Former Japanese prime minister Yoshiro Mori refuses to retract a remark that suggested childless women should be denied welfare payments in old age, his office said on Wednesday.
Worried about Japan’s declining birthrate, Mori (65) told a symposium last week it was unreasonable for women without children to receive state welfare after they retire.
”We are talking about fewer children here — the true welfare is that the state says ‘thank you’ to women who give birth to many children and takes care of them in later years,” he said at the symposium last Thursday that was televised nationally this week.
”It is actually strange that tax money looks after women who lived freely without having a single child.”
Lawmakers from the opposition Social Democratic Party have demanded Mori apologise and retract the remark made at the forum in the southern city of Kagoshima.
But the former prime minister has ”no intention of retracting” it, his office said on Wednesday.
Mori told reporters on Tuesday that he had meant to say that, as the chair of a ruling party panel discussing the problem of Japan’s falling birthrate, he had heard such an opinion expressed.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, once a member of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) faction headed by Mori, avoided blaming the heavyweight politician, noting there was such a thing as ”freedom of speech”.
Mori served as premier from April 5 2000 to April 26 2001 and was replaced by Koizumi.
By the end of his term, Mori was rated one of the least popular prime ministers of modern times due to a series of gaffes.
Seiko Hashimoto, a former Olympic bronze medalist in women’s speed skating who has since became an LDP politician, also attended the symposium but suffered temporary amnesia when asked for comment on Tuesday.
”I think I was not there,” she told the private Asahi television network, although broadcasted footage showed she clearly was.
Mori’s remark was not the only controversial comment at the symposium.
Another senior ruling party lawmaker, Seiichi Ota, apologised on Friday for having responded to a comment by the symposium’s moderator about the recent arrest of five university students for allegedly raping a woman with the observation that: ”Those who gang rape [a woman] are fine as they are in good spirits.” – Sapa-AFP