TOKYO, March 30, 2020—Ken Shimura had made the entire country of 127 million people laugh at his hilarious ad rib gigs in his TV variety shows ever since the 1970s. From toddlers to octogenarians, viewers would stop channel surfing to keep the station locked on to the shows. Late March 29, Shimura, a core member of the comedian group Drifters, succumbed to pneumonia caused by the coronavirus infection and died. He was 70.
Shimura’s death almost drew the entire country to express grief. Chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga expressed his condolence at a regular news conference March 30 and that Japan at a ‘a very critical period,’ according to Reuters.
Kazumasa Kusaka, a former trade vice minister of international affairs, told me that Shimura left ‘an invaluable message to us’ to take extra precautions against the pandemic. A senior Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry official, who was Tsukasa’s superior, told me that it would be conceivable that the third phase of soft lockdown would be announced ‘if the number of infections continue at the three-digit level.’
On March 29, the number of infections rose 173 to 1,866, spiking to the three digit for the first time from two digit. The number of deaths rose 2 to 54.
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