Japan: Agriculture Minister resigns after questionable rice price joke
Japanese Agriculture Minister Taku Eto resigned on May 21 after claiming he did not need to buy rice, thanks to his abundant stocks. This remark shocked the population, faced with the exorbitant price of this grain.
If it was a joke, it didn't exactly get a laugh. Japanese Agriculture Minister Taku Eto resigned on Wednesday, May 21, due to a remark that was particularly poorly received by the public and within the government.
“I have never bought rice ,” he said three days earlier at a political fundraising event for his party. “My supporters give me a lot of it. I have so much in my pantry that I could sell it!”
Taku Eto “later explained that he wanted to make the audience laugh but that he had probably gone ‘too far,’ ” notes the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper . And for good reason: the country is facing a rice shortage that has sent prices skyrocketing. “The average price of a 5-kilogram bag of rice in supermarkets was 4,214 yen (26 euros) at the end of April, more than double that of the same period last year,” details The Japan Times .
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