Abstract: In 2020, the COVID-19 epidemic became a worldwide public health crisis. The emergency management ability of governments around the world became the center of concern and was subject to test. Japan's emergency management mechanism is constantly enriched and formed by summing up the experience of previous major crisis events, and is characterized by “joint participation”. The emergency management measures of the Japanese government in the face of the epidemic situation show six characteristics: the central government and local autonomous bodies playing a leading role, timely improvement of the emergency management law, completing “selfrestraint” with the help of f nongovernmental forces, timely release of information, financial support policies, and guarantee of hierarchical diagnosis and treatment system. At the same time, there are still some problems, such as the central government's failure, the backward means of reporting disaster information, and unreasonable allocation of medical resources.

Key words: emergency management, epidemic, Japan