This book chapter examines the role of the World Health Organization (WHO) in the formulation of Japan’s responses to the SARS, MERS, and COVID-19 public health crises. During these crises, the WHO was used as a neutral and scientific source of information, and thus managed to influence Japan’s responses. However, trust in the organization has faltered due to its connection with China. Japanese policy makers have questioned the neutrality of the organization. This chapter argues that Japan has pragmatically balanced declining trust in the organization with domestic policy aims, with these aims often taking precedence. It shows that the importance of the WHO in Japanese policymaking has declined and will continue to do so as long as the organization’s neutrality is doubted, and as long as their advice and guidelines conflict with Japan’s domestic agenda.
Although the scale of the SARS, MERS, and COVID-19 crises cannot be compared, the ways in which Japan has organized its national response to these three crises have followed similar patterns. During public health crises the Japanese cabinet establishes an ad hoc task force to formulate containment policies. Those policies directly related to health are implemented by the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare (MHLW), while policies related to international traffic of people and goods are implemented by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) and the Ministry of Justice. The main scientific research centre in Japan dealing with emerging infectious diseases is the National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID). The NIID is tasked with cooperating with other national institutes and international organizations, and it reports back directly to the MHLW (NIID 2018). Informed officials at the MHLW are consequently involved in policy making through cooperation with the cabinet and parliamentary questioning in the Japanese National Diet.
The analysis in this chapter relies on official parliamentary records published during the three public health crises. I have included Diet meetings and MHLW public documents from 1 November 2002 to 31 July 2003 (SARS), 1 April 2014 to 31 December 2015 (MERS), and 1 December 2019 to 31 May 2020 (COVID-19) in the data set. I have collected records of the National Diet meetings from the National Diet database (National Diet Library n.d.).
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