Opinion | Japan Can’t Handle the Coronavirus. Can It Host the Olympics?

Why is Mr. Abe — who is no stranger to an authoritarian style of leadership and readily breaks rules and conventions, as well as, arguably, the Constitution, to get his way — not doing more, or more decisively?

The answer might simply be: out of a lack of interest, personal and political. When the expert panel finally gathered on Feb. 16, Mr. Abe addressed it for just three minutes and then spent the rest of the day at home. The task force has met 13 times, but according to the opposition, the prime minister has been seen in attendance a mere 12 minutes on average.

The day after the first Japanese death from Covid-19 was reported, Mr. Abe was at a task force meeting for eight minutes, and then spent nearly three hours at dinner with the chairman and the president of Nikkei, the media organization. Shinjiro Koizumi, the environment minister and a rising star in the ruling party, skipped a task force meeting altogether to attend a New Year’s party with supporters from his constituency.

This is not the first time that Mr. Abe and his entourage display callous indifference in the face of an unfolding disaster. During the summer of 2018, the prime minister and his ruling-party colleagues came under fire for wining and dining in Tokyo during a bout of torrential rains in western Japan that ultimately killed more than 220 people. From the heavy snow that buried and paralyzed Yamanashi in central Japan in 2014 to Faxai and Hagibis, typhoons that devastated parts of eastern Japan last year, the Abe government has often been criticized for exerting far too little leadership to protect the people.

Once again, as Japan struggles to respond to Covid-19, Mr. Abe is largely invisible. Perhaps he — much like President Xi Jinping appears to be doing in China — wants to keep his distances from the crisis for fear of being held responsible for its consequences. But there is another explanation, both simpler and more systemic.

The Japanese government today is dominated by third- and fourth-generation descendants of long political dynasties, who inherited such important assets as name recognition, dedicated electoral machines, ample tax-exempt campaign funds and vast networks of cronies and special interest groups. Both the prime minister and the deputy prime minister, Taro Aso, are the grandchildren of former prime ministers; Mr. Koizumi, the environment minister, is the son of an ex-prime minister; the defense minister, Taro Kono, is the son of a former deputy prime minister.