Japan's deputy prime minister has retracted comments suggesting his country should learn from Nazi tactics when changing the constitution.
Taro Aso sparked outrage by asking whether his country should follow the example of Hitler-led Germany, which amended its constitution ahead of the Second World War before anyone had realised.
But after protests from neighbouring countries and human rights activists, Mr Aso, who is also the country's finance minister, insisted he was misunderstood and only meant to say that loud debate over whether Japan should change its postwar constitution was not helpful.
"It is very unfortunate and regrettable that my comment regarding the Nazi regime was misinterpreted," he told reporters.
"I would like to retract the remark about the Nazi regime."
He added that he was referring to the Nazis "as a bad example of a constitutional revision that was made without national understanding or discussion".
Mr Aso made the comments during a speech in Tokyo organised by an ultra-conservative group.
Hitler's Nazi Party oversaw the killings of an estimated six million Jews "I don't want to see this done in the midst of an uproar," he said, according to a transcript of the speech.
He said that since revisions of the constitution may raise protests, "doing it quietly, just as in one day the Weimar constitution changed to the Nazi constitution, without anyone realising it, why don't we learn from that sort of tactic?"
Critics of the ruling Liberal Democrats are uneasy over the party's proposals for revising the US-inspired postwar constitution, in part to allow a higher profile for Japan's military.
Japan and Nazi Germany were allies in the Second World War, when Japan occupied much of Asia and Germany much of Europe.
Japan's history of military aggression, which included colonising the Korean Peninsula before the war, is the reason its current constitution limits the role of the military.
According to the transcript of Mr Aso's speech, he decried the lack of support for revising Japan's pacifist constitution among older Japanese, saying the Liberal Democrats held quiet, extensive discussions about its proposals.
Government spokesman Yoshihide Suga said the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe "in no way looks positively at the Nazi regime. Since the end of the war, our nation has consistently built up a society which thoroughly advocates peace and human rights."
It is not the first time Mr Aso has been in the spotlight for controversial remarks.
He has previously apologised for accusing the elderly of being a burden on society, joking about people with Alzheimer's disease, saying the ideal country would be one that attracts "the richest Jewish people," and comparing the opposition Democratic Party of Japan to the Nazis.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a group dedicated to keeping alive the history of the Holocaust, said: "What 'techniques' from the Nazis' governance are worth learning? How to stealthily cripple democracy?"
In South Korea, foreign ministry spokesman Cho Tai-young said: "I believe Japanese political leaders should be more careful with their words and behaviour."
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