Imamura’s comments prompted an immediate rebuke from the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, who apologised on his behalf. “It was an extremely inappropriate comment and hurtful to people in the disaster zone, an act causing the people a reconstruction minister works for to lose trust in him,” Abe told reporters after Imamura resigned. The subject still touches a raw nerve because regional businesses have struggled to recover and reconstruction work has been slow. He quit in March on the eve of the sixth anniversary of the 11 March disaster after making a joke about the incident. Abe’s support currently hovers around 50% despite a series of recent scandals, including one involving a nationalist school.

Source: The Guardian April 26, 2017 04:27 UTC