“Jishuku-keisatsu (self-restraint police)” under the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan : Focusing on transformation of discursive space

マツバラ, ユウ

Matsubara, Yu

サイガイ　ト　キョウセイ　ケンキュウカイ

言説空間

新型コロナウイルス感染症（COVID-19）

世間の「空気」

問題の外在化

“Jishuku-keisatsu (self-restraint police)”

discursive space

COVID-19

“kuuki” (atmosphere as implicit social norms)

externalization of problem

The Japanese term “jishuku-keisatsu (literally means self-restraint police)” has become a widely used term during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan to describe overheated actions that attack those who are perceived as not cooperating with measures for controlling the pandemic. We found that this term best describes a social movement that emerged under the pandemic, was promoted by related Internet posting and became quite prominent in Japan. This term contributed to the transformation of discursive space and promoted actions which led to the emergence of strong unofficial implicit social norms called “kuuki” (literally meaning atmosphere) in Japanese in response to the comparatively weak official government requests that people cooperate with guidelines for controlling the pandemic. We can interpret this process as an “externalization of problem” which is a key concept in narrative therapy. We must make efforts to prepare clues for enriching discursive space in disasters and crises which tend to become dominated by “kuuki” in that we consider it important to have a conceptual framework for identifying when society becomes unstable through the analysis of “jishuku-keisatsu”.