Starting from a Sankei Shimbun article on Kiyomi Tsujimoto, this essay sharply questions her stance on the Imperial House, constitutional revision, parliamentary conduct, and the abnormal behavior of Japan’s established media, including NHK.
It argues that the time has long come to confront the structure in which broadcasters monopolize Japan’s public airwaves, disregard broadcasting law, and continue reporting that throws national politics into confusion.

2019-04-04
The time has long since come when these abnormal privileges must be stopped at once, when the price paid for monopolistically using Japan’s public airwaves must be raised sharply, and when broadcasters must be made to obey the Broadcasting Act.

A friend who read the chapter I posted this morning asked me whether I had read today’s Sankei Shimbun, and told me that the following article had been published there.
Even so, what kind of people are the Japanese citizens who have made a woman like this a member of the Diet?
What sort of Japanese citizens are those producing NHK’s News Watch 9, repeatedly filling the screen with such a woman as though they were helping her election efforts?
What country’s political party is the Constitutional Democratic Party, which places such a woman in so important a position as Chair of Diet Affairs?
And what are we to make of Asahi Shimbun, which gives weight to a punk like Kazutoshi Handō, whom such a woman openly says she admires?
Asahi Shimbun and NHK have not only caused Japan astronomical losses, but, as a result of the anti-Japan propaganda that China and the Korean Peninsula persistently wage in international society, have also fixed the image that the Japanese are a cruel and evil people.
And yet what exactly are the Japanese people who continue to let Asahi Shimbun and NHK survive, without abolishing them and without making them pay damages?
Likewise, what exactly are the Japanese people who leave unchecked publications such as Shukan Bunshun, which give importance to such men and keep publishing articles that throw national politics into confusion, weaken Japan’s national strength, and side with China and the Korean Peninsula?

Tsujimoto Is a Constitutional Revisionist on the Emperor Clauses
Ruriko Abiru

There are people in this world who want to sneer at anything and everything.
On the 2nd, when the new era name Reiwa was announced and society was filled with excitement, Kiyomi Tsujimoto, Chair of Diet Affairs for the Constitutional Democratic Party, attacked Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at a party meeting as follows.
“Isn’t the Prime Minister showing up too much? The more the Prime Minister explains and expresses his thoughts, the lighter the era name becomes, and the more it loses its gravity.”
Apparently what irritated her was that the Prime Minister gave an interview to Sankei Shimbun after the press conference on the 1st and appeared on news programs on three television networks.
Why is it wrong for the head of the executive branch, who was deeply involved in selecting the new era name, to convey his thoughts to the people?
Tsujimoto also said, “Japan is not in a situation to be celebrating,” but since this was not during a mourning period, and since the Emperor was still in good health, is it really so wrong to celebrate the coming of a new era while His Majesty is alive?
Even before that, if Tsujimoto truly believes that “Japan is not in a situation to be celebrating,” then this is hardly the time for her, as usual, to seize upon some small after-dinner remark by a vice minister of land and transport and inflate it into a major matter in order to throw national politics into confusion.

Reflecting on Past Statements

Tsujimoto also referred to “the weight of the era name.”
Those words sound almost as if she places importance on the imperial system, but is that really so?
So let us look back on what sort of thoughts and impressions Tsujimoto has expressed about the Imperial House itself.

At the June 2017 session of the House of Representatives Commission on the Constitution, Tsujimoto expressed regret over her own past statements and actions.
This concerned what she had written about the Imperial House in her March 1987 book Kiyomi Surude!! Shinjinrui ga Fune o Dasu!
“Don’t you feel a physiological disgust? I mean those people, that system, that family. I don’t even want to breathe the air near them.”
“The disgustingness of the Emperor and that family.”
It sounds like hate speech with naked revulsion.
On this matter, Tsujimoto emphasized in the constitutional review commission that these were statements from about 30 years earlier, when she was a student, and said things such as, “I keenly realized that my thinking had been one-sided, and I deeply regret it,” and “The symbolic Emperor as stipulated in the Constitution must be respected.”

Open Rejection

That said, there is no need to go back as far as 30 years.
After being elected to the House of Representatives in October 1996, Tsujimoto wrote the following in her April 1997 book I Changed Careers and Became a Diet Member.
“The constitutional amendment I have in mind is the total deletion of Chapter 1 of the Constitution of Japan. Articles 1 through 8, all the constitutional provisions concerning the Emperor, should be removed entirely. Naturally, this would require revising or abolishing the Imperial Household Law and many related laws.”
In the July 1998 book Sō Ja no U…, in which Tsujimoto interviewed former Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, she revealed the same resistance.
“As for the Emperor system, I am personally opposed to it. I still feel resistance to it, emotionally speaking, somehow the Emperor is…”
In her September 1998 book Kiyomi Tsujimoto’s Nagatachō Navigation Log, she stated her own thinking clearly.
“I had long believed that the Emperor system was incompatible with the spirit of popular sovereignty and equality under the law in the Constitution of Japan.”
Likewise, in her 2000 book Kiyomi Tsujimoto’s ‘Even Now, Things Can Be Changed’, she emphasized the same point.
“It would be fine to delete the provisions concerning the Emperor in Chapter 1 of the Constitution, Articles 1 through 8. The Emperor should be ‘privatized.’”
“To be precise, it is not ‘abolishing the Emperor system.’ It is removing the provisions concerning the Emperor from the Constitution. It is separating state acts from the Emperor.”
If one traces her statements, the matter is obvious at a glance.
So long as the Emperor clauses remain, Tsujimoto respects the Imperial House, but she is in fact a deliberate “constitutional revisionist” who wants to remove them someday.
Editorial board member and political desk senior editor.

Almost no Japanese people probably believe that Kiyomi Tsujimoto is genuinely Japanese….
Everything in her words and actions, and the way she is a liar through and through….
The way she lies without the slightest shame, and while naturally attacking others, never tolerates criticism of herself….
Whenever her own name appears in a negative light, she always exerts abnormal pressure on the media….
Surely she uses, in threatening the mass media, the realities of the pressure that Chongryon placed on the Japanese media, and the realities later revealed by a TBS employee.
That is why, except for Sankei Shimbun, the media all move just as such a woman tells them to move. They are truly spineless wretches, and outright traitors.
The abnormal privileges granted to all television stations must be stopped at once, the price they pay for monopolistically using Japan’s public airwaves must be raised sharply, and they must be made to obey the Broadcasting Act.
The situation in which the media has become a paradise for spies from China and the Korean Peninsula must be brought to an immediate end.

In the nearby column, the following article was also carried.

Constitutional Review Secretaries’ Meeting: Opposition Again Refuses
Tsujimoto: “If You Do It, It’ll Be Serious”

On the 3rd, the House of Representatives Commission on the Constitution called off the secretaries’ meeting that had been planned to discuss the schedule and related matters.
Chairman Eisuke Mori had decided to hold it by his own authority, but the major opposition parties, including the Constitutional Democratic Party, refused to attend, and it was changed to an informal discussion involving the Liberal Democratic Party, Komeito, the Japan Innovation Party, and some other opposition parties.
Since March 28, this was yet another cancellation of a previously decided secretaries’ meeting.
At the informal discussion on the 3rd, Yoshitaka Shindō, the leading secretary for the ruling side, revealed the course of events behind the refusal, as explained by Ikuo Yamahana, the leading secretary for the opposition side.
According to him, Kiyomi Tsujimoto, Chair of Diet Affairs for the party, told Yamahana, “Tell Mr. Shindō that if they hold the secretaries’ meeting, it will become a serious matter.”
Participants in the informal discussion voiced the opinion that “it felt like intimidation by the opposition party’s Diet Affairs Chair toward the ruling side.”