Japan's Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso said that the elderly should "hurry up and die" so that he and tax payers won't have to pay for their medical expenses. The 72-year-old leader made this crass remark during the National Council on Social Security Reforms meeting on Monday. He also called senior citizens that are unable to feed themselves "tube people."
The self-proclaimed Otaku added that he has already written a will and would prefer his family to let him "hurry up and die" rather than accept end-of-life care. "Even if (doctors) said they could keep me alive, it would be unbearable. I would feel guilty, knowing that [treatment] was being paid for by the government," he said. "The problem won't be solved unless you let them hurry up and die."
Later the deputy PM said that his comments were misinterpreted and that he was only speaking about himself, not the elderly. "I said what I personally believe, not what the end-of-life medical care system should be."
The blunder was not out of character for the political leader who once referenced an opposition political party as the Nazis and said that he wanted to build Japan to become a country where "the richest Jews would want to live." In 2008, while still he was Japan's Prime Minister he called the elderly "feeble" who "just sit around and do nothing but eat and drink."
In 2005, Aso sparked controversy when he referred to Japan as a homogeneous, "one nation" country, denying the presence of indigenous people, Koreans who were brought to Japan as laborers during WWII and biracial Japanese citizens. He said Japan was "one nation, one civilization, one language, one culture, and one race, the like of which there is no other on this earth,"
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