Impact of Historical Experiences of Defeat on Public Policy Effectiveness: Evidence from Japan’s Largest Civil War

Abstract

The Boshin War (1868–1869) was Japan’s largest civil war, a typical conventional civil war while being a rare instance where winners and losers were geographically mixed. This study examines how the defeat in the Boshin War impacted the effectiveness of contemporary policy and its mechanisms. We focused on the early period of the COVID-19 pandemic as an event evoking the Boshin War’s collective memory. We measured the frequency of going out using precise smartphone mobility data as the outcome variable. Analyses using Coarsened Exact Matching and Difference-in-Differences techniques showed that residents of the defeated regions did not comply with stay-at-home orders during the first state of emergency, with a going-out frequency approximately 57% higher than that of the comparison regions. This relationship remained robust against alternative explanations. Surveys of municipal education boards, text analyses of municipal educational policies, a pre-registered Internet survey, and supplementary Twitter content analysis suggested that post-war educational decentralization emphasized Boshin War history in the defeated regions, fostering a common intellectual foundation and social identity among residents while leaving policy orientation and historical awareness largely unchanged.