Masako Akagi, left, holds a news conference after requesting the disclosure of information from the Finance Ministry, in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, on Aug. 11, 2021. During the meeting, she said, "I want to know the truth." (Mainichi/Hiroyuki Oba)

       TOKYO -- The wife of a government official who died by suicide filed a request with the Finance Ministry and a local finance bureau on Aug. 11, seeking the disclosure of documents including emails exchanged among bureaucrats involved in tampering with official records related to the heavily discounted sale of state land to nationalist school operator Moritomo Gakuen.

       Toshio Akagi, a then employee of the Ministry of Finance's Kinki Local Finance Bureau, took his own life at age 54 in March 2018, claiming that he was forced to participate in altering ministry papers that approved the high-profile property sale.

       During the lawsuit filed by his wife Masako, the "Akagi file," in which Toshio compiled the detailed background of the tampering, was disclosed by the ministry in June. However, she was unable to get the whole picture from the file, prompting her to make the disclosure request.

       Masako is seeking the documents collected by the ministry during its in-house investigation into the matter, and those voluntarily submitted to prosecutors in charge of the probe.

       Masako held a news conference in Tokyo after going through the procedures required under the Act on Access to Information Held by Administrative Organs, and said, "From what my husband left behind, I cannot figure out how the instructions for tampering were given or what emails were exchanged within the ministry. I want to know the truth."

       Masako also said that she would like to hear directly from Nobuhisa Sagawa, then director-general of the ministry's Financial Bureau who, according to the Akagi file, ordered the tampering.

       Masako added, "When I saw Finance Minister Taro Aso's news conference, I got the impression that he was saying, 'The problem is already over.' The former prime minister (Shinzo Abe) tweeted the part where my husband wrote (in the file), 'It is certainly not true that I gave (the school) favorable treatment.' It's very offensive and disgusting."

       (Japanese original by Hiroyuki Oba, Tokyo City News Department)

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