Taro Aso, Japan's deputy prime minister, was forced to deny that he advocated the elderly should "hurry up and die" to save the government the cost of providing medical care for them.
The 72-year-old Aso, who has a reputation for speaking insensitively, was addressing a meeting on social security issues on the burden imposed by prolonging patients' lives with treatment.
Describing patients with serious illnesses as "tube persons", Aso said they should be allowed to die quickly if they wanted to, Kyodo News reported.
"Heaven forbid I should be kept alive if I want to die. You cannot sleep well when you think it's all paid by the government. This won't be solved unless you let them hurry up and die."
He later retracted some of his remarks and admitted it had been inappropriate to make such comments in public. They were his personal opinion, not government policy, he said.
Aso became something of a figure of fun during his brief stint as prime minister in 2009, during which he told a group of university students that young people should not get married because they are too poor and, because they don't earn much money, they are not worthy of respect from a life partner.
