As a continuation of Takayuki Hikawa’s article in the monthly magazine WiLL, this piece examines how opposition parties summoned Foreign Ministry and Health Ministry officials working on the front lines of the new pneumonia response to a Diet hearing. It records the opposition’s performance for the media, while failing to question ministers in the Budget Committee.

February 28, 2020
The opposition parties did not ask questions about the new pneumonia there, but merely performed for the media in order to show that they, too, were interested.
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Their Favorite Bureaucrat-Bullying
It was not only the Diet questioning that drew public criticism.
On the afternoon of the 29th, the same day Ishigaki stood to ask questions, what was held in the Diet was the “Opposition Parties’ Joint Hearing on the New Pneumonia,” strongly pushed by Azumi.
Called to the opposition parties’ room for the hearing were about ten bureaucrats from the Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, who were precisely the officials working on the front lines of the new pneumonia countermeasures.
Amid the 24-hour operation to transport Japanese nationals by chartered aircraft, they had probably been working through the night; their faces were ashen, and they had dark circles under their eyes.
Members of the various opposition parties sat facing the bureaucrats.
After confirming that the television cameras had begun filming, Shu Watanabe, deputy leader of the Democratic Party for the People, flipped through the handouts prepared by the ministries and bombarded the bureaucrats with questions.
“What is a PCR test?
Don’t say it in Roman letters; say it in hiragana.”
They deliberately questioned bureaucrats summoned from the front lines about things that could be understood instantly by looking them up on the internet.
Indeed, such fruitless “bureaucrat-bullying” continued for one hour and fifteen minutes.
At the time the hearing was being held, the Budget Committee of the House of Councillors, attended by all cabinet ministers, was in session.
The opposition parties did not ask questions about the new pneumonia there, but merely performed for the media in order to show that they, too, were interested.
Needless to say, such behavior was naturally harshly criticized even by various media outlets, which asked:
“Why are they holding a separate hearing by calling in busy front-line bureaucrats, instead of questioning ministers in the Budget Committee?”
The rest is omitted.