TARO ASO, Japan’s finance minister, is a seasoned champion of the political gaffe. Among his most notorious observations was that health costs could be cut if elderly people would just hurry up and die. Even by that standard, however, the doubts he has expressed…
TARO ASO, Japan’s finance minister, is a seasoned champion of the political gaffe. Among his most notorious observations was that health costs could be cut if elderly people would just hurry up and die. Even by that standard, however, the doubts he has expressed about the link between cigarettes and lung cancer have raised eyebrows. Mr Aso’s scepticism might just be wishful thinking: he is, after all, a lifelong smoker. But his ministry also rakes in more than ¥2trn ($18bn) a year from tobacco taxes and owns about a third of Japan Tobacco, the world’s fourth-largest cigarette-maker.
Campaigners have railed for years against the anomaly of a government that simultaneously sells cigarettes and discourages smoking. One likens it to accelerating a car with the brakes on. The debate has come to a head over a proposed ban on smoking inside most buildings other than private residences, to protect people from passive smoking. The health ministry wants it in force before millions of tourists arrive in Tokyo for the Olympics in 2020.
Nearly 70% of MPs from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) , to which Mr Aso belongs, have joined a group that opposes the ban. Egging them on are a small but influential group of tobacco farmers, and the huge catering industry, which frets that the measure would force thousands of small bars, restaurants and izakayas —Japan’s beloved and ubiquitous gastropubs—out of business.
