Despite the final release of documents related to the Moritomo Gakuen scandal on April 14, key questions remain unanswered almost a decade later.
No revelation was forthcoming on an order by a high-ranking Finance Ministry bureaucrat to falsify documents related to the sale of state land to the private educational institution at a steep discount.
Toshio Akagi, who worked at the ministry’s Kinki Local Finance Bureau, took his own life in 2018 after he was forced to falsify administrative documents on the sale of land in Toyonaka, Osaka Prefecture, to Moritomo Gakuen.
Akagi’s widow, Masako, went to court to seek disclosure of the documents.
On April 14, the Finance Ministry released the last trove of about 140,000 pages of records, but there was nothing about an order given by Nobuhisa Sagawa, the former chief of the ministry’s Finance Bureau, to falsify the documents.
After the release, Masako met with reporters and said there remained so much not known.
“I just want to know why the falsification took place,” she said.
Her husband left behind his own batch of notes that clearly stated Sagawa had given the orders for the falsification.
The government decided to begin disclosing the documents from April 2025 after the Osaka High Court in January 2025 struck down an earlier Finance Ministry decision to not release them.
Over seven separate occasions, about 146,000 pages of documents that the Finance Ministry voluntarily submitted to prosecutors investigating the land deal with Moritomo Gakuen and the falsification of the documents were released.
The documents did show the thinking of Finance Ministry officials regarding the land deal as well as the exchange of emails and other communications within the ministry about falsifying documents.
There were emails exchanged among ministry officials after the land sale was brought up in Diet deliberations because of the steep discount given to Moritomo Gakuen.
Suspicions were raised because the owner of the educational institution boasted about close ties to the late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s wife, Akie.
After the opposition began demanding answers in the Diet, emails showed ministry officials sharing the recognition of not disclosing any new documents related to the issue.
The Finance Ministry released its report in June 2018 about the falsification of documents that said Sagawa had made the decision to start the ball rolling.
But the disclosed documents did not include any that specifically showed the contents and dates of such orders from Sagawa.
In compiling the report, Finance Ministry officials interviewed Sagawa and other ministry officials about their involvement in the document falsification.
But on April 14, ministry officials said transcripts of those interviews were not included in the disclosed documents.
The documents also did not include any emails sent directly by Sagawa.