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Taro Aso told to keep mouth shut

Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso’s top aide urged him yesterday to watch what he says, the second straight day that the Japanese leader was warned after a series of gaffes that have left some analysts wondering about his grip on power.

In the space of a few days, the outspoken 68-year-old Aso has managed to offend doctors, insult parents, upset reformers and irk ruling party barons with ties to road construction.

“I think what is necessary ... is for the prime minister to keep quiet and then take responsibility and make the final decisions,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura told a reporters when asked about Aso’s latest controversial remarks.

Analysts said Aso’s string of comments reflected not only his gaffe-prone personality but also disarray ahead of an election due by next September that could oust the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has ruled for most of the past 53 years.

An LDP defeat would spell a raft of policy unknowns as the opposition Democrats, a hodge-podge of ex-LDP members, socialists and younger lawmakers, took their first shot at governing.

“He’s looking like a prime minister who has only several months to go,” Sophia University professor Koichi Nakano said. “He’s the pilot of a plane that has lost control. There is turbulence after turbulence and passengers are getting nervous.”

Kawamura had already chided Aso on Thursday for saying doctors “lacked common sense,” a remark that outraged physicians who have long backed the LDP.

Also this week Aso, apparently thinking he was addressing a teachers’ group, told an audience mostly of parents that it was mums and dads who needed to be scolded rather than kids.

He also made comments raising doubts about his commitment to postal privatization, the reform rallying cry under which the ruling bloc won a huge electoral victory in 2005.

Then he suggested that road-related tax revenues could be doled out to local governments with no strings attached, outraging LDP lawmakers backed by firms that build roads.

Meanwhile, Japanese animation guru Hayao Miyazaki wishes one of his industry’s most famous fans — the prime minister — would just keep quiet about his avowed love of manga comic books.

Aso, a conservative and often gruff political veteran, has tried to soften his image by casting himself as someone who understands the culture of otaku (geeks) whose hobbies border on obsession.

But Miyazaki said Aso had no need to advertise his earnest reading of comics.

“I think it’s a shame. It’s something that he should do secretly,” the 67-year-old Oscar-winning animator told reporters on Thursday when asked about Aso’s public declarations of admiration for Japanese comics and animation.

Aso chose Tokyo’s Akihabara district, a noted center for Japan’s comic book subculture, for his first street speech after taking office in September, hailing comics and complaining he could not find enough time to read them.

Miyazaki said Japan should create a proper environment for children rather than building bridges and roads to stimulate the economy.
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