This essay examines COVID-19 reporting, Tokyo’s pandemic response, constitutional and legal constraints on crisis management, increasing Chinese activity around the Senkaku Islands, and comparisons between Japan’s Abe administration and Germany’s long-serving chancellors, raising fundamental questions about national security and the responsibilities of the Japanese media.

August 10, 2020
As the number of COVID-19 cases began rising again, clusters associated with host clubs and other establishments in Tokyo’s Kabukicho district became a major public issue.
Several months earlier, on March 22, 2020, a large K-1 event had been held at Saitama Super Arena despite requests from the national and Saitama prefectural governments that it be cancelled, drawing approximately 6,500 people according to the organizers.
For me, the incident symbolized a deeper problem: even during a serious infectious-disease emergency, Japan’s national and local governments had only limited power to compel the cancellation of gatherings and business activities.
Anyone seeking to exploit Japan’s vulnerabilities would naturally study the constraints imposed by its laws and Constitution and look for weaknesses in the system.
China’s increasingly assertive conduct around the Senkaku Islands was, in my view, an important example of why this question mattered.
In 2020, Chinese government vessels maintained an unprecedented level of activity around the Senkaku Islands.
Japan was therefore facing not only a public-health emergency but also a serious national-security challenge.
Yet while changes in daily infection numbers were reported relentlessly, I did not believe developments around the Senkaku Islands were receiving comparable, sustained attention from the Japanese media.
I was also strongly critical of Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike’s response at the time.
Tokyo did provide protective clothing from its stockpile to China during the early phase of the outbreak.
The legitimate question, in my view, was whether that decision sufficiently anticipated the possibility that Japan itself would soon require those supplies.
I also believed that major news organizations such as the Asahi Shimbun and NHK had failed to pursue adequately the questions that had been raised about Governor Koike’s academic record.
The same principle applies to infection statistics.
Journalists should not merely repeat numbers announced by government authorities.
They should examine what those numbers mean, how they relate to testing volumes, and whether changes in methodology affect comparisons.
Yet it appeared to me that some major media organizations devoted extraordinary energy to repeated opinion polls while failing to investigate these deeper issues with equal intensity.
At the time, speculation continued about a possible dissolution of the House of Representatives and a general election, while opposition parties including the Constitutional Democratic Party remained strongly wary of an early election.
I had consistently evaluated the second Abe administration highly.
The second Abe Cabinet took office on December 26, 2012.
By August 10, 2020, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had therefore led his second administration for roughly seven years and eight months—already an unusually long period by postwar Japanese standards.
Germany offers an instructive comparison.
Postwar German chancellors included Konrad Adenauer, Ludwig Erhard, Kurt Georg Kiesinger, Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt, Helmut Kohl, Gerhard Schröder, and Angela Merkel.
Adenauer served from 1949 to 1963, approximately fourteen years.
Kohl served from 1982 to 1998, sixteen years.
Merkel became Chancellor in November 2005 and, as of August 10, 2020, had served for roughly fourteen years and nine months.
I believe that such long tenures can contribute greatly to a leader’s experience, international negotiating power, personal networks, and global presence.
I therefore had a question for Mariko Bando, who had recently appeared on TV Tokyo and praised Chancellor Merkel.
If Merkel is to be praised, should we not also examine the political structure that enabled Germany to sustain such long-term leadership?
In 2020, Japan’s COVID-19 death toll remained dramatically lower than that of many major European countries and the United States.
If one praised foreign leaders while refusing to give the Abe administration any credit for Japan’s relative outcomes, I believed the standard of evaluation itself deserved scrutiny.
I should also correct one statement in my original text.
I wrote that Germany “prohibits the Communist Party under its Constitution.”
More precisely, the Communist Party of Germany, the KPD, was prohibited by the Federal Constitutional Court in 1956.
Germany’s Basic Law does not automatically prohibit every party describing itself as communist.
The larger point, however, remains important.
Postwar German democracy developed the concept of a “militant democracy”—a democracy that does not remain passive toward forces seeking to destroy the free democratic constitutional order itself.
I believe Japan must likewise consider whether its institutions are adequate to protect democracy, sovereignty, and the lives of its citizens.
To return to the main subject.
At times, I found the Asahi Shimbun’s reporting posture even more troubling than NHK’s.
While enormous attention was devoted to daily infection numbers, was the growing Chinese presence around the Senkaku Islands being reported with sufficient intensity for the Japanese public to understand its significance?
I did not believe so.
A pandemic is a grave national challenge.
But a pandemic is not the only possible national crisis.
Territory, security, and sovereignty can also determine the lives and future of a nation’s citizens.
At the time, I had been translating into English an essay by Seki Hei.
Reading his work again reminded me of Arthur H. Smith, the American missionary who lived in China for more than twenty years and wrote the historically influential work Chinese Characteristics.
Smith observed Chinese society over many years as a foreigner.
Seki Hei was born in China, knew the society from within, and later became a Japanese citizen.
Although they lived in very different eras and came from very different backgrounds, I believe their observations raise overlapping questions about Chinese society and political conduct.
It would be unrealistic to assume that China does not conduct propaganda or influence activities directed at foreign societies.
For that reason, Japan must continually examine whether newspapers, television networks, politicians, intellectuals, legal organizations, and civic groups are critically evaluating claims originating from foreign governments.
That does not mean that any individual organization or person should be accused, without evidence, of acting under instructions from Beijing.
But when domestic reporting or political arguments happen to coincide with the strategic interests of a foreign government, examining that relationship is a legitimate task of journalism.
At the time, both the Chinese and South Korean governments strongly opposed important elements of the Abe administration’s historical and security policies.
At the same time, Abe faced intense criticism within Japan from newspapers, broadcasters, opposition parties, intellectuals, and civic organizations.
I do not claim that these positions necessarily arose from a common intention.
What must be examined calmly is where domestic political movements and foreign strategic interests happen to overlap—and where they do not.
We must not look only at infection numbers.
What was happening around the Senkaku Islands at the same moment?
What was happening in the seas surrounding Japan?
Were Japan’s Constitution and legal system truly structured to protect the lives of its people, its territory, and its sovereignty?
And were the media properly informing the public about those questions?
That was the essential warning I sought to express on August 10, 2020.