Recalibrating Risk and Governing the Japanese Population

Abstract

This article examines how the Japanese state recalibrates the risks Japanese nationals face when traveling outside of Japan's sovereign territorial boundaries. The author elucidates the measures the state takes to assist its nationals deal with the range of risks they are likely to encounter when traveling to another sovereign state or territory. The article focuses on how the Ministry of Foreign Affairs communicates travel advice and warnings on "risky" destinations and how the state's recalibration of risk aims to inculcate "self-responsibility" as a norm in governing the Japanese population.The core argument of this article is as follows. In the context of the Japanese government's support for the U.S. "war on terror," 1 along with the increasing salience and pace of globalization, the state's role in governing the population is increasingly manifest outside as well as inside Japan. This is evident in the way nationals are being called upon to shoulder risks within a state framework of becoming "self-responsible." The advice and warnings Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) gives its citizens aim to make them more responsible for managing the risks involved in overseas travel and to help them carry out individual risk management as autonomous beings, relying on themselves, rather than on the state.

Introduction: The Duty of Care in International Relations

“…The results are mixed. The state produces and reproduces risk, and tries to govern its population in new ways, balancing a "responsibilisation" of the population with increased state disaster preparedness (Bianchi 2006, Löwenheim 2007, Hook 2012, Kelman 2017. Even so, there are reasons to believe that this new responsibilisation is largely rejected by the audience; the citizens (Leira 2017).…”