diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index fc312366df7..d31af42e56e 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -52,6 +52,8 @@ Release 0.91.0 - Unreleased
    HBASE-3688  Setters of class HTableDescriptor do not work properly
    HBASE-3702  Fix NPE in Exec method parameter serialization
    HBASE-3709  HFile compression not sharing configuration
+   HBASE-3711  importtsv fails if rowkey length exceeds MAX_ROW_LENGTH
+               (Kazuki Ohta via todd)
 
   IMPROVEMENTS
    HBASE-3290  Max Compaction Size (Nicolas Spiegelberg via Stack)  
diff --git a/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/mapreduce/ImportTsv.java b/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/mapreduce/ImportTsv.java
index b7b8001e8ab..beb02336789 100644
--- a/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/mapreduce/ImportTsv.java
+++ b/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/mapreduce/ImportTsv.java
@@ -267,6 +267,16 @@ public class ImportTsv {
         } else {
           throw new IOException(badLine);
         }
+      } catch (IllegalArgumentException e) {
+        if (skipBadLines) {
+          System.err.println(
+              "Bad line at offset: " + offset.get() + ":\n" +
+              badLine.getMessage());
+          badLineCount.increment(1);
+          return;
+        } else {
+          throw new IOException(badLine);
+        }
       } catch (InterruptedException e) {
         e.printStackTrace();
       }