Japan Press Weekly

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2016 June 15 - 21 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

Shii condemns Deputy PM’s insulting remarks against older people

Japanese Communist Party Chair Shii Kazuo on June 18 said to the press that Deputy Prime Minister Aso Taro’s ageism remark tramples on the very notion of human dignity and is totally unacceptable.

On the previous day, Aso, who is also the Finance Minister, in his speech delivered in Otaru City in Hokkaido said, “The other day, when I was watching TV, a person on a TV program mentioned something ridiculous. The person said that he/she is 90 year olds and still worries about old age. I wondered how much longer he/she intends to live.”

This followed another remark he made that Japanese people have a total of 900 trillion yen on deposit in banks and that the money is useless just sitting in banks. Clearly, Aso intended to urge elderly people to spend more money by drawing on their savings. The deputy prime minister turned a blind eye to the fact that the Abe government has deepened older people’s financial anxieties through a series of anti-people policies such as cuts in pension payments, increases in medical and nursing-care insurance premiums, and consumption tax hikes.

Shii pointed out that everybody gets older and that Aso’s remarks go against the social welfare system’s role to support the elderly.

Aso’s insulting comments regarding older people are outrageous, but not unprecedented. In 2013, for example, in a meeting of a government committee on social welfare system reforms, the gaffe-prone politician said that he feels uncomfortable about the fact that a vast amount of taxpayers’ money is being used to cover the cost of terminal care services for older patients. He went so far as to say, “We need to consider various ways to resolve the issue, such as letting those critically-ill patients choose to die.”

Past related article:
> Aso’s ‘learn from Nazi’ shows his failure as politician [August 1, 2013]