Chapter 5 - Political Leaders’ Discourse Addressing “Corona Discrimination” in Japan

Summary

Abstract

This chapter discusses discursive resources and underlying ideological stances of four central and regional government leaders’ public video messages to counter widespread “coronavirus discrimination” discourse in Japan. Analysis reveals intersecting layers of discourses which emerge from different socio-political positioning of the creators of the messages. Their messages seek cooperation from the public while aligning themselves with their institutional agenda. The anti-discrimination messages were also characterised by the use of the war metaphor “fight against the virus,” whereby corona discrimination is discursively projected as disruption to the national unity required in a public health crisis. The counter-discourse to highly disruptive discourse of discrimination by the leaders implicitly addresses potential loss of political power and control.

Keywords: anti-discrimination, video message, political leaders, metaphor, institutional discourse

Introduction

When Japan was hit by the triple disaster of 2011, a strong sense of solidarity emerged from the national recovery effort. However, as the nation faced the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, disturbing instances of discrimination against people who contracted the virus, health workers, essential workers and their families were reported. Media reports of コロナ差別 [korona sabetsu] (lit. corona discrimination) revealed examples such as recovered patients being told not to come to work and hospital employees being asked not to bring their children to childcare. A database search brought up the earliest articles with the terms コロナ [korona] and 差別 [sabetsu] in Yomiuri Shimbun published on January 31, 2020 (Yomiuri Shimbun, 2020a), and in Asahi Shimbun (Asahi Shimbun, 2020a) on February 1, 2020. The target expanded from Chinese people to Japanese citizens returning from China, and to doctors who treated patients who contracted the disease on the cruise ship Diamond Princess. As community transmission began to spread in Japan, those who caught the illness, essential workers such as doctors, nurses, truck drivers, their families, and even visitors/outsiders from other prefectures became the target. Even drivers of cars with non-local registrations were told to leave and sent back to their own region. This corona discrimination began to cause noticeable disruptions to the medical, economic, and social welfare of the nation. Thus, an urgent need to put this “disruptive discourse” under control emerged.