Study: Excess Deaths Increase in Japan

A Japanese paper by H. Kakeya et al titled “Significant Increase in Excess Deaths after Repeated COVID-19 Vaccination in Japan” was published on 28 April 2025. This is not the first time excess mortality in Japan is discussed but it is apparent that the opinion article is in response to the continuing trend.

The paper first highlights that Japan has one of the highest COVID-19 vaccination rates per capita in the world and the highest for mRNA injections at 3.6 doses as of March 2024.

The authors are upfront about the lack of effectiveness of the so-called vaccine against the Omicron variant (even if one accepts it was effective in the first place).

After the emergence of the Omicron variant, however, the number of infections surged dramatically in Japan in 2022, despite more than 80% of the population having been fully vaccinated. Surprisingly, the number of excess deaths per million in Japan exceeded 1400 in 2023, three times higher than that in the United States, whereas COVID-19 deaths in Japan accounted for only 10% of these excess deaths.

Addressing the argument that the excess deaths were due to hospital resource shortage as a result of COVID-19 cases, the condition was downgraded in May 2023.

Despite this major policy shift, the number of excess deaths in 2023 remained as high as in 2022.

As expected, the authors do not draw any hard conclusions but they do hypothesize as to possible causes, including the so-called vaccines. In particular, they mention cancer which has been addressed by others.

It is also noteworthy that deaths from cancers related to estrogen receptors, such as leukemia, breast, pancreatic, lip/oral/pharyngeal, ovarian, and uterine cancers, have also increased since the population-wide administration of mRNA vaccinations. The spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 is known to bind to estrogen receptors located in the nucleus and includes a nuclear localization signal, which makes it more likely to be conveyed to the nucleus.

Another particular point, also much discussed by some doctors, is immunosuppression after repeated vaccination.

Indeed, recent studies have reported an increase in spike-specific immunoglobulin G4, an immunosuppressive class of antibody, and regulatory T cells after the second and subsequent vaccinations. This can lead to chronic infection whereby the virus remains in the intestine, for which positive test results cannot be obtained by nasal swabs. Wastewater monitoring data support this claim. This hypothesis can explain not only the high number and non-COVID-19 ratio of excess deaths but also the synchronization of the COVID-19 infection surge and non-COVID-19 excess deaths.

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