Prompted by this week’s issue of Weekly Shincho, this article criticizes Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike’s talk of a capital lockdown and her political performance. It argues that Japan, despite being close to China and having received large numbers of Chinese tourists and Chinese residents, has kept infections among the lowest in the world because of Japanese cleanliness and daily habits.

April 2, 2020
Despite this, the reason Japan has effectively remained among the countries with the smallest number of infections in the world is that the Japanese are the cleanest people in the world.
This week’s issue of Weekly Shincho, released today, contains many decent major articles for the first time in quite a while.
A female friend of mine, an extremely capable person, once said, when Governor Koike appeared on television the other day, “I cannot bring myself to like this person……”
This column, too, has occasionally criticized this person.
The way she calmly uses fashionable words secondhand is itself the very attitude of a fake.
When Obama said, “Yes We Can,” she immediately imitated it.
When Trump said “America First,” she immediately imitated it with phrases such as “Tokyoites First.”
This is the exact opposite of what it means for a human being to be genuine.
It is the attitude of a fake.
Because the greatest postwar crisis is striking the world economy, the Bank of Japan has taken unprecedentedly bold measures to stop the sharp fall of the stock market, one of the foundations of capitalism.
In response, fake economic commentators of the same kind as Koike say, as usual, the most irresponsible things imaginable, such as that it distorts the market.
Their real motive is probably nothing more than wanting to make themselves look important.
It is no exaggeration at all to say that theirs is a way of thinking in which the country may collapse so long as they can preserve their own appearance.
Yuriko Koike is exactly the same as these people.
Unlike Western countries, Japan has China as its neighbor.
Moreover, because of Japan’s recent policy of becoming a tourism-oriented nation, among the largest numbers of Chinese people in the world had been coming to Japan.
There are also hundreds of thousands of Chinese residents in Japan.
Despite this, the reason Japan has effectively remained among the countries with the smallest number of infections in the world is that the Japanese are the cleanest people in the world.
Koike does not even notice that the fine qualities of the Japanese people have been proven, and this time, for election-oriented performance, perhaps performance is everything to this person, she apparently went to petition Prime Minister Abe to consider a capital lockdown, imitating Western capitals such as New York, Paris, and London.
Japan is now carrying out, one after another, what a nation ought to do, at the highest level in its history.
The reason the stock market, one of the foundations of capitalist society, was prevented from having its bottom fall out amid a once-in-16-billion-years upheaval, an upheaval greater than the Great East Japan Earthquake, is that the authorities moved immediately and boldly.
This was the exact opposite of the Bank of Japan during the foolish total-volume lending restrictions, a foolish policy made in an era when the Asahi Shimbun ruled Japan, and made precisely because it was such an era.
It was because Japan decided to pour into the stock market an amount of money exceeding the national budgets of groups of countries that speak as if they are full-fledged nations at the United Nations, while in reality they are little more than puppet states of China.
Meanwhile, this Yuriko Koike, for the sake of performance for her own Tokyo gubernatorial election, is trying at a time like this to imitate, secondhand, the lockdowns of Western capitals.
A pandemic occurring because of uncleanliness.
This person does not think at all about how much damage her stupidity will cause to the Japanese economy.
Her mind is incapable of thinking about it.
Before thinking, performance for her own sake comes first.
She can only be described as an outrageous article.
In fact, preventing the spread of infection in Tokyo is simple.
During the consecutive holidays, people claimed to be tired of self-restraint and stood in bars shoulder to shoulder, talking so closely that they were spraying spittle from their mouths.
Do not go to the many restaurants in Tokyo where there is not even one meter between customers, where there is no distance at all.
This is something that young people and mid-career salarymen must absolutely observe.
Wealthy people must not go to Ginza or Roppongi.
Holding events such as K-1 is utterly out of the question.
Always keep a distance of one meter from others.
Wash your hands everywhere.
That alone will immediately suppress the increase in infections in Tokyo.
In Kansai dialect, the matter is this: a capital lockdown? Are you stupid?
However, today, when I turned on the television to watch the midday news, it was Fuji Television, and a host who came from the idol world was agreeing with Koike’s smooth talk and saying foolish things, as if urging the government to act.
A friend of mine, one of the most avid readers I know, bought a book titled Wide Shows Are Ruining Japan, and he agreed completely that this is exactly right.