Japan isn't testing very many people. That's probably a big part of why the numbers look so low. As someone living over here it's frustrating but not surprising.

Probably a reason Italy and Iran are melting down with it.

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Italy and Iran have been two of the countries hardest hit by the Wuhan coronavirus, outside of China. Why? Helen Raleigh explains at The Federalist:

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The reason these two countries are suffering the most outside China is mainly due to their close ties with Beijing, primarily through the "One Belt and One Road" (OBOR) initiative.
OBOR is Beijing's foreign policy play disguised as infrastructure investment. Here's how it works: China and country X agree to do an infrastructure project in country X. Country X has to borrow from a Chinese bank to finance the project. A contract is always awarded to Chinese companies, which then bring supplies and Chinese employees to country X to build the project.

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As a result of One Belt and One Road, there are more than 300,000 Chinese living in Italy.

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Almost exactly a year ago in March 2019, against warnings from the EU and the United States, Italy became the first and only G7 country to sign onto OBOR. As part of the deal, Italy opened an array of sectors to Chinese investment, from infrastructure to transportation, including letting Chinese state-owned companies hold a stake in four major Italian ports.

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More thoughts on Italy:

Everyone keeps saying that Italy is so bad because of their close relationship with China, but when you look at the map tracing the genetics of each strain of this coronavirus that doesn't seem to hold up. Granted, I know next to nothing about genetics, but I can read maps.

The purple lines indicate the strains originating in the Wuhan province of China. It seems that the Italian cases of COVID-19 in the Milan region came from the UK and The Netherlands. Or am I missing something here?

https://nextstrain.org/ncov