While Americans who understand the course of events since the outbreak of the Wuhan virus are filing damages claims against the Chinese government, Japanese television programs and opposition politicians continue to demand compensation only from the Japanese government.
Through this contrast, this essay examines national consciousness, the postwar masochistic view of history, and the distortions of Japanese politics and media.

April 9, 2020
Meanwhile, what Japanese news programs and opposition-party politicians keep saying day after day is simply this:
at the same time as requesting self-restraint, the Japanese government must provide compensation.
I am republishing the chapter I posted on April 2, 2020, under the title:
“Americans who accurately know the course of events since the outbreak are now filing class-action damages claims against the Chinese government in various places.”
A moment ago, I realized something that probably no Japanese person has noticed.
NHK’s news programs, commercial television news programs, and wide shows are all the same.
They lack the perspective of asking what responsibility China, a one-party dictatorship under the Communist Party, should bear for the virus that emerged in Wuhan.
As I have already written, this column is convinced that this was not a naturally occurring thing, but a 100 percent man-made virus.
The person who caused it is Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the responsible party is the Chinese government.
The true nature of the Wuhan Institute of Virology is that it is China’s biological and chemical weapons research institute.
For if it were truly and purely a research institute for preventing the spread of viruses and the like, a vaccine should already have been made long ago.
Researching in order to make vaccines would be the proper form of such an institute.
Americans who accurately know the course of events since the outbreak in the latter half of last year are now filing class-action damages claims against the Chinese government in various places.
Meanwhile, what Japanese news programs and opposition-party politicians keep saying day after day is simply this:
at the same time as requesting self-restraint, the Japanese government must provide compensation.
Most of the people saying such things are probably people who are always criticizing the government.
It is the same as Okinawa.
They continue to engage in words and deeds that can be called, without any exaggeration, those of traitors to the country, or even enemies of the state.
Yet when Shuri Castle burned down, they pretended not to know what sort of attitude they themselves had taken toward the government, and begged the government for reconstruction funds.
Judging from the conduct of Onaga and Denny Tamaki, it would be only natural for them to beg China or South Korea.
China and South Korea would gladly accept.
With broad smiles.
But in their hearts, they would be doing so with the greatest contempt.
How fortunate that these people are not our own citizens.
They are the lowest human beings.
While despising them in that way, China and South Korea would provide reconstruction funds with broad smiles.
A people who believe that it is always right to criticize and attack their own government.
A people who live within the masochistic view of history imposed by GHQ.
A people who are proud that their own country is the finest democratic nation in the world.
The difference between them is clearly appearing.
The American people know that the grave damage they are suffering was brought about by a one-party dictatorship under the Communist Party.
On the other hand, the opposition-party politicians and television media, and probably the Asahi Shimbun and others as well, who do nothing but demand compensation from the government, and the people who merely go along with them, are doing the same as denouncing the Japanese government as the party that brought about this greatest disaster of the postwar era.