A Jiji reporter who was there through Oct. 2 covering this very trial has tested positive for the coronavirus. No notices on tests or tracing contacts have come to the foreign media so far. We are crammed into one area but the seats are not assigned so tracing might be hard. https://twitter.com/yurikageyama/status/1311967911720841220

Maybe they will let us sit in the emptier sections when we go there again, given that this has happened. On Oct. 2, the court official already promised to go down to the courtroom with me to make sure we could space out the seating if they are available in the public gallery.

I wish they had acted sooner as I have been raising this issue from the start. Not that I am trying to feel vindicated. It is horrible that this has happened. I hope the reporter gets well soon.

When social distancing is practiced so well in much of Japan, and everyone is good about wearing masks, this lack of logic in a courtroom, run by the state, where, despite empty seats in three-quarters of the gallery, press is confined, crammed in a section, is abominable.