Photo/Illutration Masako Akagi, with a photo of her late husband, Toshio, speaks at a news conference in Osaka on Feb. 6. (Emiko Arimoto)

The widow of a Finance Ministry bureaucrat said the government’s decision not to challenge a court ruling concerning information disclosure represents one step toward revealing the truth about her husband’s suicide.

She called on the government to take the next step.

Masako Akagi, 53, held a news conference in Osaka on Feb. 6 after the central government announced it would not appeal an Osaka High Court ruling that said its refusal to disclose public records related to a shady sale of state-owned land was illegal.

“I was really surprised because I was afraid that the appeal would be filed,” Akagi said. “I hope (the government) will disclose the documents as soon as possible.”

However, the high court did not order the government to release the reports.

The ruling in January specifically said the government’s nondisclosure was illegal because the state would not even discuss whether the documents existed.

After the government’s decision not to appeal, Finance Minister Katsunobu Kato acknowledged that the documents exist.

But he and other government officials, including Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, remained uncommitted on whether to disclose the documents.

Akagi’s freedom-of-information lawsuit stems from the sale of state-owned land in Osaka Prefecture to the Moritomo Gakuen educational institution in 2016 for a price that was 800 million yen below the market value.

Speculation was rife that the steep discount was offered because of Moritomo Gakuen’s close ties to Akie Abe, wife of then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Akagi’s husband, Toshio, an official of the Finance Ministry’s Kinki Local Finance Bureau, was ordered to falsify official documents concerning the land sale. The names of the Abes, for example, were deleted from the documents.

Toshio committed suicide in 2018.

In 2021, Masako requested disclosure of documents related to the falsifications, which the Finance Ministry had voluntarily submitted to prosecutors for their investigation.

However, the government refused to provide the documents to the widow on grounds that they would hinder the investigation. The government, in fact, would not even say if the documents existed.

Masako filed the lawsuit to clarify the events leading to her husband’s death.

“I want to know who initiated and ordered the falsifications,” she said at the news conference on Feb. 6.

She also said she sent a message to Ishiba, with whom she had been in contact for some time, requesting disclosure, and that he replied, “Thank you for contacting me.”

Ishiba said he summoned Kato and Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki to the prime minister’s office on Feb. 6 and instructed them not to appeal the case.

“We must take very seriously the fact that a man who had worked with a strong sense of mission and responsibility took his own life,” Ishiba told reporters that day.

“When I considered the feelings of Mr. Akagi and his bereaved family, I decided not to appeal the decision because I thought it should be taken seriously,” he said.

When asked if he would order the release of the documents, Ishiba only said, “We will make a sincere and earnest effort from the perspective of fulfilling our accountability to the public in accordance with the law.”

Kato told reporters: “All documents submitted to the prosecutors have been returned to the Finance Ministry. We will examine them carefully and consider what kind of work we will do.”

Teruyuki Ogoshi, a lawyer representing Masako Akagi, urged the government to release all the information “to help us understand the reason for (Akagi’s) death and to help prevent a recurrence.”

“This is going into the second round,” Ogoshi said at the news conference. “Even if the government discloses the information, we will not be able to understand what happened if it blacks out the entire document.”

(This article was compiled from reports written by Shun Suzuki, Takefumi Horinouchi and Yuki Hanano.)

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