Japan and Coronavirus Revisited: How a Perceived Loss of Control Quickly Erodes Trust in the Authorities
It is funny how situations can change so quickly when it comes to a spreading virus. Just a week after this blog praised Japan for its relative calm despite having the largest number of cases outside China, the country is making a gradual but visible descent into increased concern and vigilance about the virus at the grassroots level. As several pieces of news about growing infections in Japan, the general public is becoming visibly irritable.
The confidence that the virus, at least as far as Japan is concerned, is largely contained has been on the wane. News broke about the first death to the virus in the country, an 80-year-old woman with no connection whatsoever to China. A separate piece of news that a taxi driver in his 70s tested positive only increased the fear that he unknowingly spread the virus by picking up so many passengers in his days working on the streets of densely populated Tokyo.
Just as discomforting is the news about the virus's perceived unstoppability onboard the Diamond Princess, the cruise ship quarantined off the port of Yokohama. The ship, originally with a dozen cases, has now grown to host more than 300 cases. The government's refusal to let only the sickest and oldest passengers off the ship has attracted growing grassroots criticism that the authorities are botching the response to what many calls a "giant petri-dish."
It is reasonable to foresee that, given the fear of the virus's further diffusion, the Japanese response to it will begin to resemble much more closely to what has been playing out in neighboring countries. The state may take a much more prominent role in pushing for businesses to keep people at home and the bouts of panicked hoarding of daily necessities and vocal xenophobic commentary against the Chinese may emerge.
So where did that supposedly inherently Japanese trust in authorities and medical institutions go? To understand the erosion of trust, looking back at my research into Chinese immigration in the Russian Far East, the topic of my Ph.D. dissertation may be instructive. One of the key findings of the research is just how much the perception of locals being in control of incoming foreigners correlates with trust in authorities and dampening of extreme sentiments.
Put differently, if people think that local authorities are unable to effectively limit the entry of foreign elements, through enforcement of transparent and easily understood rules, the people will take matters into their own hands, using whatever vigilante ways available to ensure what they think is an unmitigated flow of foreign elements into their homeland are reversed. In the absence of effective legal institutions for control, people will then appeal to anti-foreign emotions as the primary rationale for taking matters into their own hands.
In this progression of state-led control to grassroots vigilantism, the key event is the loss of public trust that the state is capable of maintaining order by ensuring that what is foreign is limited and always accounted for when entering into the host society. Whether the foreign matter is immigrants or a virus, if the state can no longer keep taps on the exact quantity and location, then the common people will quickly lose trust in the authorities concerning controlling the foreign elements.
No country is really an exception to the rule described above. Authorities in some countries, like Japan, may have started out with more public trust, having had more successful control in the past. The higher initial trust explains a longer period of calmness. But a virus is not visible and easily stopped like a bunch of immigrants. As it invisibly spread among the "native" population, all countries, no matter how trustworthy its government, will be faced with the prospects of a population that finds the authorities less than capable of stopping an epidemic.
The confidence that the virus, at least as far as Japan is concerned, is largely contained has been on the wane. News broke about the first death to the virus in the country, an 80-year-old woman with no connection whatsoever to China. A separate piece of news that a taxi driver in his 70s tested positive only increased the fear that he unknowingly spread the virus by picking up so many passengers in his days working on the streets of densely populated Tokyo.
Just as discomforting is the news about the virus's perceived unstoppability onboard the Diamond Princess, the cruise ship quarantined off the port of Yokohama. The ship, originally with a dozen cases, has now grown to host more than 300 cases. The government's refusal to let only the sickest and oldest passengers off the ship has attracted growing grassroots criticism that the authorities are botching the response to what many calls a "giant petri-dish."
It is reasonable to foresee that, given the fear of the virus's further diffusion, the Japanese response to it will begin to resemble much more closely to what has been playing out in neighboring countries. The state may take a much more prominent role in pushing for businesses to keep people at home and the bouts of panicked hoarding of daily necessities and vocal xenophobic commentary against the Chinese may emerge.
So where did that supposedly inherently Japanese trust in authorities and medical institutions go? To understand the erosion of trust, looking back at my research into Chinese immigration in the Russian Far East, the topic of my Ph.D. dissertation may be instructive. One of the key findings of the research is just how much the perception of locals being in control of incoming foreigners correlates with trust in authorities and dampening of extreme sentiments.
Put differently, if people think that local authorities are unable to effectively limit the entry of foreign elements, through enforcement of transparent and easily understood rules, the people will take matters into their own hands, using whatever vigilante ways available to ensure what they think is an unmitigated flow of foreign elements into their homeland are reversed. In the absence of effective legal institutions for control, people will then appeal to anti-foreign emotions as the primary rationale for taking matters into their own hands.
In this progression of state-led control to grassroots vigilantism, the key event is the loss of public trust that the state is capable of maintaining order by ensuring that what is foreign is limited and always accounted for when entering into the host society. Whether the foreign matter is immigrants or a virus, if the state can no longer keep taps on the exact quantity and location, then the common people will quickly lose trust in the authorities concerning controlling the foreign elements.
No country is really an exception to the rule described above. Authorities in some countries, like Japan, may have started out with more public trust, having had more successful control in the past. The higher initial trust explains a longer period of calmness. But a virus is not visible and easily stopped like a bunch of immigrants. As it invisibly spread among the "native" population, all countries, no matter how trustworthy its government, will be faced with the prospects of a population that finds the authorities less than capable of stopping an epidemic.
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