Major stations and downtown areas throughout the nation saw far fewer people on the first Sunday since a nationwide state of emergency was declared last week.
According to analysis of big data, there were 86.9 percent fewer people in the Umeda district in Osaka compared to before the outbreak of the new coronavirus, while visitors to the Shinjuku district in Tokyo fell by 79.9 percent.
In some cities, however, the decline was less than 50 percent.
Tokyo-based NTT Docomo Inc. compiled a mobile spatial statistics report, which uses anonymous mobile phone location information to estimate how many people are in a 500-meter-square area.
The company used this method to calculate how many people were at major stations and shopping districts in 47 prefectures this Sunday and then compared the figure to how many people, on average, were in these places on weekends and holidays between Jan. 18 and Feb. 14, before the spread of the virus.
The data all indicates the number of people present at 3 p.m. on the different days.
There was an over 70 percent drop in Tokyo and the prefectures of Osaka, Kanagawa, Saitama, Chiba, Hyogo and Fukuoka, where a state of emergency was declared on April 7.
The declaration was later expanded nationwide.
Declines were less sharp in prefectures that were more recently designated as needing stricter virus prevention measures, likely because the measures have just been enacted. Gifu Station and Mito Station, for example, both saw their numbers fall by 55.9 percent.
In Iwate Prefecture, where no one was believed to be infected with the virus as of Sunday, the number of people seen at Morioka Station dropped by 51.5 percent.
Kokusai-dori avenue in Okinawa Prefecture witnessed a 24.2 percent decline. One factor is believed to be the drop in foreign visitors to the prefecture since January.
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