Japanese author suggests new apartheid in South Africa "Since I learned the situation in South Africa 20 to 30 years ago, I've come to believe whites, Asians and blacks should live separately,"

Ayako Sono, a government adviser, said Japan would have to open up to mass immigration to reverse its declining population but that racial groups should be kept separate

South Africa has reacted with fury to a newspaper column by an adviser to Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, in which she praised apartheid as a model for her country's own immigration policy.

Ayako Sono, 83, who is also a bestselling conservative author as well as an education adviser to the government, wrote that it was necessary for Japan to accept immigrants, especially in order to care for the growing elderly population, but that they should live separately from the Japanese.

"Since I learned the situation in South Africa 20 to 30 years ago, I've come to believe whites, Asians and blacks should live separately," Miss Sono wrote in her regular column in the conservative Sankei newspaper on Wednesday.

She claimed that black Africans had "ruined" areas previously reserved for whites in South Africa, and would do the same thing in Japan if allowed to live where they chose.

She said that opening up to mass immigration, as Japan is considering doing, would only work if the country segregated races. "It is next to impossible to attain an understanding of foreigners by living alongside them," she said.

South Africa's ambassador to Japan wrote to the newspaper saying Miss Sono's proposal was "shameful and extravagant", and "tolerated and glorified apartheid".

Mohau Pheko said apartheid was a crime against humanity that could never be justified in the 21st century in any country.

Miss Sono's suggestion also sparked outrage among her compatriots.

"So while the rest of the civilised world was condemning apartheid, Sono decided that she rather liked it, and now wants to bring it back," wrote a blogger on the Japan Times website. "And she is a government appointment on an education panel?"

The right-wing Japanese government has distanced itself from Miss Sono, saying she had been an education adviser some time ago and had no current relations with government.

After years for strict immigration policies which meant that only two per cent of its population is foreign, Japan is considering opening its doors to large-scale immigration in a bid to head off the dual problems of a shrinking and ageing population.

Aislinn Laing, Johannesburg