A parliamentary exchange at Japan’s Constitutional Review Committee finally confirmed long-standing criticisms of Kiyomi Tsujimoto. While Sankei Shimbun reported the facts, most major media outlets remained silent. This essay examines Tsujimoto’s past remarks on the Imperial Household and the media’s willful suppression of the issue.

Yesterday, during a session of the National Diet’s Constitutional Review Committee, a question-and-answer exchange took place that, for the first time, informed the Japanese public that the criticisms made by discerning observers had been entirely correct.
2017-06-10
Several years ago, when the Asahi Shimbun openly began promoting Kiyomi Tsujimoto, then a Democratic Party lawmaker, as the spearhead of attacks against the Abe administration, people with sound judgment strongly criticized this behavior, asking whether a major newspaper could truly act without shame by elevating such a person.
Yesterday, the Sankei Shimbun reported that, during a session of the Diet’s Constitutional Review Committee, a line of questioning finally made clear to the Japanese people that those criticisms had been justified.
The following account comes from page two of yesterday’s Sankei Shimbun, information that was brought to my attention by a friend.
This woman is, without question, an utterly outrageous individual, but the real issue is that, for reasons unknown, no media outlet other than the Sankei Shimbun reported this matter at all.
I regularly watch NHK’s 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. news programs, as well as the late-night news on Fuji Television, yet this issue was not reported even once.
Because criticizing Kiyomi Tsujimoto invites a flood of fierce protests from Chongryon and the Buraku Liberation League, she has likely become a taboo figure for the majority of Japan’s media.
It is precisely the UN Special Rapporteurs who are connected to such groups who should be reporting to the United Nations the fact that freedom of the press in Japan is being violated.
As for the Asahi Shimbun, it is truly a filthy newspaper company.
Through the Moritomo Gakuen and Kake Gakuen affairs, it has attacked Prime Minister Abe, a politician of rare caliber in recent times, at a level no reasonable person could conceive, and it continues, as ever, to repeat actions that weaken Japan’s politics and diminish Japan as a nation, actions that bring satisfaction to no one other than China and the Korean Peninsula.
The ideology held by Tsujimoto, shown below, was formed precisely because she was raised on careful and repeated consumption of the Asahi Shimbun, a fact that all readers of that newspaper will readily acknowledge.
All emphases in the text, other than the headline, are my own.
“Tsujimoto Says the Imperial Family Is ‘Physiologically Unacceptable.’”
Past Remarks Acknowledged as “Regrettable.”
Kiyomi Tsujimoto, a member of the House of Representatives from the Democratic Party, acknowledged during the June 8 session of the House of Representatives’ Constitutional Review Committee that she had criticized the Imperial Family in a past book, describing it as “physiologically unacceptable,” and stated that her views had been “one-sided,” expressing regret.
Hiroshi Adachi, a member of the Japan Innovation Party, raised the issue by citing her book and pressing her on the matter.
The remarks in question appeared in Kiyomi Surude!!—The New Generation Sets Sail!, published in March 1987, before Tsujimoto entered politics.
In that book, Tsujimoto wrote of the Imperial Family, “Don’t you find it physiologically unpleasant,” “I don’t want to breathe the same air near them,” and “The Emperor is also one of the reasons I dislike Japan.”
She even went so far as to describe the imperial system as “the root of evil.”
Adachi pointed out the inappropriateness of Tsujimoto, who had repeatedly made such statements, serving as a secretary of the Constitutional Review Committee.
Tsujimoto responded by stating that these remarks had been made during her student days some thirty years earlier, asserted that the symbolic Emperor must be respected, and formally withdrew the contents of her book.