Kumamoto has been designated as being under “pre-emergency status” (“quasi-emergency status” in the Japan Times article I link to below).
It seems that these terms are being used for the Japanese “man’en boushi tou juuten sochi” (まん延防止等重点措置). The terminology is a little confusing because the literal meaning of the Japanese term is not “pre-emergency” but somthing like “focused measures to prevent (the virus) from becoming widespread.” In illustrations about which prefectures are under which status, however, red is often used for emergency status and yellow for “man’en boushi” status, so it’s being presented as a step below full-blown emergency status and in that sense, “pre-emergency” is a reasonable translation. It’s one rank below the worst status.
Here’s a description from NHK of the main change this status will mean for us:
“The new measures targeted risky behavior. Governors in affected areas are calling on bars and restaurants that serve alcohol or offer karaoke to close. Other eateries are asked to shut at 8 p.m.”
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20210507_34/
Finally, here’s a little note that I’ll leave here for myself and others like me who are interested in figuring out how to link Japanese terms related to COVID-19 to appropriate/commonly used English renderings. The following blog, which is in Japanese, has about 30 articles on such terms, including “pre-emergency status.” Many of the articles cover more than one term so it’s a pretty extensive resource. The English terms are all taken from English-language news sources so the English is quite good.
https://www.daijob.com/crossculture/arimoto/list.html
I’d like to add that in writing this post, I was surprised at how difficult it was to figure out how the key policy term in Japanese (man’en etc.) is usually translated in English. I think there should be an official glossary to help bilingual people bridge the gap more easily. I did find the following page, which provides translations for many COVID-19 terms in many languages but it does list policy terms that are unique to Japan: https://glossaries.translatorswb.org/covid19/
– Kirk
P.S. In the post I made last night about the rate of infection I was mistaken about the unit of time. The numbers were not for the number of daily cases but for cases over the past week. I’ve corrected that post wanted to add a note here for the many people who wouldn’t ordinarily notice my correction. Those high numbers seem to have led to this designation. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/05/13/national/quasi-emergency-five-prefectures/
