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.