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Bureaucrat suspended over ‘old hags’ tsunami blog
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Japan’s government yesterday suspended a senior bureaucrat who blogged that it was pointless rebuilding tsunami-wrecked towns because they were populated mostly by economically unproductive old people.
The 51-year-old career civil servant said coastal areas that were destroyed in March 2011 were “almost in ruins” before the disaster, which claimed more than 18,000 lives and destroyed whole communities.
Writing anonymously, Hisanori Goto said it was unacceptable for public money to be spent rebuilding ports so that “old coots and hags can live off their vested interests in fisheries.”
“Politicians who won’t come out with the fair argument that reconstruction is unnecessary might as well die,” he wrote.
He captioned a picture of an elderly woman with the words “Drop dead.”
Goto was unmasked after fellow bloggers outraged by his comments tracked him down, finding a photograph of the civil servant that he had posted.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Goto had been confronted by bosses at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry about the “inappropriate” comments, that he admitted writing in September 2011.
“It was an unforgivable act for a national public servant. We think it was extremely regrettable,” said Suga.
Jiji Press news agency later reported that Goto had been suspended for two months.
Finance minister and former prime minister Taro Aso got into hot water earlier this year for saying elderly people should “hurry up and die” to avoid taxing the medical system.
He also faced condemnation after he said Tokyo could learn from the Nazis’ swift overhaul of Germany’s constitution in the run-up to World War II.
Ill-considered words about the earthquake-tsunami of 2011, which also sparked the worst nuclear accident in a generation at Fukushima, are considered shameful in Japan.
Mainstream opinion holds that the ageing towns and cities on the northeast coast need to be rebuilt, despite their economic malaise and depopulation.
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