Japan's banks emerged from the 2008 global credit crisis largely unscathed because senior employees did not speak English well enough to have got them into trouble, the country's finance minister said.

Taro Aso, who also serves as deputy prime minister, said bankers in Japan had not been able to understand the complex financial instruments that were the undoing of major global players, so had not bought them.

Taro Aso's comments have raised eyebrows. Credit:AFP

"Many people fell prey to the dubious products, or so-called subprime loans. Japanese banks were not so much attracted to these products, compared with European banks," Mr Aso told a seminar in Tokyo on Friday.

"There was an American who said Japanese banks are healthy, but that's not true at all. Managers of Japanese banks hardly understood English, that's why they didn't buy."



Mr Aso's comments are the latest in a line of pronouncements that have raised eyebrows.