The outbreak of the Wuhan virus exposed Japan’s dangerous dependence on China for masks and medical supplies. This essay examines the decline of America’s middle class, the rise of the Chinese Communist Party, the relocation of Japanese manufacturing to China, and Japan’s domestic mask shortage, arguing for the importance of domestic production as a matter of national security.

April 21, 2020
The prosperity of the middle class and the thickness of that class should have been the very essence of America being America.
The time when a handful of super-rich people began to hold more than 90 percent of America’s wealth and the time when China began to grow arrogant followed the same trajectory.
There is a famous line in a Japanese manga.
“You are already dead.”
That is exactly what China, that is, the CCP, is today.
Taking China’s nominal population of 1.3 billion and saying, “It is a great power, a great power equal to the United States. Between these two great powers, Japan…” and other comments that China would be delighted to hear, people who are merely NHK employees and cannot even be compared with true journalists such as Masayuki Takayama, as well as the Asahi Shimbun and others, have continued to make China, that is, the CCP, more and more arrogant.
When I was doing the greatest work of my business life, the existence of China had nothing whatsoever to do with anything.
That should have been the same for people all over the world.
At the same time as China’s arrogance increased, for example, the gap between rich and poor in the United States expanded astronomically.
The prosperity of the middle class and the thickness of that class should have been the very essence of America being America.
The time when a handful of super-rich people began to hold more than 90 percent of America’s wealth and the time when China began to grow arrogant followed the same trajectory.
There are probably few who would object to defining Kissinger as the founder of this.
In any case, China is no good at all.
The ruling class of China, a one-party Communist dictatorship, obtained astronomical sums of money through bribes and the like, and sent that money abroad to the United States and elsewhere, together with their daughters and sons.
It is no exaggeration to say that divine punishment has fallen upon the conduct of those who have moved on the same trajectory as a country of vice beyond comparison.
The people of all countries in the world, excluding the foolish countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative, have now felt to their bones that the way things have been done up to today was completely wrong.
Even if it costs not one yen, but 100 yen more, no, even 1,000 yen more, they should choose safe products made in their own countries, and medicines and medical supplies that protect their own lives.
They have realized that it was completely wrong to have such things made as cheaply as possible by people under the rural household registration system, people who may be called slaves without exaggeration.
In Japan, manufacturers such as Unicharm and Kowa have competed to make high-quality masks.
But they moved their manufacturing plants to China.
The reason was that manufacturing costs were low.
That was the only reason.
China generated the Wuhan virus.
Tokyo Governor Koike, who did not know the reality of the WHO, Secretary-General Nikai, who is a representative of the pro-China faction, local governments, and major corporations such as Sumitomo Mitsui had no insight whatsoever that Japan too would fall into the present situation.
They danced to the tune of false Japan–China friendship and donated large quantities of masks, medical protective equipment, and the like to China.
China’s return for that favor was the seizure of all the products of the manufacturers mentioned above.
Even though they were products made for Japan at the factories of Japanese manufacturers, not a single one has come into Japan.
Now that even medical protective gear is beginning to be lacking, companies from other industries, such as Toyota, have begun production for Japan.
It was reported by television stations and newspapers that today at 10 a.m., Sharp would begin online-only sales of masks it had started manufacturing.
The product would be sold from 10 a.m. today, one box of 50 masks, limited to one per person, with people of the same name unable to purchase within three days, and 3,000 boxes sold every day.
Because Sharp is producing them at its factory in Mie Prefecture, it has created masks of a quality that anyone would accept.
I too set an alarm during my work on this column and joined the battle.
But before that, I had one friend who cannot use a PC, and I telephoned to ask whether there was any possible way for him.
However, inquiries were flooding in and I could not get through.
Ah, just as I thought.
Even when 10 o’clock came, the Internet did not move at all.
It was down from overload.
Even at 5 p.m., Sharp announced that it had not been able to confirm anything at all.
Because of China’s maliciousness beyond compare, the majority of the Japanese people had been quietly enduring.
The following is a chapter I sent out to Prime Minister Abe on February 26, 2020.
Dear Mr. Shinzo Abe.
What you have done under the second Abe administration is truly worthy of praise.
In this morning’s Sankei Shimbun, an article on the opinion poll said that for the first time in one year and seven months, the approval rating of the administration had fallen sharply below the disapproval rating.
I thought that this was only natural.
Even if the people most responsible for the domestic spread of the novel virus originating in Wuhan were those who failed to do what they should have done in the Diet, namely discuss how the state should respond to this matter.
As I have repeatedly said, it was no exaggeration to say that they acted as China’s agents, preventing the anger of the Japanese people from turning toward China.
Even if they were absorbed in something truly ridiculous called the Cherry Blossom Viewing Party, a fabrication for attacking the administration, especially the matter of the hotel and so on.
All opposition-party politicians must themselves be negotiating to have things made as cheap as possible.
Nevertheless, the opposition parties that continued to repeat such conduct, the Asahi Shimbun and others that followed them and continued to write appalling editorials, and NHK, television wide shows, and the radio-wave geisha who appear on them and agreed with them.
The spread of virus infection has clearly shown that these are people equivalent to traitors to the nation.
As I have said, the Constitutional Democratic Party, the Asahi Shimbun, NHK, and other media bear the greatest responsibility.
On this point, Komeito is also completely useless.
Instead of resolutely doing what must be done now, it has devoted itself to dealing with the ugly opposition parties and offering complaints about the behavior of certain politicians.
You, the person who has continued to be attacked, are now the most trusted politician in the world and also the politician most familiar with world affairs.
The condition within Japan, the conduct of the opposition parties, the conduct of the Asahi Shimbun and others, and in particular the baseness and stupidity of opposition-party politicians who repeat questions about hotel responses and such things, have clouded your rare quality of being a thorough realist.
The sharp drop in your approval rating is the result of that quality being thoroughly clouded.
Mr. Abe.
The truly urgent task that must be done now above all else is to realize the supply of masks to all citizens as soon as possible.
It is an extremely simple matter.
It is only natural that you are utterly fed up and disgusted by the persistent attacks of such stupid and low-grade opposition-party politicians and the Asahi Shimbun and others.
But you must not allow your characteristic gaze, the gaze that thinks from the viewpoint of each individual citizen, to become clouded.
For example, I have only five masks left.
Now, in Kyoto, the plum blossoms are in full bloom.
Every year, I go to see the plum blossoms at Jonangu and Kitano Tenmangu.
In the past, I went there to photograph them.
Especially “plum blossoms and white-eyes.”
It is also the season when I should be going to see the Kawazu cherry blossoms near Yodo Station on the Keihan Line.
But this year, I have not gone anywhere.
For some reason, this year I had especially wanted to go to Kitano Tenmangu, connected with Michizane.
But in the present situation, no one wants to go into crowds unprotected.
As a result of Japan having been ruled by the Asahi Shimbun until August six years ago, Japan may indeed have become a foolish country that is defenseless in every respect.
But the majority of citizens, except those who subscribe to the Asahi Shimbun and the like and watch only NHK news programs, are by no means such foolish advocates of defenselessness.
The conduct of those who are probably buying up masks every time they appear in stores and are now listing them online is utterly ugly.
In other words, the Japanese people are now facing true stupidity and ugliness, and they are truly angry.
Mask manufacturers too are companies that Japan can boast of to the world.
Mr. Abe.
Only ruling-party lawmakers and sympathetic lawmakers are enough.
Summon all companies that manufacture masks to the Diet.
Have them make clear before the people the current production systems of each company, the production volume if they were to operate twenty-four hours a day, and when masks can be supplied to the Japanese people as usual.
If you do that, your approval rating will recover at once.
At the same time, have companies capable of producing masks and willing to produce masks as a response to a national emergency begin production.
If the situation comes under control and those companies end up holding inventory, take this lesson from the present situation and decide that the state will purchase all of it as national stockpiles.
This is no time to let your eyes be clouded by fools.
You may be clinging to the decision to invite Xi Jinping, the worst dictator in history, as a state guest, and to the nerve war with China, a country of bottomless evil and plausible lies, over which side will say it first.
I understand.
But leave that alone completely.
In the end, with Machiavellianism in the correct sense, you should decide to postpone it.
Almost all the people will strongly support it.
Of course, while taking care not to allow China to seize on any opening.
In any case, right now it is masks, Mr. Abe.
With the decisiveness that is your strength, as soon as you read this article, simply put it into action.
Right now, that is all.
Since February 26, the only masks I have been able to obtain were one pack of three masks, which I bought after hearing by chance in an elevator on the way home from a haircut that they were being sold at a nearby pharmacy.
At all pharmacies, the situation continues even now: masks sold out, disinfectants sold out.
China seized the products of all Japanese medical supply manufacturers and forced us Japanese people to endure this much.
The world must know the maliciousness China is now displaying.
Countries that gratefully call such maliciousness friendship are themselves stained with evil like China.
Italy, which one can hardly believe is a G7 country, former Eastern European countries ruled by dictators, and countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative.