Photo/Illutration Dappi’s Twitter account (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

A Tokyo-based website consulting company is asking the Tokyo District Court to throw out a defamation suit launched by two Upper House members over the content of an anonymous tweet.

The court heard the first oral arguments in the case on Dec. 10.

The two Diet members, both from the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, the largest opposition party, claim that the tweet posted by an anonymous Twitter account, named “Dappi,” has damaged their reputations.

They accuse the web company of being behind posting the tweet and are suing the company, its directors and its president.

“It can be presumed and recognized as the truth that the tweet was posted by a director or employee of the website consulting company or someone who was contracted to perform work by the company,” the lawmakers argue.

But the company is standing its ground, filing to have the case dismissed.

The anonymous Twitter account in question posts videos of internet TV programs accompanied with text of critical comments about opposition parties made by the people appearing in the shows. The account has also repeatedly tweeted praise for ruling party members.

The two lawmakers, Hiroyuki Konishi and Hideya Sugio, launched their suit against the company in October over a tweet posted by Dappi on Oct. 25, 2020.

The tweet said, “A Finance Ministry's Kinki Local Finance Bureau official committed suicide after Hiroyuki Konishi and Hideya Sugio grilled him for an hour.”

The official killed himself in 2018 after he was forced to help falsify public documents concerning the bureau’s sale of state-owned land to Moritomo Gakuen, an Osaka-based private school operator linked to former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s wife, Akie.

Two other court cases filed by the same two lawmakers had revealed the website consulting company was a subscriber of the internet service provider through which the tweet was posted.

These court cases, filed separately against Twitter Inc. and the internet service provider, were aimed at disclosing information on the identity of the poster. However, the relationship between the company and the poster remains unknown.

One of the main aspects of the latest court case is whether the identity of the actual poster will be revealed.

In a court document submitted by the internet service provider, a lawyer acting for the poster said, “The information was tweeted by the poster, not by a subscriber of the internet service,” suggesting that the party under contractual agreement with the internet service provider and the author of the tweet are different people.

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