Ever controversial, Japan’s newly-appointed Liberal Democratic Party Minister of Finance, Taro Aso, addressed Japan’s elderly care problem in a press conference January 21 in Tokyo by stating that the elderly should be allowed the right to end their lives rather than have the state of Japan waste billions of yen on their care.
Taro Aso, who also serves as Japan’s Deputy Prime Minister to Shinzo Abe, had this to say during the National Council on Social Security Reforms:
Heaven forbid if you are forced to live on when you want to die. You cannot sleep well when you think it is all paid by the government.
This won’t be solved unless you let them hurry up and die …
In other comment, Aso claimed that he did not want to have his life prolonged unnecessarily or become what he termed a ‘tube person,’ or someone who can no longer feed or care for themselves.
Japan faces the modern industrial world’s most serious crisis in terms of an aging population and the topic is somewhat taboo to discuss.