The Democratic Party of Japan, favored in polls to win next month's election, plans to trim Prime Minister Taro Aso's ¥15.4 trillion stimulus by eliminating "wasteful" projects such as a museum dedicated to pop culture.
Aso's spending plan includes ¥11.7 billion to build a hall showcasing "manga" comic books, ¥12.4 billion to clean up dumped fishing equipment and ¥400 million to fell trees. The pork-barrel approach diverges from former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's pledge to cut spending and contain the world's largest public debt.
"The stimulus has meaningless and wasteful things like the manga palace," DPJ deputy policy chief Tetsuro Fukuyama said in an interview at his office in Tokyo. "We must consider submitting a bill to cut some of this from the budget once we come to power."