Japan lost one of its best-known politicians Friday, a man whose sharp tongue gained him supporters at home but angry protests overseas.
Foreign Minister Michio Watanabe died of heart failure at a Tokyo hospital. He was 72.Watanabe was perhaps best known overseas for remarks that provoked protests and official rebukes from countries including the United States, South Korea and China.
But he was also known as someone who could strike a bargain, most recently as head of Japanese negotiators who concluded a deal to give North Korea 300,000 tons of emergency rice supplies.
Earlier this year, Watanabe had visited the hard-line, communist state to try to restart talks on normalizing relations that had been stalled more than two years.
The Asahi newspaper reported Friday that talks on normalizing relations and possibly giving more rice would start again soon. The rice was requested Wednesday in a letter to Watanabe, it said.
Speaking with the local accent of Tochigi prefecture, where he was born, Watanabe's direct style made him seem folksy and less stiff than many other politicians and also made him popular with ordinary Japanese.
But his blunt, off-the-cuff remarks also caused consternation, and he had to apologize numerous times after reaching the top ranks of the Liberal Democratic Party, Japan's ruling party for nearly four decades until 1993.
Watanabe apologized in June after touching off protests in South Korea for a statement implying Koreans had welcomed Japan's brutal 1910-45 occupation.
In 1988, he was admonished by the U.S. Embassy and other Americans for saying U.S. blacks were willing to declare bankruptcy to avoid paying bills. He apologized.
After first being elected to Parliament in 1963, Watanabe rose through party ranks, holding various top posts, including finance minister, trade minister and, most recently, foreign minister.
Watanabe is survived by his wife, Sumiko, two sons and a daughter.