A recent report suggested that
over half of Americans had already contracted COVID at least once, leading some to argue that catching COVID is inevitable, so we should all just move on to the "learn to live with it" stage.
However, with masking and other prevention requests in Japan still in place, that number remains
well under 5% of the population of the Kanto area. So a vast majority of the population has still managed to avoid infection.
And this is fortunate, because the hospital infrastructure has, thanks to the byzantine system of Japan, been stressed to dangerous levels even with the low number of infections seen to date. If this system remains unchanged, and all restrictions are removed and we end up getting like 5% of Tokyo's population infected all at the same time, then the system could well and truly be brought to its knees.
So if the Japanese government does decide that this is the direction that society needs to move in, then they will first need to create a law or somehow otherwise legally relegate COVID to a flu-level of disease, so that regular hospitals will be able to handle the cases, which would finally allow Japan to just let the virus have its way. And I think that's the step that will be necessary before full-blown tourism resumption will be palatable, though I've yet to hear a peep from Kishida on a timetable for that.