Regarding the May 19 article “Foreign residents stranded abroad by Japan’s coronavirus controls,” is this the same country that even months after the rest of the world had opened its eyes to the threat of a pandemic was still pushing forward in top gear toward a summer Olympics in Tokyo which is the only place left in Japan under lockdown? That’s what happens in a country with a population of one — that is only one person seems eligible to govern Japan because as so many people keep repeating there is no one else.

The problems Japan faces may be the same as the rest of the world, but they are made much worse by the attitude that just one person can solve them or be trusted to do so, especially when that one person has been skating on the thin ice of corruption for as long as he has forced himself into an unassailable position by quashing opposition and muzzling the media, especially Japan’s purportedly independent broadcaster NHK, which now forces extortionate fees on viewers in order to pay for the ruling party’s destruction of democracy and freedom of speech.

In every other country with a constitution, a leader’s job is to protect, honor and defend the supreme laws of the land, but Prime Minister Abe seems bent on destroying Japan’s postwar vow to reject militarism and aggression.

David John
Dazaifu, Fukuoka Prefecture


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