Let me suggest that the government should clarify all the medical resources needed to hold the huge sports events and ask for the panel’s opinion about the viability of holding them. While Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and other top administration officials have refused to discuss the option of canceling the events, Omi did a good job of underscoring the harsh reality of the pandemic and its serious implications for the Summer Games. Shigeru Omi, the chairman of the government's expert panel, said in late April that the government should decide on whether to proceed with the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics by assessing the level of strain placed on the nation’s health care system. One expert voiced his sense of crisis in another way. It was probably due to them having many frustrating experiences in which their spontaneously expressed views and opinions just fell on deaf ears. What is troubling is the fact that they, scientists not politicians, had to hold a kind of secret meeting to plan their move in advance. The experts deserve applause for their bold action. They clearly viewed the measures the government was about to propose as too weak and decided not to approve them. When the government on May 14 presented the original plan to the expert panel advising it on its pandemic response, many panel members took exception, forcing the government to change it.Īccording to an Asahi Shimbun story on what happened, the experts held an unofficial online meeting the previous night and discussed how they should respond to the proposal.

It concerns the government’s abrupt decision to add Hokkaido, Okayama and Hiroshima to the list of prefectures under the COVID-19 state of emergency in an about-face on its original plan to apply only the quasi-emergency pandemic response program known as “man-en boshi” to these prefectures. In the Japanese folktale “Saru kani gassen” (The Crab and the Monkey), young crabs, with the help of some allies including a chestnut and a bee, take revenge on a bullying monkey, which caused the death of their parent.Ī rebellion reminiscent of such stories recently took place in connection with the government’s latest COVID-19 response plan. In “Town Musicians of Bremen,” a donkey, a hound, a cat and a rooster, which all have seen better days and outlived their usefulness, come together and scare robbers away by creating a din. Stories in both the West and the East about the weak fighting back against a powerful common enemy usually tell how important it is to stand together to defeat the mighty.

Unity time donkey