About 200 victims of sexual crimes and their supporters gathered in central Tokyo to call on a lawmaker to resign and retract her claim that women can tell lies about sexual assaults.

Sugita Mio, a Liberal Democratic Party member of the Lower House, said at a meeting of party lawmakers last month that "women can tell lies as much as they want."

Before and after her first match in the US Open, Japanese tennis star Osaka Naomi wore a face mask bearing the name of a Black woman who was fatally shot by police in the United States in March.

The Grand Slam tournament opened in New York on Monday with various anti-coronavirus measures in place. No spectators are allowed, and players and tournament officials have been tested for the virus.

Tennis star Osaka Naomi is pulling out of her semifinal match at the Western and Southern Open to bring attention to the ongoing racially motivated protests in the United States.

A nonpartisan group of Japanese lawmakers has issued a statement protesting the arrests of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong on suspicion of violating the new national security law for the territory.

The lawmakers include former defense minister Nakatani Gen of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and Lower House member Yamao Shiori of the opposition Democratic Party for the People.

Artists and other celebrities in Japan were among millions of people who have been posting protests online against a government bill that could extend the retirement age of public prosecutors.

More than 3.8 million tweets were posted by Sunday afternoon with a hashtag that expresses opposition to the revision of the public prosecutor's office law.

A group of legal and political scholars has protested the government's abrupt change of its legal interpretation to allow a senior prosecutor to put off his retirement.

The government decided at a cabinet meeting in late January to delay until August the retirement of Hiromu Kurokawa as the head of the Tokyo High Public Prosecutors Office.