This chapter examines Takamasa Kadota’s Pandemic 2020, as introduced in the Sankei Shimbun column Sankei Sho.
It addresses the Chinese authorities’ information control concerning the novel coronavirus, the Japanese government’s initial failure to ban entry from China, and dysfunction within Japan’s governing institutions, including the bureaucracy of Kasumigaseki.
It ultimately asks whether the state has forgotten its supreme duty: protecting the lives of its people.

July 20, 2020
The author points out that the pandemic confronts us with a variety of fundamental questions, including how we should deal with China now that it has become an uncontrollable “monstrous great power.”
The following is taken from today’s Sankei Sho.
Many of my colleagues are fans of detective fiction and mysteries.
Perhaps that is because, given the nature of our work, the fascination of solving mysteries is difficult to forget, even though reality contains many mysteries that cannot be solved.
One such colleague recommended this book to me, saying, “This is truly fascinating.”
It is not fiction, but nonfiction that pursues reality.
Pandemic 2020, published by Sankei Shimbun Publications, is a work in which author and journalist Takamasa Kadota uses his extensive reporting to approach the mysteries surrounding the novel coronavirus pandemic.
It was half a year ago, in January, that the news arrived that Japan had confirmed its first patient with the new form of pneumonia.
Returning to that time and interweaving tweets that the author posted online, the book allows readers to relive the process of unraveling what was happening, together with his candid questions and proposals.
It describes in detail the information control imposed by the Chinese authorities at the source of the outbreak.
It also covers such details as how a doctor who recognized the disease at an early stage was punished.
How should we deal with China now that it has become an uncontrollable “monstrous great power”?
The author points out that the pandemic confronts us with a variety of fundamental questions.
The book also contains severe criticism of the Japanese government, including its initial failure to impose a ban on entry from China.
It recounts an episode in which a meeting of Liberal Democratic Party legislators, supposedly established as a forum for open debate, served merely as a means of releasing political pressure.
The book cuts into problems within the governing structure and among the bureaucrats of Kasumigaseki.
It questions Japan’s postwar complacency born of peace, arguing that the supreme duty of “protecting the lives of the people” has been forgotten.
In an ordinary year, many schools would begin their summer holidays on the twentieth, but this year many are shortening the holidays to make up for lost class time.
A season that should be filled with excitement has instead arrived amid anxiety.
August 15, marking seventy-five years since the end of the war, is also approaching, bringing many opportunities to think about the nation.
“Who is trampling upon freedom, independence, and human life?”
We must not run away from the reality presented by the pandemic.
We should renew our resolve to confront it.