The prime minister launched his offer to send cloth masks out while wearing one at a meeting of a government task force late on Wednesday. The masks will be sent to each of Japan’s more than 50 million households starting the week after next, with areas seeing a spike in cases getting priority.

“I am wearing one too, but these cloth masks are not disposable,” Abe said. “You can use soap to wash and reuse them, so this should be a good response to the sudden, huge demand for masks,” he said, noting domestic production of disposable masks would likely rise to 700 million in April from 600 million last month.

Twitter users were scathing. “Is the Japanese government for real? This is a total waste of tax money,” wrote a user with the handle Usube.

“A night has passed and it was not a dream,” Kentaro Iwata, an infectious disease specialist at the Kobe University, tweeted Thursday, referring to Abe’s Wednesday announcement.

He denounced the proposal as a “waste of money”, pointing out that hospitals would never use cloth masks of the sort proposed by Abe.

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Government ministers including Abe have said it was not yet time to declare a state of emergency that would provide authorities more legal clout to tell residents to stay home, close schools and take other steps, but would not allow penalties in most cases for those who defy the requests.

Abe first appeared in public wearing a mask on Tuesday. He wore a loose cloth mask for parliamentary committee meetings the following day, sitting beside Finance Minister Taro Aso, who appeared visibly uncomfortable in a disposable paper mask and removed it to talk – in contravention of recommended procedures.

After news of the offer, some Twitter users posted doctored photographs of Abe wearing two masks, one over his mouth and another over his eyes. Others listed nations that are distributing subsidies to each household and said they’d rather just get money.

The offer of two masks per household attracted scorn.

“If your family has more than two people, what are you supposed to do – fight over them?” posted user Yosuke.

The proposal also came in for caustic satire in yet another subtitled version of the global meme based on the German war film Downfall. The clip, which shows a distraught Adolf Hitler being told, “This is not an April Fool’s joke”, had 1 million views as of Thursday morning, and was retweeted by the Japanese Communist Party’s second-in-command, Akira Koike.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said on Thursday that the masks are estimated to cost about 200 yen (US$1.86) each, which could make the cost of the programme 40 billion yen (US$372 million), before shipping.

Suga defended the programme, saying it would also help ease demand for surgical masks.

Despite mixed views among experts on the medical value of masks, they are popular in Japan and were commonly worn during cold and hay fever seasons even before the coronavirus pandemic.

Since the virus outbreak, they have been in short supply nationally despite government pledges to ramp up production.

Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse