Published on February 19, 2020.
This essay examines how changes in PM2.5 pollution maps appeared to reflect the suspension of industrial activity inside China during the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak.
It further criticizes Japan’s opposition parties for focusing on the Cherry Blossom Viewing Party controversy while the virus threat was growing, and argues that major media organizations, particularly NHK, failed to apply the same level of scrutiny to opposition parties that they applied to the government.
The essay maintains that opposition parties and media organizations are also forms of power and should be subject to equal criticism and accountability.

2020-02-19
Today’s map showed that China had resumed production activities, except in Wuhan and certain other areas. I will repost what the maps up until yesterday had been telling us.
For several days, I had not checked the PM2.5 pollution maps, and when I did, there was a pattern I had never seen even once before: the sky over China was not bright red.
Today’s map showed that China had resumed production activities, except in Wuhan and certain other areas.
I will repost what the maps up until yesterday had been telling us.
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They showed that, inside China, the novel coronavirus was raging far more severely than Japanese mass media outlets such as NHK were reporting.
As a result, China’s industrial activity was in a state of suspension.
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The fact that industrial activity had come to a standstill showed that the one-party dictatorship of the Chinese Communist Party was desperately trying to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus by exercising coercive powers on a scale unimaginable in a democratic country.
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As a result of the combination of the above two factors, production activities in China are now suspended.
The greatest responsibility for the successive appearance of infected people inside Japan lies with opposition parties such as the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and the Japanese Communist Party.
At a time when measures to prevent infection from entering Japan had to be considered as national policy, they continued attacking the government with the ludicrous fabrication known as the “Cherry Blossom Viewing Party,” thereby tying the government’s hands.
The guilt of media organizations such as NHK is also great.
When the other party is the government, they criticize the government relentlessly, as they did during the Moritomo-Kake uproar.
They do so even when the matter is fabricated.
Yet, for some reason, they almost never criticize the opposition parties.
On the contrary, it is no exaggeration to say that they allow the opposition parties to use television as their medium.
It is a clear fact that their attitude created Japan’s lost 20 or 30 years and allowed China and South Korea to become increasingly arrogant.
Programs such as Watch 9 did not even once utter words admonishing the opposition parties, such as, “Now is not the time to be doing such things.”
Rather, Arima and Kuwako commented with expressions that showed that attacking the government was their true desire, saying with delight that a Diet battle over the “Cherry Blossom Viewing Party” had unfolded.
I have stated several times that it is no exaggeration to say that the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan is a proxy party for the Korean Peninsula and China.
Since the novel coronavirus emerged in Wuhan at the end of last year, it is no exaggeration to say that their words and actions were meant to divert the eyes of the Japanese people from this matter.
In other words, in order to prevent the Japanese people from looking sternly at the Chinese government, they repeatedly asked truly absurd questions about the “Cherry Blossom Viewing Party” and the like.
Thus, the culprits who created the greatest cause of the domestic spread of this virus are, first, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, and second, the mass media that joined them and devoted themselves to attacking the administration.
Speaking of my home prefecture, Miyagi, there are the people around Ishinomaki who elected a colossal fool like Jun Azumi as a Diet member and gave him an effective annual income of about 50 million yen.
There are also the people of the Sendai area, my very own hometown, who in last year’s House of Councillors election sent a former female announcer to the Diet by a margin so narrow that, just as the first presidential primary of the U.S. Democratic Party resulted in no winner, the election should properly have been rerun.
All the people throughout Japan who voted for opposition parties such as the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and the Japanese Communist Party are the culprits behind the spread of infection.
Added to them are the pro-China bureaucrats infesting Kasumigaseki.
Even North Korea quickly closed its border with China.
Whether one calls it the negligence of Kasumigaseki or not,
the present spread of infection, or pandemic, is the result of the countless pro-China elements existing in politics, the bureaucracy, the media, and among so-called intellectuals.
Even so, what is truly bizarre is the manner of NHK’s reporting.
As was made clear during the Moritomo-Kake uproar, when it comes to criticism of the government, all viewers surely remember that Arima repeatedly and continuously made comments criticizing the government.
Yet they do not criticize the opposition parties at all.
As viewers know, this time there was not a single comment saying, “They should listen to the voices of the people who say that now is not the time to be doing such things.”
Maeda, the new president of NHK and said to be a former top executive of Mizuho Bank, was asked at a press conference about NHK’s reporting and said, “It is natural for the media to criticize power…”
However, the following points must have been completely missing from his mind.
The opposition parties are also a major form of power; indeed, it may be said that all politicians are power.
Six years ago, in August, the Asahi Shimbun officially admitted that its reporting on the comfort women issue and its reporting on the testimony of Director Yoshida of TEPCO’s Fukushima plant had been erroneous reports—the reality was fabrication—and its president resigned.
Since then, serious doubts have arisen about its credibility, and although the power it had wielded at will until then has greatly faded, the mass media is still the Fourth Estate, a power that surpasses even the three branches of government.
All of the above must have been completely missing from his mind.
Maeda, NHK, never forget, even for a moment, that the principle “It is natural to criticize power…” applies to the opposition parties as well, and also to NHK’s news department itself.