Amid the spread of the new coronavirus, media narratives began praising South Korea’s mass testing while disparaging Japan’s testing system. This essay criticizes opposition parties, media outlets, and activist groups for losing sight of the essential task of preventing infection and turning testing numbers into political propaganda.

March 1, 2020
The Inversion over Testing: The Harm Created by South Korean-Style Propaganda and Japan’s Media
In this essay, I will write about two evils.
The first is the evil I noticed yesterday: South Korea, opposition parties such as the Constitutional Democratic Party, print media such as the Asahi Shimbun and the Mainichi Shimbun, television media beginning with NHK, and so-called citizens’ groups.
This axis of evil is now creating a new evil.
It is, truly, an outrageous absurdity, but they have begun saying that Japan’s testing system is the problem.
This axis of evil has even begun reporting that South Korea is far more advanced.
The image of testing people while they remain in their cars is truly ridiculous.
To borrow the words of the great Professor Furuta, it is nonsense itself.
Such a thing is not a means of preventing the spread of infection.
There is a girlfriend who accompanies me when I walk around Kyoto.
She is an extremely fine person, and I have almost never heard her speak of other people’s wrongdoings.
Yet she has said something to me several times.
Among tourists from South Korea, she says, there are people whose sense of hygiene is hard to believe.
Because they are speaking Korean, she can tell immediately.
She says that even among young women, there are not a few who do not wash their hands after using the restroom.
In other words, at least as far as I have seen and heard, I cannot help thinking that problems concerning hygiene have remained in Korean society from the time of Isabella Bird down to the present.
I cannot dispel the suspicion that this uncleanliness, these unclean places, and Korean markets may not be so different from the markets of Wuhan.
In other words, they may be similarly dirty and unsanitary.
At a time when unnecessary outings and gatherings should be prohibited, and when unclean places and the routes taken by patients should be thoroughly disinfected and sterilized, they are setting up tents in parking lots, making cars line up, and conducting what they call tests.
To begin with, the people who can drive around South Korea and go to be tested in this way are relatively well-off people, and are probably among those living in comparatively cleaner environments.
Instead of wasting time on testing such apparently healthy people, personnel should be assigned to tracing patient routes, isolation, disinfection, and sterilization.
Yet in the end, displaying the essence of bottomless propaganda and plausible falsehood, they have begun saying that the number of infected people in South Korea is increasing because they are conducting so many tests.
It is nonsense that even a kindergarten child would reject.
What is even more absurd in this matter is that Japanese television media, beginning with NHK, which are connected with them, have begun truly foolish reporting that portrays Japan, a country with one of the highest medical standards in the world, as far inferior to South Korea.
And they do so while implying criticism of the Abe administration between the lines.
The maliciousness once expressed by Wakamiya and Chikushi, when they licked their lips and spoke foolishly of the arrival of the age of television politics, of selecting unintelligent television personalities and handing them the Asahi Shimbun, is not only still alive.
It still possesses great power.
Yesterday, a male acquaintance of mine who has long worked in the service industry came to my home.
In the industry in which he works, he is a true professional in product knowledge.
Before he arrived at seven in the evening, the news had reported that three infected people had also been found in Osaka.
When he tried to remove his mask to speak, I said to him:
You can leave it on.
The moment I said, “In Osaka,” he said:
The reason Osaka had so few cases until now is that it was not testing.
His source of information is television and other media.
The evil of television must be corrected as quickly as possible.
The news of the three cases in Osaka concerned a thirty-year-old woman living in Kochi Prefecture who, despite feeling unwell, that is, despite having a fever, attended a concert at a live music venue in Miyakojima Ward, Osaka City, on February 15 without wearing a mask.
The following is from the Nikkei electronic edition.
On February 29, Osaka Prefecture announced that a female nurse in her thirties, whose infection with the new coronavirus had been confirmed in Kochi Prefecture, had attended a concert held on February 15 at a live music venue in Miyakojima Ward, Osaka City.
It was also said that a man in his forties living in Osaka Prefecture, whose infection was confirmed in Sapporo on February 25, and a male company employee in his forties, whose infection was confirmed on February 27, had also attended the concert.
At a press conference on February 29, Governor Hirofumi Yoshimura pointed out that three infected people had emerged from the enclosed space of a live music venue, and that further spread of infection was possible.
The prefecture called on concert participants who had fever or other symptoms to consult the new coronavirus consultation centers at public health centers within the prefecture.
According to the prefecture, the live music venue where the three people had been present was Osaka Kyobashi Live House Arc in Miyakojima Ward, Osaka City.
The concert began at 6:30 p.m. on the 15th and ended around 9:00 p.m.
There were about one hundred participants.
The woman in her thirties was at the venue from 5:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. that day and was not wearing a mask.
The two men attended as people connected with the concert and were also at the same venue on the 16th.
Under the direction of the public health center, disinfection had already been completed.
According to Kochi Prefecture and other sources, the woman worked at Nakauchi Orthopedic Clinic in Kochi City.
She felt throat pain on the 13th and visited a medical institution on the 14th.
She was given antibiotics, went alone to the concert on the 15th, and returned on the 16th.
She used highway buses both ways.
Afterward, she continued to have coughing, throat pain, and a slight fever.
When she visited a medical institution on the 28th, pneumonia was observed, and she was confirmed positive.
Her condition was not severe, and she was hospitalized for treatment.
Her mother, in her sixties and living with her, had shown symptoms of coughing and fatigue since the 25th, was being tested, and had been hospitalized from the 29th.
The two men living in Osaka Prefecture developed fevers on the 20th and the 24th.
Regarding the infection route, Governor Yoshimura expressed the view that because the woman had developed symptoms before the two men, it was possible that the infection spread from the woman to the two men.
In connection with the male company employee whose infection was confirmed on the 27th, the infection of a female family member in her forties and a preschool girl was confirmed on the 28th.
Most Japanese people probably do not know this, but from a certain point onward, Kochi University has had many Chinese international students enrolled.
Why are there so many Chinese international students at Kochi University?
It is not at all because they are interested in Kochi.
Kochi Prefecture, already small in population, is also in the midst of population aging and a declining birthrate.
The method chosen to overcome a situation in which even the survival of the university was in danger was to acquire large numbers of Chinese international students.
Why do Chinese students come so readily?
Because there are very favorable treatment measures.
The taxes paid by us, the Japanese people, are being used to provide considerable benefits to Chinese international students.
This too is an evil created by the axis of evil described above.
Relative to its population, Kochi has a very large number of Chinese people coming and going.
I believe it is highly possible that the source of infection was connected to China.
Even such a simple reality is something the television media, in particular, do not understand at all.
Those whose only source of information is such media not only disparage Japan, a country with one of the highest medical systems in the world, by saying that its testing system is inadequate.
They have even rushed to hoard toilet paper and the like.
This is a perfect example of the truth that the only thing evil can create is evil.