Japan's General Practitioners' Responses to COVID-19

Transformations of the “Body Social” in between Pandemic Waves

Abstract

Since early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a pervasive global issue eliciting various responses at the local level. Drawing upon anthropologist Yanai Tadashi's concept “body social,” this article aims to discuss what Japanese general practitioners have attempted to protect from the uncontrollable “waves” of the pandemic. Based on the vivid narratives about their shifting patterns of responses from July 2020（the beginning of the so-called “second wave”） to February 2021（the end of the “third wave”）, it elucidates how the general practitioners' imaginings of the “body social” to be protected were flexibly transformed according to their perceptions of the pandemic situations in their immediate surroundings, from their physical bodies to their medical institutions, to their chiiki （communities）．Their engagements in expanding cooperation with other medical and non-medical actors to protect their chiiki as “body social” pose valuable lessons for anthropologists of infectious diseases and disasters beyond the realm of medicine.