Filmmaker's short video gives Nanjing virus campaign a leading role

Most restaurants just offered takeaway food, and some even pasted the name and temperature of the cook and handlers on the package as a guarantee of the food's safety.

Since the reopening of schools has been postponed, Takeuchi's 12-year-old son took online classes recorded by teachers, covering courses such as Chinese, music and physical education.

The company run by Takeuchi and his Chinese wife was asked to prepare facial masks, goggles, alcohol-based disinfectants and other medical protective supplies in the office before the staff members got back to work.

Many other details of the strict measures for disease prevention and control are also recorded in the video, from which, Takeuchi says, he could feel China's strong determination to defeat the deadly epidemic.

"I hope that the video could offer Japan some references," he says.

On Feb 21, Takeuchi's colleagues went to downtown Tokyo and conducted street interviews, to see what young people think about the novel coronavirus. It turned out that most of the 22 interviewees underestimated the seriousness of the virus situation, some of whom even held the belief that there was nothing to be concerned about as the overall case fatality rate is just around 2 percent.

"I was very worried," says Takeuchi. "They don't know, behind the statistics on the death rate, how much effort China has made to cure infected patients and curb the spread of the virus."

Hence, he filmed the video in the hope that Japanese people could take precautions to prevent the virus spreading rapidly.

"I found that many Japanese viewers of the documentary were surprised at the strictness of China's virus-prevention actions, and they thought that Japan should learn something from China," he says.

Beyond his expectation, the video also made a splash in China, notching up more than 10 million views on the Chinese micro-blogging platform, Sina Weibo.

One Chinese user's comment partly explains why the video became so popular in China: "As a Nanjing citizen, I don't even know so many details about virus-control measures because I've been confined indoors for over a month. I hope more authentic records of what's going on in China will be produced to clear up misunderstandings and improve mutual trust between China and other countries."

On March 7, Takeuchi released a post on Sina Weibo to encourage people from across China to contribute video clips about how their cities are fighting against the epidemic.

"I want to show other countries that are facing a severe virus situation how Chinese people have been living their everyday lives during the epidemic," he says.