Published on February 15, 2020.
Based on the Sankei Shimbun’s Sankei-shō column, this essay examines opposition criticism of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s remark during a House of Representatives Budget Committee session.
It argues that Kiyomi Tsujimoto’s own remarks were a greater insult to parliamentary democracy, and criticizes the notion that the government should silently endure one-sided slander and abuse as though such silence were a virtue.

2020-02-15
I do not think it is a virtue for the government to swallow everything simply because it is the government, and to make no rebuttal at all while being attacked one-sidedly.
Firmly countering mistaken assertions and abusive language may well be what revitalizes the forum of speech.
The following is from today’s Sankei-shō.
It is a sound argument among sound arguments.
Is it not Kiyomi Tsujimoto, Acting Secretary-General of the Constitutional Democratic Party, who should be apologizing?
It makes no sense that the Budget Committee of the House of Representatives on the 13th was allowed to collapse on the pretext that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had heckled Tsujimoto at the committee session on the 12th.
Perhaps it is because the columnist is contrary by nature, but when the major opposition parties arrogantly criticize this heckling, it feels as though offense and defense have been reversed.
“Do you know the saying that a fish rots from the head?”
Tsujimoto opened her remarks in the Budget Committee in this way, then ended her questioning after making one-sided assertions against Prime Minister Abe, saying such things as “it is bad for children’s education” and “the head must be changed.”
The fact that Prime Minister Abe responded by saying, “That is a meaningless question,” has been treated as a problem, but it was exactly that: a meaningless question itself.
The Constitutional Democratic Party side immediately reacted furiously, saying, “It is an insult to the entire legislative assembly” (Yukio Edano, party leader), and “It is conduct unworthy of a parliamentarian” (Jun Azumi, Diet Affairs Committee Chairman), but this too is incomprehensible.
Surely it is far more insulting to the Diet to abuse, to his face, as something rotten a person who became prime minister through the legitimate procedures of parliamentary democracy.
Azumi himself had posted inside the Diet various newspapers reporting on Diet questioning, added comments such as “trash, zero points” and “out of the question,” and laughed at them; does he pride himself on that conduct as something appropriate for a parliamentarian?
Regarding Prime Minister Abe’s heckling, there have also been voices within the ruling party admonishing him as immature.
This newspaper’s “Editorial” of the 14th also urged him to “compose himself more firmly,” but surely this depends on the time and circumstances.
When a Diet member launches a vicious slander at the end of a question, thereby preventing a reply, properly rebuking that person may also be for that person’s own good.
I do not think it is a virtue for the government to swallow everything simply because it is the government, and to make no rebuttal at all while being attacked one-sidedly.
Firmly countering mistaken assertions and abusive language may well be what revitalizes the forum of speech.