Embodied consequences, doing jishuku and staying home: literary depictions of Japan’s Covid-19 disaster response

Abstract

During Tokyo’s first State of Emergency in 2020 in response to raising Covid-19 infection numbers, the population was requested to STAY HOME and to exert jishuku (self-restraint) to help slow the spread of the disease. In response to this initial period, the Japanese publishing company Kodansha launched a 100 day, online blog project, drawing upon the creative efforts of Japanese authors, essayists and poets to describe their daily life during the pandemic. This article examines how the home is positioned within the collection, revealing a sub-corpus of texts which are deeply concerned with the challenges of this limited geography. Two of the works by Bin Konno (May 20) and Mariko Hayashi (July 3) are subject to closer reading, revealing a critical engagement with jishuku discourses, gendered bodily norms, and the unintended embodied consequences of this new lifestyle. These works do so with humour and ironic employment of these ideas, and yet the influence of these norms is undeniable. Here, staying home is both an indulgence and a risk, inviting further consideration into how the home as a private space is being recreated within the context of public health orders, and the shifting boundaries of people’s geographies.

Keywords:

• Body norms
• home
• Japanese literature

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the editors and reviewers of the Special Edition for their insightful feedback and support, and Peter Jackson for his mentorship as part of the 2021 ASAA Mentor Program. I would also like to acknowledge that some of this research was undertaken whilst at Showa Women’s University, Tokyo with the Mariko Bando Fellowship.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Showa Women’s University.

Notes on contributors

Laura Emily Clark

Laura Emily Clark is a Japan studies and gender issues scholar, specialising in contemporary Japanese literature and gender norms, marriage, and ageing. She is a Lecturer in Japanese at the University of New England. She received her PhD from the University of Queensland for her research on gender ideals in the writing of Haruki Murakami. She has previously published on masculinity in Murakami, gender in Japanese literature, and the reception of Japanese authors within international literary spheres. Her co-authored paper with Kawasaki Kenko “Girls (and boys) Debating Democracy in Aoi Sanmyaku” was published in Japanese Studies in 2022. Laura is a former Japan Foundation Fellow and recipient of the Mariko Bando Fellowship. Laura is part of the Sakura Grant supported Student Motivations in Intermediate and Advanced Japanese Project Team, and a member of the UCNIS collaborative group.