Tokyo Governor Koike Yuriko has called on people to refrain from going out over the four consecutive holiday weekend from Thursday amid a surge in coronavirus infections in the capital.
Koike said at an extraordinary news conference on Wednesday that infections are spreading in wider areas and across generations.
Studio Ghibli producer Suzuki Toshio has released a video message for children who are staying at home due to school closures.
Schools in Japan as well as all over the world have been closed in an effort to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. To cheer up those children staying at home, the Nagoya Board of Education launched a special website.
Officials in Nagasaki Prefecture dealing with a coronavirus outbreak on a cruise ship docked there are working to send crew members who tested negative back to their home countries.
The Italian-registered Costa Atlantica is at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries shipyard for repairs. Of the 623 crew members, 148 were confirmed to have the virus as of Saturday.
Mobile phone data in Japan suggests people in major cities are largely complying with the government's request that they stay home.
Telecoms company NTT Docomo has released anonymous tracking data. It shows that under the nationwide state of emergency, average outings in major cities on Saturday declined compared with the period between mid-January and mid-February.
In a bid to slow the spread of coronavirus, authorities around Japan are pleading for residents to refrain from going out ahead of one of the country's biggest holiday periods. In Tokyo, the metropolitan government has dubbed the 12-day period through May 6, "stay-at-home week."
Shinkansen bullet trains are usually crowded ahead of the spring holiday. But some trains that left Tokyo on Saturday had no passengers in the non-reserved cars. Officials from Japan Railway say the occupancy rate for non-reserved seats on the Tokaido Shinkansen line was below 10 percent as of Saturday afternoon.
Economic Revitalization Minister Nishimura Yasutoshi canceled a news conference and worked from home on Saturday as an official of the Cabinet Secretariat was found to have contracted the new coronavirus.
The government said on Friday that the man in his 40's is a member of the taskforce launched last month to deal with the pandemic.