What questions are the COVID-19 pandemic posing to modern civilization? While countermeasures against COVID-19 are converging on vaccination, spontaneous healing ability of organisms and ecological background of the pandemic, like deforestation and global climate change, are underestimated. This pattern of behavior stems from modern civilization’s presumption that human beings can separate themselves from nature and control it as an object. In this context, the fundamental question is how reconnect humans with nature. An essential feature of life is spontaneity. This ground of life is impossible to be objectified, owned or controlled. Both nature and humans are rooted in this common ground and connected to each other. From the perspective of indigenous peoples who have been colonized by “modern” countries, not only individual organisms but also the world itself is living. In this living world plants and animals as well as mountains, rivers and earth are living and taking care of each other. Every living thing is living in this connectivity (immanence). This caring connectivity is inherited by the next generation (intergenerational peace). Decolonization is headed for this living world. The web of life is an appropriate image to express the state in which diverse entities including human being are connected to each other. This is a dimension that is ontologically fundamental to both indigenous and modern peoples. Based on the ontology of the web of life, various aspects of the world, like research, language, technology, economy and even relations with the pandemic would change by itself.

The pandemic caused by the COVID-19 and the responses to it are disproportionately affecting women in many parts of the world. In Japan, since the outbreak of the COVID-19, gender-based violence against women has increased, women who held insecure part-time jobs have had their employment lost or their work hours cut, single-mother households have been facing further economic hardship, and the number of female suicide cases has increased. The pandemic also made us recognize the importance of “essential work” including the paid and unpaid care work traditionally provided by women. However, these are not caused by the COVID-19 only; it is said that the pandemic has only deepened the preexisting inequalities. In addition, at a time of crisis, the structural issues such as gender tend to be put aside because they are considered beyond the reach of immediate measures responding to the crisis. Nevertheless, there are cases articulated in past pandemics that such measures leaving out structural issues put women in vulnerable situations to the broader impacts of crises. In responding to the COVID-19, immediate medical, public health, economic, and social measures are indispensable; at the same time, conscious efforts to transform gendered social structure paying attention to the invisible factors such as care economy is also necessary. Transforming the gendered social structure and building a resilient society to minimize negative impacts in time of crisis should be counted as one of the conditions of peace in the era of pandemic.

The COVID-19, which perished the lives of more than three million people within one and a half year, has opened our eyes to a unprecedent threat to human society at the time of globalization. People have been forced to review the situation of one’s own country in comparison with other countries, based on the globalized information network. Is their government doing all right? How about the medical care and vaccine policy? Can they get enough economic and social support? In mid-2021, several groups of countries are highly appreciated for their success to contain the pandemic: China or China model, the Developmental States in East Asia, i.e. South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore, and the social democratic countries, especially led by women leaders, such as New Zealand, Iceland, Denmark and Taiwan. In contrast, the countries with the strong leadership of “neoliberal nationalism” and/or “illiberal democracy” have not been quite successful, such as the United States under President Donald Trump, the United Kingdom of the BREXIT cabinet as well as influential developing countries, i.e. India, the Philippines, Brazil and Turkey. Thomas R. Oliver argued the significance of Politics of Public Health to meet the crisis of pandemic, as Anthony Giddens proposed Politics of Climate Change. Probably, it is the right time for us to question the relevancy of our states and international society to secure the lives and welfare of ordinary people.