Japan’s most celebrated cartoon animator today condemned his country’s comic book-loving Prime Minister, Taro Aso, as an “embarrassment” who should keep his reading habits to himself.

The extraordinary outburst by Hayao Miyazaki – the normally tacit, Oscar-winning producer of feature-length cartoons Spirited Away and My Neighbour Totoro – comes amid rising public disgust with Mr Aso’s handling of the economy, a pensions time-bomb and the threatened collapse of the Japanese healthcare system.

“In this modern society, we all feel uncertainty about our children’s future,” said Mizazaki, who went on to deliver an impassioned call for Japan to adopt a better relationship with nature.

The indictment from Mr Miyazaki will invigorate speculation among “true” manga fans that Mr Aso’s purported keenness for the genre is more political stunt than genuine love. Miyazaki – regarded by many as the greatest Japanese cartoonist in a heavily crowded market – said that Mr Aso should “enjoy manga in private, rather than in public”.

His criticisms of the Prime Minister and the state of modern Japan did not end there. Japan had failed its young people and destroyed its regional economies, he said, hinting that it was dyed-in-the-wool conservatives like Mr Aso that were to blame.

Many political commentators believe that the promotion of Mr Aso to leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party effectively destroyed all hope of reform in Japan. In response to the financial crisis that has bludgeoned the country’s blue-chip exporting companies and sent the economy into recession, the LDP seems set to fall back on its old tricks to revive the economy – unnecessary public works projects up and down the country.

“It is ridiculous to talk about building bridges or roads to stimulate domestic demand,” said Miyazaki, whose cartoons deal predominantly with the interaction of children with Nature, “we need a proper environment in place for future generations”.

Despite the ferocity of Mizayaki’s comments, he has historically not concealed his despair with the way in which Japan has flourished economically at the expense of the environment. The blockbusters Princess Mononoke and My Neighbour Totoro both make centrepieces of imperilled woodland deities, while Spirited Away includes a fearsome monster that turns out to be the soul of a heavily polluted river. In the same film, Miyazaki introduces a character who symbolises Japan during its 1980s bubble period – dishing out gold to underlings before indiscriminately devouring everything in its path.

Mr Aso, a gaffe-prone nationalist from blue-blooded political stock, took over as Prime Minister in late September after the sudden resignation of his predecessor, Yasuo Fukuda. In his time as foreign minister, and while on the party election trail two months ago, Mr Aso made much of his purported love of manga: he has regularly touted the international appeal of Japanese animation and comics as a prime example of Japanese “soft diplomacy”. Mr Aso’s hand was clearly detectable when, in March this year, Japan appointed Doraemon – a blue, robotic cat from the 22nd century — as a globe-trotting cultural ambassador.

During various periods of his rise to the top, Mr Aso also made a particular point of campaigning in Akihabara – the gadgetry, toy and comic quarter of Tokyo, and the spiritual heartland of the Japanese “otaku” pop-culture obsessives.

Miyazaki revealed that he does not share the Prime Minister’s taste for that introverted, geeky side of his industry, suggesting that Japanese children now inhabit a dangerously virtual world of mobile phones, television and e-mail that saps their strength. Nobody runs barefoot any more, he said, and there are no sheep or cattle around.

“Children should learn basic life skills before they learn freedom,” he said, “like how to kindle and extinguish fire, how to climb a tree, how to knot a rope, how to use knife or how to use thread and needle. This is what parents and local community are supposed to do but the central government destroyed the regional economy. It must be revived.”

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