The Pitfalls of Relying on Voluntary Self-Restraint for COVID in Japan

Ten years ago, in the aftermath of the Great Tohoku Earthquake, the Japanese economy faced a brief slump that was attributed as much to the behavior of the Japanese general public as damages by the Quake itself. Due to the devastating nature of the Quake, many Japanese people took upon themselves for "self-restraint" (自粛) on entertainment-related spending, canceling parties, outings, and other leisure activities as a display of respect toward the thousands who perished in the Quake.

At the time, the government had the sensitive role of pushing people to start spending money on leisure again, without sounding too frivolous as to understate the gravity of the national sorrow that was the Quake. The resulting low-level propaganda had to slowly prod people to go out despite their social reluctance to do so. Only as time went by and the immediate memory of the Quake faded from the minds of the people who are not directly affected that the consumption returned to the normal level.

Ten years later, self-restraint has become a topic again, this time during the COVID. But the direction of its impact is opposite that of the Quake. Whereas the government had to prod people to abandon their self-restraint and go out in 2011, now the government is pleading with the general public to display more self-restraint and limit going out as much as possible. In ten years, the nation has gone from one filled with the self-restraint to one that is visibly lacking it.

This change is all the more curious given that the consequence of self-restraint is much larger now than it was ten years ago. The Quake, while reflecting the national character of Japan, hardly had any direct impact on the vast majority of Japanese people. Only a small portion of the overall population had friends or relatives in the disaster area, and the supposed talks of radioactivity leading to health issues have so far proved to be inconclusive at best. 

In comparison, COVID can potentially affect everyone. The rapidly rising number of cases and fatalities have far outstripped what was registered as casualties of the Quake, with the potential for more damage. It is in the personal interest of each person to show self-restraint just so that they do not end facing the very real prospect of becoming a casualty him or herself. Such immediacy of victimhood was simply not present ten years ago.

So what changed about the Japanese sense of self-restraint in these ten years. To be sure, there are some fundamental differences between the two. The self-restraint in the aftermath of the Quake lasted but a few months. While companies were careful to protect their images, individuals who did not care were free to end their self-restraint at any time with little consequences other than being frowned upon by the morally self-righteous.

But now, self-restraint does not have an immediate end date. After a year of being told to be self-restrained, what started out as a voluntary effort to prevent the spread of COVID, has gradually come to be seen as a top-down authoritarian measure to impede personal freedom, even in a nation as conscious of peer pressure and personal image as Japan. Continuing to appeal to self-restraint is leading to diminishing returns and reduced effectiveness.

Still, perhaps giving up on self-restraint is premature. The self-restraint of ten years ago and today share the quality of willingness to sacrifice individual choices as a display of support for initiatives that advance the collective good, even if the action is taken purely out of self-interest of retaining a good public image. If people can be shamed out of their leisure activities for several months after the Quake, the task of doing the same for years after COVID broke out should still be possible, especially considering that self-interest is not only one of a good personal image but life and death.