DIJ DWIH Web-Forum
27 May 2020

National Approaches to Systemic Risk Germany and Japan under the COVID-19 Crisis

Welcome and Introduction
Franz Waldenberger, DIJ
Hello and welcome to our first web-seminar jointly organized by the German Center for
Research and Innovation in Tokyo (DWIH) and the German Institute for Japanese Studies(DIJ) Tokyo.
A positive side-effect of extra-ordinary situations like the present pandemic is that they
make us try out new things. In German and in English we have an expression for this – makea virtue of necessity. This online format of our traditional DIJ forum is a solution born out ofnecessity. And we will turn it into a virtue by using it, at least partly, even after we are backto normal, because it allows us to reach out to a much wider audience.
The COVID-19 has had a dramatic impact on all aspects of our lives, most of us haveprobably not experienced before. It is of course not the first time, that mankind isconfronting a pandemic. Human history has been shaped by pandemics of various kinds be
it plague, cholera, flu or HIV/AIDS. Such pandemics present the downside to dense humansettlements combined with mobility and trade. They are one of the hidden risks ofglobalization. It is incredible how a virus one of the most tiny and simple organisms canthreaten what seems to be the most complex and intelligent organism, namely humansociety.
Of course, history does not fully repeat itself and this time is different too. Today’s
pandemic occurs under a very different circumstances in terms of political, economic andtechnological regimes. Also, our knowledge about pandemic risk and its management is far1

more advanced. The question is, whether this has been helpful in containing the presentcrisis. And this leads us to our topic today.
Our seminar today looks at how Japan and Germany have so far been coping with theCOVID-19 pandemic. I say so far, because I feel that we are still somehow in the middle of it,
although at least in Germany and Japan the worst seems to have been overcome.
Comparing the two countries is not just something we as a German research institutelocated in Tokyo would do anyway. No, the two-country comparison promises to be
especially instructive, because both countries have been pursuing quite different strategies,
for example with regard to testing, but have been similarly successful in term of containing
the pandemic and limiting the number of deaths (see next figure).

Of course, this observation is very superficial, but at least it should make us curious andinterested in learning more about how both countries could achieve the same goal by taking
such seemingly different or even opposite routes.
I am very happy that our two speakers today are best qualified to help us better understandthe different approaches Germany and Japan have so far pursued in fighting the COVID-19
2pandemic. Professor Ortwin Renn, scientific director at the institute of Advanced
Sustainability Studies (IASS) Potsdam, and Professor Norio Okada, Prof. em. of Kyoto
University and former head of Kyoto University’s Disaster Prevention Research Institute, areboth experts in the field of risk governance, a research topic which they both approach froma sociological perspective.
Today’s media are full with statements by virologists and epidemiologists. Their knowledge
about the virus, how it spreads and how it can be contained, and how it hopefully can betreated is of course extremely important. But it does not explain how countries like Italy,
Spain or cities like New York, to name just a few, could experience such extreme hardships,
while other countries like Germany and Japan have been able to avoid similar scenarios. It
could of course just have been luck. But is much more likely that political, social and cultural
factors are playing a bigger role here. So, the sociological perspective on the governance ofrisk, which our two speakers apply in their research, seems to be highly appropriate.

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