What is the Japanese Government's Corona Virus "Hammer and Dance" strategy?
- Monoar Hossain Munna

- Jan 9, 2021
- 2 min read

Last night Prime Minister Abe made the official expected announcement that the State of Emergency, nationwide, will continue until May 31, 2020. What was interesting to me was after Prime Minister Abe spoke, Nishimura-san who is in charge of the reopening up of businesses in accordance to the government’s Corona Virus strategy came on national TV to give his update and presentation on what has transpired. His first slide was in English (below) about the "Hammer and Dance" concept. He then went on to explain in Japanese about this strategy. First, I could not understand why they had the slide in English and the way Nishimura-san explained the "Hammer and Dance" sounded very strange to me. I could only guess that at the very last minute, they somehow found this concept and slide on the internet and decided to use it without first translating it into Japanese, although the vocabulary on the “Hammer and Dance” diagram was quite basic. Or it could have been that the Japanese government did not want the press or anyone else asking too many questions about the "hammer and dance" strategy. So by keeping the chart in English, no one would ask about the concept, using the "English Wall" to avoid inquisitive questions. Second, the metaphor of "Hammer and Dance" is not a culturally understood idea in Japan and most older Japanese would be totally lost, especially since it was written in English on the diagram. The definition of "hammer" in this strategy is to take measures and actions that quickly and aggressively address the pending health issue. Japan has not done anything quickly or aggressively, so I am not sure why they chose this model to explain their case. Also Japan is not a “dancing culture” in terms of people going out to dance socially and have fun. I think both metaphorical examples, the hammer and dance, would be difficult for most Japanese to conceive. So why did they choose this example, use the English words, and use metaphorical terms that are not really understood by many Japanese? I did a quick Google search and found that Tomas Puyeo had written an article on the "Hammer and Dance" and the diagram chart he used was where the Japanese government got the concept and diagram from. The key point in Tomas Puyeo's article was "The time needed for the hammer is weeks, not months." Japan is presently going into its third month of trying to address the appropriate safety health measures for the Corona Virus.







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