Drawing on a dialogue between Masayuki Takayama and Eitaro Ogawa in WiLL magazine, this article examines Japan’s fragmented bureaucracy, the weakness of its quarantine system during the Wuhan virus crisis, the prewar Home Ministry, the Government-General of Korea, the 731 Unit narrative, and the postwar distortions left by GHQ and the Asahi Shimbun.

June 8, 2020
At that time, there were people who refused testing, but if it had been the Home Ministry, it would never have allowed that.
From arranging charter flights and quarantine to city lockdowns and responses to medical institutions, everything would have been completed within the ministry.
The monthly magazines I refer to are must-reading not only for the Japanese people, but for people all over the world.
After all, although they are filled with genuine articles like this one, they cost only 950 yen.
The following is a continuation of a special dialogue between Masayuki Takayama and Eitaro Ogawa, published in this month’s issue of the monthly magazine WiLL under the title, “Designate China, the War-Criminal Nation of the Wuhan Virus, as a Terrorist State.”
Masayuki Takayama is the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
Eitaro Ogawa, for a book in which he criticized the Asahi Shimbun in the most natural and justified way, was, unbelievably, sued by the Asahi Shimbun, which is supposed to be an organ of speech, for a large amount of damages, in other words, subjected to a harassment lawsuit.
Even while suffering great financial loss, he has continued to write essays without flinching in the slightest.
He is one of the prides among graduates of the Faculty of Letters at Osaka University.
If it had been the Home Ministry.
Ogawa
Domestically as well, the coronavirus disaster has brought to light an irrational and ambiguous governing structure.
It has become clear that not only the vertical sectionalism among ministries, but also the vertical sectionalism within ministries, is serious.
For example, within the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, the section that handles masks and the section that manages protective clothing are different.
Since the manufacturers supplying them are the same, unless they are brought together into one place, the discussion cannot move forward.
Even though people are crying out about such a severe shortage of masks, even information on which hospitals have how many medical devices is not being shared.
The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare needs to create a map that displays this information in real time.
I asked the medical association, and they said that the hospitals are communicating with one another by tacit understanding.
What kind of backward country is this?
Takayama
Before the war, quarantine and epidemic prevention were handled by the Home Ministry.
The Home Ministry had the Police Affairs Bureau, today’s National Police Agency, and could take measures backed by coercive power.
At the end of January, the Japanese government flew charter planes to Wuhan and brought Japanese nationals home.
At that time, there were people who refused testing, but if it had been the Home Ministry, it would never have allowed that.
Moreover, the Home Ministry had the National Land Bureau, today’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, and the Sanitation Bureau, today’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare.
From arranging charter flights and quarantine to city lockdowns and responses to medical institutions, everything would have been completed within the ministry.
The Government-General of Korea also had the same structure as the Home Ministry, and when cholera or plague spread, it could forcibly isolate patients.
There were also people who did not report infection, but it made villages create epidemic-prevention associations like groups of five households, and it even paid money to those who informed on others by saying, “That person is infected.”
As a result, typhus and plague could be brought under control in two or three months.
Ogawa
There is an urgent need to create a powerful epidemic-prevention system.
As early as autumn, a mutated and more vicious virus may come from the Southern Hemisphere.
At such a time, if Japan does not have a solid epidemic-prevention system, the social life of the people will collapse.
On top of that, Japan will be ostracized by the world.
Takayama
But when people hear “epidemic prevention,” many of them imagine Unit 731, and when they hear “Home Ministry,” many imagine the Special Higher Police and the Peace Preservation Law.
During the China Incident, cholera was spreading within the army.
Amid such circumstances, Unit 731 was studying epidemic prevention and clean drinking water.
Each division had such an epidemic-prevention and water-supply unit.
After the capture of Nanjing, the Japanese army pursued the Nationalist Government army as it fled up the Yangtze River.
When the Japanese army tried to head toward Wuhan via Jiujiang, the enemy cut the embankments of the Yangtze River and scattered poison and cholera bacteria into the wells of the city of Jiujiang.
So the epidemic-prevention and water-supply unit purified the well water, other units repaired the broken sections of the embankments, and food was distributed to the citizens of Jiujiang.
GHQ and the Asahi Shimbun completely covered up such stories, and the only things they talk about are fake news stories such as human experimentation by Unit 731.
Because of the lies about Unit 731 and the dissolution of the Home Ministry, postwar Japan forgot even what “epidemic prevention” means.
I think that one remote cause of the coronavirus quarantine system falling behind at every step lies in such malicious schemes by GHQ.
Ogawa
It is a kind of allergy.
Takayama
In the past, every time a proposal to revive the Home Ministry surfaced, the Asahi Shimbun and the opposition parties always brought up the Peace Preservation Law and made a fuss.
It has already become a pattern.
This article continues.