“This may be the first time that Europe has modeled its behavior on that of Asia.” These are the words of aJapanese scholar of French literature, right after several local governments in France made mask-wearing mandatory in April2020 (Nemoto Citation2020). Now we can modify that as “this may be the first time the world has modeled its behavior on that of Asia.” Before the COVID-19 pandemic, wearing masks was regarded as part of East Asian culture (Hyun and Sumida 2020; O’Dwyer Citation2020; Tasker Citation2020; Victor and Ives Citation2021).. The history of masks, however, has not been investigated as much as one would expect, especially in Japan.
