Working Title: Citizen Self-Restraint, Institutional Vigilance, and Neighborhood Resilience: Japan’s Non-Legalistic Governance of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Working Subtitle: A study on the activation of neighborhood resilience through vigilance in public-private institutional networks under the non-legalistic infection control measure regime of “self-restraint” (jishuku)
Paul J. Kramer, M.A., B.A. Japanese Studies, B.A. Sociology (CRC 1369 Cultures of Vigilance, LMU Munich) kramer.paul@lmu.de
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Gabriele Vogt, LMU
Japan’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been remarkable on multiple levels. Instead of enacting strict movement restrictions and rapid testing, the government called upon citizens to voluntarily apply self-restraint (jishuku) in their daily lives whenever possible. Nevertheless, these comparatively “soft measures” prompted widespread cooperation with the infection control measure regime; citizens reduced their movement significantly and mostly complied with masking and social-distancing recommendations rigorously. Finally, Japan was able to steer through the pandemic with a low rate of excess deaths compared to other OECD nations, while also avoiding widespread public backlash or even protests in response to government recommendations.
Previous scholarship explaining this outcome can be grouped into three distinct categories. The first attributes this success to a cultural pervasiveness of conformity pressure, surmise, and peoples judging gaze. The second, highlights the effect of social capital and the social infrastructure, e.g., community ties in and around restaurants, on crisis resilience, but also the socially sanctioning effect of the so-called self-restraint police (jishuku keisatsu). Lastly, the third states that there is a long tradition of non-legalistic governance in Japan, and deliberate governing guidance through social pressure. In recent years the trend to delegate tasks to the lowest levels of government or even the citizenry for self-management has steadily continued. Yet, as seemingly with the pandemic this has created similar patterned forms of civic engagement.
In my dissertation I focus on the pandemic self-management in rural communities through the non-legalistic governance framework of self-restraint in Japan. I hypothesize that the previous scholarship can be integrated into a multifaceted analysis through the lens of vigilance, which is explains the activation of neighborhood resilience through public-private institutional networks. This theoretical perspective developed and explored at the DFG funded Collaborative Research Center (CRC 1369) “Cultures of Vigilance” allows us to understand the coupling of individual attention to supra-individual goals, e.g., security or public health.
I use mixed methods, from qualitative and quantitative repertoires, i.e., discourse analysis, interviews, and the statistical analysis of movement data. This enables me to ask: 1) How is individual attention addressed in societal self-descriptions to discursively create a culture of vigilance? 2) How is it embedded into social structures and channeled into behavior through social practices? And 3) how is it integrated into local governance and coupled to political goals? Ultimately, I aim to enhance our understanding of effective crisis governance modes by elucidating the opportunities and risks of the Japanese non-legalistic approach to the pandemic.