Originally published on April 18, 2018.
This chapter examines the conduct of opposition lawmakers such as Kiyomi Tsujimoto, Renhō, Naoto Kan, Sachiko Hirayama, and Yūko Mori, arguing that their undignified behavior and their politicization of the Kake Gakuen issue degraded the Japanese Diet.
It portrays how unchanged rhetoric, baseless accusations, and rule-breaking conduct damaged the national interest of Japan.

2019-04-16
Ms. Hirayama replied, “If a friend wanted to establish a new faculty, I would think, ‘I hope that happens,’” and was instantly dismissed by the prime minister, who said, “I cannot answer questions that are premised on your wanting that to happen in the first place…”

This is a chapter I published on 2018-04-18 under the title, “I am already fed up with the Diet.
Just seeing Shinzo Abe’s face makes me sick, or rather…”
What follows is also an article I found online.
The emphasis in the text is mine.
2017.6.10 08:50
[WEB Editorial Committee Member’s Murmur]
Kiyomi Tsujimoto’s way of speaking was unbearable 30 years ago, and it is unbearable now as well!
The behavior of opposition lawmakers who do not seem worthy of being called “chosen representatives.”
Article 19 of the Constitution of Japan broadly guarantees “freedom of thought and conscience.”
However, I would like once again to introduce passages that are hard to believe were written by someone called a “chosen representative,” much less by a member of the Diet who loves the nation.
It is said that the following was written in a book by Kiyomi Tsujimoto, a House of Representatives member of the Democratic Party.
In Kiyomi Surude!! The New Breed Sets Sail! (Daisan Shokan), published in March 1987 before Ms. Tsujimoto founded the private international exchange group “Peace Boat” and entered politics, she wrote of the Imperial Household, “Don’t you find them physiologically disgusting?
I mean those people, that system, that family.
I do not want to breathe air anywhere near where such people exist,” and, “The emperor is also one reason why I dislike Japan.”
Furthermore, linking it to sports, she wrote, “They try to impose life lessons and morality.
It is directly connected to the disgusting nature of the emperor and that family,” and is said to have gone so far as to call them “the root of evil.”
This was pointed out by Yasushi Adachi, a House member of the Japan Innovation Party, at the House of Representatives Commission on the Constitution on the 8th.
Mr. Adachi also cited Ms. Tsujimoto’s past remarks calling for “the abolition of the emperor system,” and criticized the fact that “it is not appropriate for a person who has repeatedly made such remarks to serve as a secretary of the Commission on the Constitution,” and I have no objection to that criticism.
In response, Ms. Tsujimoto admitted, “About 30 years ago, when I was a student, I made the remarks you are referring to,” and then said, “Under the Constitution of Japan, Japan was reborn and became a nation that renounced war.
We must respect the symbolic emperor as provided for in the Constitution.
I keenly realized that my thinking had been one-sided, and I deeply regret it,” and thus withdrew the contents of her book.
She seems to want to call it “a youthful indiscretion,” but was not “never wavering” supposed to be her creed?
As I wrote in this column uploaded on June 3, by a strange coincidence Renhō, leader of the Democratic Party as well, had also said that “it is painful to breathe the same air.”
Is this a stock phrase of that party, or should one call it a bizarre coincidence?
At a gathering on May 31, in connection with the issue of the educational corporation Kake Gakuen in Okayama City and with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe being pressed over his relationship with its chairman, Ms. Renhō said, “It is painful to breathe the same air in the committee room.”
She further said, “With this many women here, how pleasant it feels.
Compared with this, how suffocating the Diet is.”
The moderator of the gathering was former Vice Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Kiyomi Tsujimoto.
After saying, “I am already fed up with the Diet.
Just seeing Shinzo Abe’s face makes me sick, or rather,” she criticized him by saying, “This is an unimaginable privatization of politics.
Right now, it is Abe-friend first.
Are not Mr. Abe’s friends being put first?
I want to put an end to ‘Abe-friend politics.’”
If so, is this not the same style of speaking she had in the days of Kiyomi Surude!! 30 years ago?
The ever-familiar former prime minister Naoto Kan of the Democratic Party, over the Kake Gakuen issue, distributed flyers prepared for his local district, Tokyo 18th District of the House of Representatives, bearing phrases such as, “Prime Minister Abe is the naked king,” and, “We must stop the regime from becoming a secret police state,” and reportedly called on people to use them in every electoral district.
Mr. Kan himself described the contents as “a bit extreme,” and criticized Prime Minister Abe by saying that he was lying over the Kake issue and was “despising the people.”
Regarding Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga as well, he accused him of repeatedly launching personal attacks against former Vice Minister of Education Kihei Maekawa, a “political enemy,” by using information gathered at the Prime Minister’s Office.
On top of that, he was reportedly urging that the Liberal Democratic Party should be made to suffer a crushing defeat in the Tokyo metropolitan assembly election.
The claim that he was “despising the people” lacked clear grounds, and as for “the naked king,” I recall that Mr. Kan himself had been called that many times.
At the House of Councillors settlement committee on the 5th, Sachiko Hirayama, a House of Councillors member of the Democratic Party, questioned the prime minister about involvement in the plan to newly establish a veterinary faculty, but it was utterly ridiculous.
When the prime minister asked, “Please show me the evidence that I was involved,” Ms. Hirayama replied, “If a friend wanted to establish a new faculty, I would think, ‘I hope that happens,’” and the prime minister cut her off, saying, “I cannot answer questions that are premised on your wanting that to happen in the first place…”
Her only basis was her own “wishful thinking,” and it made even the listener feel embarrassed.
The conduct of Yūko Mori, chair of the House of Councillors caucus of the Liberal Party, another opposition party, was also terrible.
On the 8th, Ms. Mori left in the middle of questioning at the House of Councillors Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Committee to which she belonged, deliberately appeared in the observers’ gallery of the House of Councillors Cabinet Committee that was deliberating the Kake Gakuen issue, and shouted jeers at the government side’s answers.
According to Sankei Shimbun’s reporting, Ms. Mori explained that she had gone to “confirm the content” because a Democratic Party lawmaker to whom she had provided materials was going to question the government in the Cabinet Committee, and she also said that, regarding the Kake Gakuen issue, “I could not forgive the government side for not answering properly,” but why could she not maintain silence?
Personal resentment was twisting even the rules.
As such foolish conduct accumulates, the Diet, which was to reach the end of its session on the 18th, is being forced into an extension.
These were the “chosen representatives” for whom political maneuvering had become an end in itself, and who had lost sight of the national interes