Culture will inevitably play a role. The Japanese culture is also not at all helped by their expectations of you putting 16h a day in the office so you seem like you are hard at work.
Needless to say, extremely dogmatic bosses who love that ego stroking won’t give it up easily due to the pandemic – or any other reason.
I’d be willing to bet that a lot of Japanese workplaces are already putting people back in offices, even.