OKAYAMA (Kyodo) Gaffe-prone former trade minister Takeo Hiranuma, blasting Upper House member Renho for saying that funding should be cut for the government's supercomputer project, brought up the fact that she is a naturalized Japanese.

The staunchly conservative Hiranuma is known for gaffes reflecting his views as a former Liberal Democratic Party heavyweight.

"I don't want to say this, but she is not originally Japanese," Hiranuma, now an independent Lower House member, said in a speech Sunday in the city of Okayama. "She was naturalized, became a Diet member."

Hiranuma was referring to widely reported remarks made in November by Renho, who goes by one name, of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan.

During a debate with bureaucrats, she asked: "Why must (Japan) aim to (develop) the world's No. 1 (supercomputer)? What's wrong with being the world's No. 2?"

The remarks have been broadcast repeatedly on TV as symbolic of the DPJ-led government's efforts to cut wasteful spending.

Her remarks were "not appropriate for a politician," Hiranuma said, adding that Japan, as a country aiming to be a science technology power, "must have the budget for (developing) the world's No. 1 (supercomputer)."

He later told reporters he did not intend to say anything discriminatory and what he meant was that politicians should not engage in "sensational politics that ring the bell with TV broadcasters."

According to Renho's Web site, she was born in 1967 to a Taiwanese father and a Japanese mother and switched her citizenship from Taiwanese to Japanese in 1985.