New land minister Nakayama retracts 'gaffes' in media interviews

TOKYO, Sept. 25 Kyodo - Nariaki Nakayama, the new minister of land, infrastructure, transport and
tourism, on Thursday retracted a series of remarks in media interviews earlier
in the day, saying they could cause ''misunderstanding.''
In referring to the government's policy to attract foreign tourists to Japan,
Nakayama, 65, called Japan ''ethnically homogenous,'' a description that drew
protests in 1986 from the Ainu indigenous people, who live mainly in Japan,
when then Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone made a similar remark.
''Japan is very introverted, or what may be called ethnically homogenous, or
rather it tends to be inward-looking because it seldom has (exchanges) with the
world,'' Nakayama said.
In interviews with Kyodo News and other media organizations customarily given
when new Cabinet ministers are installed, Nakayama also touched on recent
bribery allegations against education board officials and teachers in Oita
Prefecture and took issue with the Japan Teachers Union, which conservatives
see as a bastion of left-leaning activists.
''The decline of the Oita prefectural education board has been (caused by) the
Japan Teachers Union,'' Nakayama said. ''The children of Japan Teachers Union
(members) can be teachers even if their grades are bad. That's why scholastic
ability in Oita Prefecture is low.''
Nakayama also said that those who have engaged in years of struggle against the
construction of Narita airport near Tokyo are ''more or less squeaky wheels, or
I believe they are (the product) of bad postwar education.''
Nakayama said of opposition to the national project, ''It is very regrettable
that the airport has not been able to expand in a milieu in which people lack
the spirit of sacrificing themselves to a degree for the sake of the public
good and think it good if they care only about themselves.''
The transport ministry is overseeing the extension of the airport's second
runway to 2,500 meters by spring 2010.