Japan's Prime Minister, Mr Yoshiro Mori, was heavily criticised by politicians and press for continuing with a game of golf after hearing a US nuclear submarine had struck and sunk a Japanese trawler packed with students.
"I don't know how the Prime Minister first heard of it, but I think he should have stopped playing golf immediately and returned to his office," Mr Takenori Kanzaki, leader of the New Komeito party and the key partner in Mr Mori's ruling coalition, said on television. Mr Kanzaki's was not a lone voice. Most major newspapers carried front-page articles and editorials criticising Japan's most unpopular Prime Minister in years for his decision to finish a round of gold on Saturday morning after he heard that the Japanese trawler had sunk off Hawaii.
Mr Mori insisted his decision had been correct, saying it would not do to get flustered in moments of crisis. "It would not get any of us anywhere if I rushed [to the Prime Minister's official residence] and got all flustered, without receiving reports," Mr Mori told reporters on Saturday.
"We took the safest course of action," he said.
Mr Mori, who had been playing golf at a country club near Yohohama, received word of the accident at around 10.30 a.m. and left for Tokyo shortly before 1 p.m.
"Prime Minister waits four hours" screamed the headline on the front page of the Asahi Shimbun newspaper.
The Chief Cabinet Secretary, Mr Yasuo Fukuda, said Mr Mori's decision had caused no problems since he was issuing instructions from the golf course by mobile telephone.
But newspapers leapt on Mr Mori's decision, quoting defence experts and political analysts.
The timing could hardly be worse. A survey of voters by the daily Mainichi Shimbun last week showed support for Mr Mori, battered by scandals that have felled three cabinet ministers and by his reputation for blunders, at a mere 14 per cent.
He is not the first Japanese prime minister to come under attack for allegedly taking a crisis too lightly. His predecessor, the late Mr Keizo Obuchi, was criticised for going for a haircut just five minutes after his cabinet set up a task force to deal with the aftermath of a Tokyo subway train collision that killed three people and injured 31 last March.
AFP adds: The belief that the ocean near Hawaii was a safer venue for maritime field trips led administrators at a Japanese fishing academy to hold their fishing expedition there, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday.
At the time of the accident, the students on board the Ehime Maru were observing tuna stocks and learning to become commercial fishermen.
According the Los Angeles Times, piracy in the Indian Ocean has led many of Japan's high schools to take their expeditions to Hawaii's waters.