In the run-up to Japan's general election on Sunday Taro Aso's handlers might have expected him to stick to the script. The country's prime minister has a penchant for gaffes, and recent targets have included parents, doctors, pensioners and people with Alzheimer's.
Still, the prime minister had at least managed not to alienate two other important groups of voters: the young and the poor.
The self-restraint was, of course, too good to last. In an address to university students in Tokyo, Aso made his own inimical contribution to the debate on Japan's falling birthrate and rising income gap.
Penniless young men, he told an audience partly comprising ... penniless young men, are unfit for marriage. "It would seem difficult to me that someone without a salary can be seen as worthy of the respect [of a marriage partner]," he said.
The hapless prime minister is among many voters who have submitted absentee ballots this week. That makes sense for expats or ordinary folk who will be otherwise engaged on Sunday, but not for a political leader who can vote in his south-western constituency and be in Tokyo in time for an early lunch.
Or could he be planning a swift getaway, perhaps to spend more time with his family?
