Veteran House of Representatives member and former education minister Hakubun Shimomura said a news reporter's decision to record the top finance bureaucrat's allegedly sexually suggestive remarks and give it to a magazine was almost a criminal act, an opposition party newspaper revealed Monday.

The broadcast network TV Asahi female reporter's audio recording posted on the website earlier this month of the weekly magazine Shukan Shincho has forced Vice Finance Minister Junichi Fukuda to tender his resignation.

In a speech Shimomura made Sunday in Tokyo, the 63-year-old said the reporter secretly recording the conversation with Fukuda and then taking it to the magazine was "a crime in a sense," according to Monday's edition of the opposition Japanese Communist Party's newspaper and audio recording of the speech released by the party.

He retracted the remark Monday, saying in a statement, "The expression was inappropriate."

(Former education minister Hakubun Shimomura)

"It's against the ethics of the press to secretly record a conversation in an off-the-record occasion," Shimomura said. "I wanted to voice my concern because I suspected that the female reporter secretly recorded (the conversation) with the intention to give the audio to the weekly magazine from the beginning."

The lawmaker also criticized the media in the speech, saying they are being so critical of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe it is as though they are trying to destroy the country.

"Most TV broadcasters (are trying to) force Prime Minister Abe out of power...I'm really inclined to think the Japanese media are trying to crush Japan," Shimomura said.

He was referring to recent media coverage about cronyism allegations leveled at Abe, namely the controversial sale of state-owned land to a school operator linked to Abe's wife and the opening of a veterinarian school run by the premier's friend, as well as views in the media against Abe's bid to revise the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution.

Shimomura served as education minister under Abe until October 2015.