Amid the spread of the new coronavirus, Japan’s opposition parties began attacking the government over access to testing, while South Korea promoted its large-scale testing through striking images. This essay criticizes the strange alignment among South Korean messaging, Japan’s opposition parties, and media outlets such as NHK, arguing that political propaganda was being placed above the urgent task of preventing infection.

March 1, 2020
The Folly of Turning Testing into Political Propaganda: The Strange Alignment of South Korean Messaging, Japan’s Opposition, and the Media
A few days ago, members of the opposition parties, who may fairly be called among those responsible for having brought about the present situation, suddenly began saying in the Diet that many citizens were complaining that they wanted to be tested but could not be tested.
From the end of last year until yesterday, their conduct was such that one could almost say they bore grave responsibility for the spread of the new pneumonia virus.
Yet now, as if they had forgotten all of that, they have begun attacking the government.
Their evil has reached an extreme.
The opposition politician whom I saw questioning the government on the news said the following.
“We are receiving voices from citizens who say they want to be tested but cannot be tested.”
The purpose was obvious.
He wanted to use those voices as a weapon with which to attack the government.
The moment I heard that question, I felt a strange discomfort at how utterly odd it was.
That is because the way of responding to the matter was completely reversed.
To put it extremely, I felt as though I had encountered an alien.
The mind of an opposition politician who felt none of the discomfort I instantly felt, or who did not even sense that those citizens were mistaken.
If people, driven by the most selfish concern imaginable, thinking only about themselves, were to rush to hospitals, what would happen?
Even an elementary school child should understand that.
Yet this mind did not.
I wondered what kind of citizens they were, these people whose voices had supposedly reached this lawmaker.
What must be done now is for the public and private sectors together to prevent the spread of infection.
It is not at all for individuals to go out to be tested merely because they are worried about whether they themselves are infected.
That is the exact opposite of what must be done now in order to prevent the spread of infection.
It would itself spread infection.
Those who elected a lawmaker who could ask such a question without even understanding that must bear political responsibility together with that lawmaker.
If many people acted with such foolish minds, thinking only of themselves, medical institutions would be overwhelmed.
At a time like this, the very idea of going to a hospital waiting room reveals a considerable lack of intelligence.
I state plainly that the so-called citizens who informed this opposition politician, providing him with material for attacking the Abe administration, are the same kind of citizens who rush to hoard toilet paper and the like.
To begin with, to worry only about whether oneself has been infected is a way of thinking incompatible with the public spirit that should belong to the Japanese people.
Then came another development.
Perhaps from the day before yesterday, television news began reporting South Korea’s peculiar behavior.
The people reporting it, and the viewers watching the broadcast images without reflection, did not notice at all that the conduct of the South Korean government and South Korean media was the expression of bottomless propaganda and plausible falsehood.
The explosive increase of new pneumonia infections in South Korea was already a pandemic condition.
If South Korea had devoted itself to preventing that condition, that would have been one thing.
Instead, it apparently wanted to show, especially to Japan, images of people being tested while remaining inside their cars, even though such testing could hardly be said to have any direct effect in preventing infection.
And what was its claim?
That the number of infected people in South Korea was increasing because South Korea was testing thoroughly.
To borrow the words of the great Professor Hiroshi Furuta, there could be no greater nonsense.
This shows clearly how South Korean-style propaganda politics replaces the essence of reality with a staged narrative.
This morning, I suddenly realized that these two phenomena were not accidental.
South Korea, opposition politicians such as those in the Constitutional Democratic Party, media organizations such as NHK, and especially those who control NHK’s news division, are connected.
Until reading this essay, the Japanese people likely had not realized that an axis of evil existed between Japan, South Korea, the Korean Peninsula, and of course China as well.
The Japanese people must realize that there are forces connected with one another, forces that seek to demean Japan, forces that seek to extract vast sums of money from Japan, and forces that continue to target the taxes paid by the Japanese people.
And the Japanese people must never again be led by the tone of media outlets such as the Asahi Shimbun and NHK into voting for opposition parties such as the Constitutional Democratic Party.
For that single vote is a vote for national ruin and betrayal.
Moreover, the countries to which such betrayal would be made are China and the Korean Peninsula.
There could be no greater nonsense than that.
As for South Korea, I have decided that throughout my life I will never go there, and therefore I have never been to South Korea.
For that reason, I do not know the present reality of South Korea firsthand.
However, when I saw on last night’s news images of Korean streets and shopping districts being disinfected, I thought, just as I expected.
In Isabella Bird’s travel writing after visiting Seoul, there is a passage to the effect that she had thought Beijing was the dirtiest city in the world, but after seeing Seoul she had to revise that view.
The passage conveys that nowhere in the world was as filthy as Seoul.
For some reason, the historical reality of the Chinese cultural sphere and the Korean Peninsula, in which uncleanliness appears to have been a tradition or even an essence, was reflected there.
The South Korea shown from time to time on television consists only of modern-looking business districts.
The places where its essential reality appears are not reported.