Identity,obedience and individual effort: virtues for a pandemic and an Olympic year

Abstract

Japan’s pandemic is a mixed one, months of calm interspersed with bursts of concern. What’s clear though is that Japan has fared much better than many rich countries in Europe and the Americas. By June, Japan had arrived at a similar dilemma as the rest of East Asia, namely that low numbers of deaths had slowed the impetus to buy vaccine doses. But with the Olympics on the horizon, and loud calls for the event to be postponed, Japan accelerated vaccination and planned for spectators to attend.

The general success of East Asia in its pandemic response is partly explained by cultural factors, although populations around the world also demonstrated their willingness to tolerate restrictions to help prevent deaths. Each country, however, has its own story and Japan’s is one marked by isolationism, featuring identity, obedience and individual efforts against infectious diseases.¹

Vaccine hesitancy is also an issue, and one of the global drivers is uncertainty about the long-term safety and efficacy of vaccines.² The balance between completing research before taking action and pragmatism, a need for action based on what we know so far, has proved difficult and echoes the age-old debate between empirical and dogmatic medicine.³

Another limitation is the populations that are studied in trials. How does a trial recruiting people in Oxford apply to people in the UK’s northern towns with a different ethnic mix, let alone to the Japanese? One solution is to promote active representation of different ethnicities in clinical trials.⁴ It is a research initiative that is long overdue and can’t be excused by expediency as we surf the ‘third wave’ of the pandemic.⁵

But the return of international sports events with spectators is evidence of a return to normality. Euro 2020 began with a row about footballers ‘taking the knee’ to show solidarity against racism that black people experience. The rift might not be simply explained by differences in ideology. Young people have been to the fore in supporting campaigns to end sexism and racism, and trainee doctors tell us why they would take the knee in support of colleagues from ethnic minorities.⁶

The Olympics may or may not generate more controversies over political and moral statements by athletes, but they will certainly showcase the Olympian and Japanese virtues of identity, obedience and individual effort.

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