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Players can be fined up to $20,000 for skipping
a media conference at Grand Slams and Osaka said she hoped the
"considerable amount" that she expected to be fined would go
towards a mental health charity.
"I'm writing this to say I'm not going to do any press during
Roland Garros," the Japanese world number two wrote on Twitter.
"I've often felt that people have no regard for athletes mental
health and this rings true whenever I see a press conference or
partake in one.
"We're often sat there and asked questions that we've been asked
multiple times before or asked questions that bring doubt into
our minds and I'm just not going to subject myself to people
that doubt me."
Expecting players to answer questions after losses amounted to
"kicking a person while they're down", Osaka added.
Osaka, 23, made headlines this week when sports business website
Sportico reported she had earned $55.2 million over the past 12
months, a record haul for a female athlete.
French Open qualifiers are underway with the main draw set to
start from Sunday at Roland Garros with the final scheduled on
June 13.
The claycourt Grand Slam has never been a happy hunting ground
for Osaka, who skipped the event last year amid the COVID-19
pandemic. She has not gone past the third round in her four
appearances.
World governing body International Tennis Federation and the WTA
Tour did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The French tennis federation FFT, which organises the major,
told Reuters it would make "no comment for now".
A spokeswoman for Japanese car manufacturer Nissan Motor, one of
Osaka's long list of sponsors, said it had no comment. Her other
sponsors did not respond to requests for comment.
Osaka, a former world number one, said the decision was "nothing
personal" against the tournament and noted she had a friendly
relationship with many of the tour's journalists. She hoped
tournaments would reconsider their approach.
She later tweeted a video of former Seattle Seahawks running
back Marshawn Lynch famously repeating the line "I'm just here
so I won't get fined", at a pre-Super Bowl news conference in
2015.
Osaka has in the past used her platform and considerable press
attention to highlight issues of police violence and racial
inequality.
American Christian Harrison was fined $3,000 by the ATP after
refusing to take part in a mandatory on-court interview at the
Delray Beach Open in January amid a dispute over mask wearing.
(Reporting by Rory Carroll and Sudipto Ganguly; additional
reporting by Eimi Yamamitsu, Rocky Swift and Julien Pretot;
editing by Ed Osmond, Lincoln Feast and Richard Pullin)
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