Japan is a very different society. People in Japan are more used to having controls over their lives. In addition, Japan citizens are used to wearing masks in public and consider social dialogue in places such as public transportation to be bad etiquette. (I have a couple of Japanese friends who told me this. Perhaps you could comment here.) There is universal health care coverage which has helped. Japan instituted cluster containment instead of lockdowns. Whether this has worked has become debatable. In addition, Japan has been accused of not reporting both cases and deaths. I have no idea if this is true or not.