The health and welfare ministry on May 12 announced a social welfare reform proposal aimed at making the nation's social welfare system sustainable in the face of Japan's graying population and low economic growth.

But efforts to reform the social welfare system along with tax reform have become complicated by the need to reconstruct the Tohoku-Pacific areas devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami — a task that will cost an estimated ¥20 trillion.

Japan's social welfare cost increases some ¥1 trillion each year because of the graying of the population.