Prime Minister criticised for playing golf after hearing of sub accident
Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori has been berated for finishing a round of golf after hearing about the submarine accident off Hawaii that left nine Japanese people missing.
Mori reportedly stayed on the links with old college friends for two hours after hearing that the USS Greeneville rammed into a Japanese fishing trawler, scattering all 35 people aboard into diesel-soaked seas.
The unpopular leader has made so many blunders since he took office last April that they have become something of a running national joke.
"I think he should have stopped playing golf immediately and returned to his office," Takenori Kanzaki, leader of the New Komei Party, said on a Fuji Television news programme.
The mass-circulation Asahi newspaper reported the golf incident on its front page. It quoted Hisao Iwajima, a former Defence Agency official, as saying: "He has no sense of crisis."
Mori reportedly defended himself after the golf course flap.
"It would not get any of us anywhere if I rushed and got all flustered," he was quoted as saying by Kyodo News. Remaining on the golf course, he said, was "the safest course of action."
