes wealth from those who can afford to pay a little more to those who need a little more. Yet those are the words Tory grandee Sir Edward Leigh used to describe Universal Basic Income in March, when he urged the government to implement a ‘Recovery’ UBI to help those struggling from the financial fallout of the pandemic.

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a fixed, regular and unconditional payment given to all citizens regardless of their wealth, income or employment status. The idea isn’t new. In the 18th century, Thomas Paine wrote in Agrarian Justice how the Earth is the common property of man and we should all share in its spoils.

Indeed, Sir Red Ed said he ran the idea past Thatcher forty years ago, and although she wasn’t keen, her economic guru Milton Friedman was a fan of another form of basic income: the negative income tax. Martin Luther King also advocated the idea, as did Friedrich Hayek, and more recently, Pope Francis.

This idea reaches across the political spectrum, and at a time when all of us must play our part in rebuilding the economy we should consider new ways to ensure everyone receives the support they need. A UBI is the fairest way of doing this. It creates a financial floor that everyone can stand on, instead of relying on the trickle-down economics that followed the 2008 financial crash. That model did not work – it only served to increase the wealth of the very richest. We cannot afford to get the response wrong again, because if resurgent right-wing populism was the result of the last financial collapse, god only know what the result of the corona-crash will be.
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That’s why I contacted the UBI Lab Network and co-founded UBI Lab Cardiff with my old roomie Liam Richards. The idea is one I’ve followed for many years. With US Presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s success in bringing UBI to the American mainstream, and with the pandemic now shaking our economy to the core, it propelled me into doing more than just being an armchair admirer.

UBI Lab Cardiff’s objective is for a basic income trial to be undertaken here in Wales. We’ve written to the First Minister of Wales, asking him to follow Scotland’s lead (a report was recently published recommending Scotland hold a pilot) and to look at ways in which we can run a pilot here in Wales.

Our letter gained serious traction – prominent politicians such as the Welsh leaders of the Lib Dems and the Green Party signed the letter, as did several Cardiff councillors. We’ve since drafted a letter and a motion asking Cardiff Council to support the idea of a pilot in the city, and we’re in discussion with academics at Cardiff University to draft a working paper for our pilot. The UBI Lab Network has already successfully lobbied councils in Sheffield, Liverpool and Hull to pass motions backing the idea of a pilot, and we hope Cardiff will soon follow.

There’s now a body of evidence that illustrates the benefits of a basic income. Trials have been undertaken in Namibia, Canada, India and most recently in Finland. All have shown reductions in poverty and homelessness, significant increases in physical and mental wellbeing, significant improvements in public trust in government, higher levels of educational attainment and increases in employment.

The latter of these statistics may surprise you. UBI’s detractors often say that we would all sit at home and stop working. But that fails to recognise the fact that a UBI only provides a basic level of income. It does not provide for all of the things we enjoy doing, such as going out or going on holiday. It is simply a basic level of security to ensure that no one is left destitute in the 21st century. Not a big ask is it? You may also be surprised to learn that Alaska has had a form of basic income since the seventies, which is paid from a sovereign wealth fund created through oil profits. Good idea, right?
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Support is growing for UBI in Wales and across the UK, with over 100 MPs signing a letter for a Recovery UBI to be implemented as a response to the pandemic. The Future Generations Commissioner in Wales, Sophie Howe, recently supported a UBI as a “very real solution to helping people out of poverty and aiding the economy, while reducing society’s gaping inequalities which have grown deeper during the crisis.” Furthermore, the First Minister of Wales said at this year’s Hay Festival that he was willing to “play his part in such an experiment.”

UBI Lab Cardiff recognises that many people will wonder how we can afford to pay everyone a basic level of income if a trial was successful and UBI was rolled out to everyone. That conversation must run parallel with discussions about simultaneous measures such as reforming the tax system so that we tax wealth more effectively, the introduction of new taxes such as a carbon tax, and higher tax rates on top earners who would also receive a basic income but who don’t need it. In short, you would give high earners a basic income with one hand and take it away with the other through taxation.

We are not professing that UBI is a silver bullet that will eradicate poverty and solve all the other economic problems caused by years of austerity. But poverty is quite simply a lack of cash. By putting money directly into people’s hands they are likely to spend it in their local economies, which will help communities recover in the years following the pandemic. It will also give citizens the freedom and confidence to be entrepreneurial and retrain in readiness for a more automated economy, and this will help put rocket boosters under our post-Covid recovery.

In the midst of every crisis lies great opportunity, and a Universal Basic Income is that opportunity. The last time the UK faced a national emergency of this magnitude we founded our most-loved institution. That institution is universal, unconditional and free-to-use from cradle to grave.

It is time to make Universal Basic Income our generation’s NHS.

This article was written by Jonathan Rhys Williams, Co-Founder of the UBI Lab Cardiff.

The history behind Japan’s love of face masks

Are face masks effective in the fight against COVID-19? The nation’s experience with such products throughout history may provide some clues

To understand the nation’s relationship with masks, there’s a need to look further 

back in history, says Tamotsu Hirai, a clinical pharmacist and an avid collector of

 vintage medical paraphernalia. | GETTY IMAGES

BY ALEX MARTIN

STAFF WRITER

In Japan, it’s sometimes said that the eyes speak as much as the mouth.

Perhaps the proverbial phrase captures the essence of the nation’s affinity for face masks, a relationship that can be traced back centuries and a custom to which is attributed Japan’s lower number of deaths from COVID-19 compared with Western nations — in particular the United States, where wearing a mask has recently become a politically charged issue.

Masks are now omnipresent in Japan as a result of the pandemic, thanks in part to an inherent mask-wearing culture. Besides being sporadically worn during hay fever and influenza seasons, masks have expanded beyond their traditional role over the years and have even been adopted by the fashion and beauty industries.

There are masks that cut ultraviolet rays and prevent glasses from fogging, and masks that make the face look slimmer. There’s even a term for women who look good in masks — masuku bijin (masked beauty) — and contests are held to decide who among them looks the most attractive donning one. The key, apparently, is the enhancement of the eyes.

It’s good business, too. With global cases of the novel coronavirus on the rise as Japan’s humid summer arrives, companies across industry lines are rushing to produce cooling and drying face masks to help cope with the sweltering heat that medical experts warn could lead to breathing difficulties and dehydration.

On June 19, the day the Oklahoma Supreme Court rejected a requirement for face masks and social distancing at Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Tulsa, hordes of customers weathered the rain and queued at Uniqlo shops in Japan. They were there to purchase the apparel giant’s Airism brand face masks with breathable fabric, which went on sale that day. The masks sold out almost instantly, and shoppers accessing the firm’s online store crashed the site.

“We can’t disclose sales figures, but the reception is overwhelming,” says a spokesperson for the company, adding that Uniqlo plans to produce 500,000 Airism masks a week for the time being.

Other, lesser known makers are also devising creative ways to make masks bearable in the summer heat. Knit Waizu, a Yamagata Prefecture-based knitwear manufacturer, began selling reusable cloth masks in refrigerated vending machines in mid-March when cases of COVID-19 began climbing and a nationwide shortage of masks made headlines.

With so many masks out there, knowing how to select the right one can be confusing. | GETTY IMAGES

“We primarily assemble sweaters but decided to make masks when sales began falling amid the pandemic,” says Katsuyuki Goto, the president of the company. “Since we have a vending machine set up in front of our office, we experimented by loading it with masks.”

The refrigerated masks, selling for ¥690 each, were an instant hit. Sensing an opportunity, Knit Waizu in May introduced its ¥1,300 hiyashi (cooled) mask, a reusable cloth mask with pockets in which to insert ice packs. “We’ve sold 50,000 so far, and are looking to expand sales channels,” Goto says.

Meanwhile, Yamashin-Filter Corp., a manufacturer of filters for construction machinery, has adapted its technology to develop “nanofiber” masks and filters using ultrafine synthetic fibers with hard-to-penetrate gaps.

Yamashin says the diameter of fibers used in typical face masks is around 3 microns. By comparison, those in the company’s masks measure between 0.2 microns and 0.8 microns. A COVID-19 particle is around 0.1 microns in size, and the layered mesh of the filter is fine enough to block particles bearing the virus, it claims.

And while a majority of masks sold in Japan are imports, a Yamashin spokesperson says the company’s masks are manufactured domestically to ensure a stable supply for the local market.

“It takes around a week for us to deliver the product after receiving orders, but they’re doing very well,” the spokesperson says.

That’s not all. Kimono maker Otozuki co-produced a face veil for nightclub hostesses that looks similar to those worn by belly dancers. And in July, sports gear maker Yonex Co. began offering masks containing xylitol, which absorbs heat and responds to sweat.

With so many masks out there, knowing how to select the right one can be confusing.

Old masks typically featured an outer shell made of cloth with a separately fitted filter. | ALEX MARTIN

Kazunari Onishi, an associate professor specializing in public health at St. Luke’s International University in Tokyo, says the two most important functions of masks are capturing airborne particles and containing virus transmission.

“It’s crucial that the mask is the right fit and there are no open spaces when they are worn,” he says.

For protection against COVID-19, filters that capture particles down to 0.1 microns are essential. N95 or masks with a tight fit and high filtration capabilities that meet requirements of medical professionals will do the job, but they need to suit the user’s facial features, says Onishi, who last year published a book, “The Dignity of Masks.”

Any apertures will reduce the mask’s ability to shut out and conceal pathogens. That means masks touting breathability and those with cooling packs attached, for example, could be less effective due to wider spaces between fibers and the likelihood of slipping off due to their weight.

In terms of material, Onishi advises users to purchase those made from nonwoven fabric. The efficacy of cloth masks, such as the gauze masks the government distributed to households — dubbed the “Abenomask” — is limited. However, even cloth masks help curb the spread of viruses into the air, preventing people from touching their noses or mouths while keeping the throat moist, Onishi says.

The bottom line: During a pandemic it’s always better to wear a face mask, regardless of its quality.

Tamotsu Hirai is a clinical pharmacist and an avid collector of vintage medical paraphernalia, including masks. | ALEX MARTIN

But why have masks become so universally accepted in Japan? In other East Asian nations, the public practice became widespread in 2003 when SARS, another variant of the coronavirus, spread from China to neighboring countries. Crippling health care systems and leaving a trail of infections and deaths, the sickness ingrained a profound fear of viral respiratory diseases and opened eyes to the importance of masks in containing outbreaks.

Japan, however, was largely spared from the SARS epidemic, recording zero fatalities. To understand the nation’s relationship with masks, there’s a need to look further back in history, says Tamotsu Hirai, a clinical pharmacist and an avid collector of vintage medical paraphernalia.

Covering the mouth with paper or the sacred sakaki (Japanese cleyera) leaves to prevent one’s “unclean” breath from defiling religious rituals and festivals has been common from ancient times, Hirai says, and is a custom still observed at Yasaka Shrine in Kyoto and the Otori Grand Shrine in Osaka, among others. During the Edo Period (1603-1868), the practice seems to have penetrated a significant portion of the population.

During an interview at his office in Western Tokyo, Hirai pulls out a framed, multicolored woodblock print showing kimono-clad patients receiving treatments from people who appear to be a masseuse, an acupuncturist and a doctor. “This nishiki-e dating from the Edo Period depicts a scene of a medical clinic,” he explains. “If you take a close look, you’ll see one of the patients covering his mouth with what appears to be a piece of cloth.”

A detail of a woodblock print from the Edo Period (1603-1868) shows a patient at a medical clinic covering his mouth with a piece of cloth. | ALEX MARTIN

The modern history of masks begins in the Meiji Era (1868-1912), according to Hirai, who makes regular trips to antiques fairs held in the capital to find old pharmaceutical equipment.

Initially imported for mine, factory and construction workers, facial masks back then featured outer shells made from cloth fitted with brass wire mesh filters. In 1879, one of the first domestically produced masks was advertised in newspapers. Hirai owns one of these prototypes, carefully preserved in its original box adorned with a retro-chic illustration of a man wearing a mask with the inscription “RESPIRALTLL.”

Tamotsu Hirai owns one of the first domestically produced face masks that featured outer shells made from cloth fitted with brass wire mesh filters. | ALEX MARTIN

One of the first domestically produced masks sold during the Meiji Era (1868-1912) features an cloth outer shell fitted with a brass filter. | ALEX MARTIN

Celluloid gradually overtook metals to become the material of choice for the mesh filters. Costing around ¥3,500 by today’s standards, these weren’t cheap, Hirai says, and were made to be reused after replacing the gauze sheets, sold separately, that were inserted between the mouth and the mask.

Costing around ¥3,500 by today’s standards, these face masks weren’t cheap, says Tamotsu Hirai, and were made to be reused after replacing the gauze sheets, sold separately, that were inserted between the mouth and the mask. | ALEX MARTIN

The mask business flourished during the Taisho Era (1912-26) as the economy boomed with factories filling orders from Europe in the throes of World War I. Numerous products made from leather, velvet and other materials advertised under various brands inundated the market.

Masks were sold under various brands during the Taisho Era (1912-26). This one, owned by Tamotsu Hirai, is called Kohaku Masuku. | ALEX MARTIN

But the single most important event that elevated masks from being a luxury item to an everyday product for the masses was the Spanish flu, which killed tens of millions around the world between 1918 and 1920.

In Japan alone, 450,000 perished according to some estimates, with an additional 280,000 believed to have died on the Korean Peninsula and in Taiwan, which were under colonial Japanese rule at the time.

Saburo Shochi, a famously long-lived academic, was often interviewed about his experience during the pandemic.

In a story that ran on Nikkei Medical in 2008, the 90th anniversary of the start of the Spanish flu outbreak, Shochi recalled losing his classmates to “the bad cold.” Shochi said most of his family, including himself, then around 10 years old, caught the disease and were unable to get out of the futon for days. The infectious nature of the virus eventually became known, and people started wearing masks, which seemed to offer protection from the influenza, he said.

Educational posters from the period feature slogans such as “reckless are those who don’t wear masks.” And for those who couldn’t afford to buy masks, newspapers began giving instructions on how to make them at home, much like the online mask-making tutorials that flourished during Japan’s latest mask shortage.

During the early Showa Period (1926-89), masks similar to today’s three-dimensional models were produced. | ALEX MARTIN

During the early part of the Showa Period (1926-89), masks similar to today’s three-dimensional models were produced, but shortages arose during World War II when raw materials were reserved for the military. Simple and cheaper gauze masks became the norm. By the end of the war, the face mask — once a symbol of affluence — was reduced to a piece of gauze with strings attached.

“These were the bare essentials,” Hirai says, pulling out a flimsy sheet of cloth tucked into a thin, paper package bearing the words “aikoku masuku” (“patriot mask”).

By the end of World War II, the face mask — once a symbol of affluence — was reduced to a piece of gauze with strings attached. This one bears the words ‘aikoku masuku’ (patriot mask). | ALEX MARTIN

In the postwar years, masks gradually evolved into the current form, with white, disposable, nonwoven pleated masks becoming mainstream.

“This evolution of masks is something quite unique to Japan,” Hirai says.

As of July 3, Japan counts 19,068 that tested positive for COVID-19 and 976 deaths. While Trump has made a point of not wearing a face mask in public until an abrupt U-turn on July 1 where he said he’s “all for masks,” Japanese politicians have adopted masks in a wide range of designs, often incorporating regional motifs and features to promote their respective localities.

Populist Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike, known for her daily coronavirus briefings, has worn a variety of masks, some displaying an initial of her given name and others with illustrations of rabbits and apples. Replicas of the masks she wears are even being sold on flea market apps.

During a radio appearance in April, Koike summed up why we need to cover our mouths.

“It’s safe,” she said, “and, most importantly, we don’t want to put others in harm’s way.”

‘Healing Labor’: Examining how Japanese

 sex work is woven into culture and economy

Physical labor: In “Healing Labor,” Gabriele Koch spent nearly two years doing

 ethnographic fieldwork to explore how Japanese sex work is woven into a 

culture and economy that frequently puts women at a disadvantage. | GETTY IMAGES

BY NICOLAS GATTIG

CONTRIBUTING WRITER

One of the pleasures of Gabriele Koch’s new book “Healing Labor: Japanese Sex Work in the Gendered Economy” is how its erudition is mixed with an anthropologist’s ear on the ground. Alongside interviews with adult women workers in Tokyo’s sex industry, it starts with an excerpt from a Japanese TV show recorded in 2006 that may leave you scratching your head.

On the show, a young female office worker asks candidates for the prime ministership of Japan — including then-Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe — if they think it immoral to work in the sex industry. Impeded from realizing her intended career goals at a monthly salary of ¥140,000, the woman says she is drawn to the autonomy and the possible earnings the sex industry offers.

Healing Labor: Japanese Sex Work in the Gendered Economy, by Gabriele Koch
248 pages
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

After former Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki agrees that her current wage is indeed “a tough salary to live on,” Abe adds, to audience laughter, that the forms of sex work in Japan are diverse. “The law legally permits these businesses,” he continues. “There are people in this industry who take pride in what they do, and the industry also includes ‘traditional’ Japanese occupations.”

Abe concludes by asking the woman to consider the consequences of her choices, including becoming viewed as a social outsider, without commenting on her salary or lack of opportunities for advancement.

Problematic as that may sound, it is one of the many perspectives coming straight from the horse’s mouth that Koch has assembled into a menagerie of “sex for sale” stories from one of the largest markets in the world.

An assistant professor of anthropology at Yale-NUS College in Singapore, Koch spent almost two years on ethnographic fieldwork, exploring how Japanese sex work is woven into a culture and economy that frequently puts women at a disadvantage. Along the way, Koch says, she had to be open to surprises.

“I soon realized that the kinds of assumptions I had as an American about what sex work is, who’s involved and how (the women) think about their work didn’t really fit what I was hearing or seeing,” Koch says in an interview with The Japan Times.

“One surprise was how the sex industry is more or less accepted as socially necessary in Japan — and there is a long history to this,” says Koch. “But despite this acceptance, sex workers still face a lot of stigma. Both in Japan and in the United States, people often think of the sex industry as somehow different from the rest of society. But it’s an ordinary industry made up of ordinary people.”

With an adventurous spirit and scholarly matter-of-factness, Koch discusses a stunning array of sexual services, with over 22,000 legal businesses operating in Japan. Street solicitation has been criminalized since the early 2000s, and so the industry has shifted to a delivery, escort-based model, in addition to “soapland” sex parlors and other mainstays established after the Prostitution Prevention Law in 1956. One of the currently most popular offerings is deribari herusu (which literally translates to “delivery health”), where a sex worker is dispatched via a website to a private home or hotel.

Perhaps the most striking — and controversial — part of the book is to learn that sex workers connect their jobs to feminine care and male healing (iyashi), which they believe reduce sex crimes and serve to benefit the economy. Based on a pragmatist view of men’s sexual needs and a work culture known to push workers to utter exhaustion, sexual release supposedly helps to replenish male productivity. “Now I’m ready to face anything again,” many customers are quoted as saying.

Gabriele Koch, author of ‘Healing Labor: Japanese Sex Work in the Gendered Economy’ |

Of course, this sort of thinking is controversial, as it makes sex work and its attendant ills appear socially unavoidable. Koch writes that “in Japan, male sexuality has long been seen as something that should be managed so as to productively direct the energy of men, whether in the service of the wartime empire or the postwar economic ‘miracle.’”

Such “boys will be boys” acceptance may raise hackles, not only for feminists. Koch says that this thinking helps to perpetuate gender inequalities, yet she refrains from editorializing.

“As an anthropologist,” says Koch, “I am trained to focus on how people are making sense of their own experiences, and then to communicate this faithfully. It makes sense that, in a society in which people don’t generally assume that the industry is exploitative, sex workers regard themselves as making positive social contributions.”

As to the question of whether women do sex work of their own choosing, Koch stresses that many jobs available to Japanese women are low wage and nonregular work, which makes sex work seem like a viable alternative. She also warns, however, against seeing only victimization and abuse when looking at the sex industry.

“Sex workers tend to find these attitudes offensive, paternalistic and even detrimental to their rights,” says Koch. “The women I conducted research with found sex work appealing as the most lucrative and flexible option available within a sexist economy that they felt didn’t leave them with many attractive choices.”