In an essay published in the monthly magazine Hanada, Nobuyuki Kaji examined why the Japanese voluntarily complied with COVID-19 precautions and achieved results equal to or greater than legally enforced restrictions in Western countries.
He argued that Japan’s civic maturity and public morality did not suddenly emerge after the Great Hanshin Earthquake, but were rooted in a long agricultural history that fostered cooperation and a culture of avoiding inconvenience not only to one’s family, but also to other people.

July 21, 2020
This chapter was originally published on July 21, 2020.
It introduced an essay by the distinguished scholar Nobuyuki Kaji that appeared as the lead article in the monthly magazine Hanada.
In responding to the novel coronavirus outbreak, Western countries imposed legally enforced restrictions on leaving one’s home.
Japan, by contrast, issued a state of emergency and primarily requested cooperation based on the judgment, self-restraint, and good sense of its citizens.
Despite the absence of comparable legal compulsion, many Japanese people voluntarily restricted their activities and cooperated in measures intended to prevent the spread of infection.
This drew renewed attention to what was described as the Japanese people’s high level of civic maturity and public morality.
Kaji rejected the view that Japanese self-restraint and public morality were comparatively recent social virtues formed during the 1970s and 1980s, or after the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995.
He argued that Japanese public morality must be understood more fundamentally through the traditions, history, and culture of the Japanese people.
According to Kaji, the long history of hunting societies in the West encouraged cultures that emphasized individualism and individual ability.
The Japanese, by contrast, possess a long history as an agricultural people.
Agriculture required communal labor and placed the unity of the family or clan at the center of life.
In Japan, the resulting sense of mutual assistance and solidarity expanded beyond the family group into an awareness that one should not inconvenience other people.
Kaji argued that this wider concern for others is what would now be called Japanese public morality, and that it is a cultural characteristic inherited from the distant past.
The following is a faithful English translation of the Japanese text published on July 21, 2020.
Faithful English Translation
July 21, 2020
The ancients said: Those of the highest wisdom develop without being taught; teaching brings no benefit to those of the lowest foolishness; but people of the middle way will not understand unless they are taught.
The following is from an essay by my greatly respected senior, Nobuyuki Kaji, which appears at the beginning of today’s issue of the monthly magazine Hanada.
The issues of the monthly magazines Hanada and WiLL released today are essential reading not only for the Japanese people, but for people throughout the world.
Every day is coronavirus, coronavirus.
After all, one cannot overcome the threat that infection may place one’s life in danger.
This old man has therefore returned, after a long interval, to a life of quiet seclusion.
Mind you, I do not call it a life of enforced confinement.
Enforced confinement implies punishment.
This old man has done nothing wrong.
He merely spends his days expressing dissenting opinions.
Now, discussion of the Japanese national character in connection with the coronavirus has become a major topic.
In Western countries, measures against the coronavirus legally and forcibly prohibited people from going outside.
Japan, by contrast, merely issued something called a declaration of a state of emergency and made requests that depended upon the good sense of the Japanese people.
Nevertheless, Japan produced results equal to, or even greater than, those achieved through legal restrictions.
Westerners find this utterly mysterious and are searching for the reason.
Moreover, the number of Japanese deaths caused by the coronavirus was, as a result, extremely small.
Deputy Prime Minister Aso promptly referred to the high level of civic maturity among the Japanese people.
Splendid.
It is a fact that the Japanese people possess a high level of civic maturity.
One need only look at Japan’s progress since the Meiji Restoration.
Mr. Aso’s statement was correct.
But, but, the real question comes next.
What is this so-called civic maturity?
Concerning this debate, a review of opinion journals for July of the second year of Reiwa, written by Sankei Shimbun editorial writer Shin Okabe and published on June 25 of that year, presented a number of arguments related to civic maturity.
Ideally, I should consult the original sources of the passages quoted in that column.
However, because I remain in seclusion, I ask forgiveness for borrowing the quotations from Mr. Okabe’s column and thus quoting them at second hand.
For example, the critic Masakazu Yamazaki is said to have stated that the “self-restraint of the Japanese people deserves special mention.”
He argued that this characteristic “was already recorded in the observations of Lafcadio Hearn,” but that their “public morality was cultivated anew somewhat later.”
He located this development in the 1970s and 1980s, and “above all in January 1995, when the Great Hanshin Earthquake occurred,” saying that “this virtue continued to flourish until only yesterday.”
However, he does not explain why this was so.
Without an explanation, it is no more than an impression and does not constitute an argument.
If he claims that this began with the Great Hanshin Earthquake, he should properly explain why.
The question of Japanese public morality must be considered at a much more fundamental level.
This old man thinks as follows.
Around the time of the Meiji Restoration, Japan’s leaders made an enormous mistake.
Overwhelmed by Western industrial products, they worshipped the modern Western civilization that had produced them.
They wanted to remake Japan in that image and devoted themselves to imitation, a course that has continued to the present day.
The intellectual class of contemporary Japan remains the same.
Yet Western individualism and meritocracy are merely the development and consequence of a hunting people’s ancient emphasis upon individual ability.
We Japanese, by contrast, have a long history as an agricultural people.
Because agriculture is communal work, we lived by placing the unity of the clan or family first.
That way of life has become part of our DNA.
To put it simply, observe Japanese television carefully.
From morning until night, it constantly broadcasts weather forecasts.
It does so because the Japanese people demand them.
Why?
Because they retain the sensibilities of an agricultural people to the very marrow of their bones.
This clan-based outlook produces mutual assistance and solidarity within the clan.
The Chinese are a typical example of clan-centered people.
Solidarity among members of the same clan is strong.
The result is that other people do not matter.
The Japanese are different.
Like the Chinese, they believe that they should not cause trouble for their own clan.
But the Japanese possess an expanded sense that they should not inconvenience people outside their clan—in other words, other people.
China’s natural environment is severe, making the clan a matter of life itself.
Japan’s environment is far gentler than China’s, and kindness therefore extends to other groups as well.
In present-day language, this might be called public morality.
That sensibility and the conduct arising from it began in the distant past and have continued ever since.
They did not suddenly appear at the time of the Great Hanshin Earthquake.
When discussing the characteristics of a people, one must above all consider that people’s traditions, history, and culture.
The ancients said: Those of the highest wisdom develop without being taught; teaching brings no benefit to those of the lowest foolishness; but people of the middle way will not understand unless they are taught.