I live in Japan. My wife and daughter are Japanese.
The point being that Japanese culture is obviously vaccine hesitant. Vaccines are widely available and their vaccinated numbers are still very low.
Mask were particularly effective against the first variant of Covid and because a great deal of Japan’s residents wear mask regularly, they weren’t affected by Covid as badly as other countries were. Their infection and death rates were lower through most of 2020.
When it comes to the UK and India variants, non-surgical mask are not as effective... Thus more cases and more deaths are occurring. The only defense against the new variants is the vaccine.
The new variants (not surprisingly) started showing up when vaccines were approved in early December. On December 10th, there were only 2,456 deaths from covid in Japan. Deaths from Covid in Japan have now risen to 14,626 deaths. Other developed countries experienced as many deaths before the vaccine approvals, as they have since vaccine approvals, and because of vaccine those death numbers are dropping significantly and daily.