Japan finance chief Fujii admitted to hospital for checkup+

TOKYO, Dec. 28 Kyodo -
Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii was admitted to hospital Monday to undergo
medical tests and get some rest after weeks of hard work to draft the fiscal
2010 budget, government officials said.
Fujii will remain in hospital for about 10 days, the officials said, adding
that the 77-year-old minister is suffering from exhaustion.
He also has high blood pressure and was admitted to hospital around 10 a.m.,
the officials said. The name of the hospital has been withheld.
Fujii is still scheduled to attend a special Cabinet meeting Wednesday as well
as the next regular meeting on Jan. 5, according to the Finance Ministry.
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's Cabinet, launched in mid-September, had been
drafting an annual budget for the first time. The budget draft for the year
starting April, standing at a record 92.30 trillion yen, was approved last
Friday by the Cabinet after many twists and turns.
Fujii, the oldest member of Hatoyama's Cabinet, had planned to retire from
politics but changed his mind at the last minute before the last general
election in August, in which the Democratic Party of Japan trounced the
long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party.
Fujii has repeatedly said he is performing his ''last public duty'' with the
change of government.
He was also finance minister from 1993 to 1994, during the LDP's first spell
out of power since its foundation in 1955.
Fujii was a Finance Ministry bureaucrat for 21 years, working mostly in the
Budget Bureau, before he was first elected to the House of Councillors in 1977
on the LDP ticket.
==Kyodo