Tokyo
CNN
—
An off-the-cuff remark about never paying for rice has cost Japan’s agriculture minister his job, as pressure mounts on the government to solve the nation’s rice crisis.
Taku Eto resigned on Wednesday, telling reporters that he had concluded he was “not the right person for this role” after sparking a public backlash by saying that he had “so much rice at home that (he) could sell it.”
The cost of rice – Japan’s prime staple food – has become a major political issue, with prices surging to record highs this year and the government taking the rare steps of releasing emergency reserves and importing foreign rice.
Eto’s…
