OSAKA -- Japan's Ministry of Finance on April 4 released parts of government documents related to the tampering of public records in a controversial state land sale, as the first batch of their phased release after a high court revoked a nondisclosure decision.

The disclosure was demanded by Masako Akagi, the widow of Toshio Akagi, a former Kinki Finance Bureau official who took his own life in 2018 over allegations of document falsification related to the government's land deal with nationalist school operator Moritomo Gakuen. The widow and her legal team had requested from the prosecution, which investigated the document tampering scandal, a full disclosure of documents submitted by the finance ministry.

The ministry claims that the administrative documents span over some 170,000 pages, 2,000 of which were released April 4. The pages record events between June 2013 and June 2016 -- from when Moritomo Gakuen expressed their wish to purchase the state property in the Osaka Prefecture city of Toyonaka to open a new elementary school, until when the school operator actually bought it at a heavily discounted price.

The finance ministry revealed negotiation records with the school in 2018 when the tampering scandal came to light, and most of those records are believed to overlap with the recently released documents. It's expected that records left by Akagi himself will be published in June.

Masako had filed for a freedom of information request to have the related documents disclosed, but was handed a nondisclosure decision without the ministry even acknowledging their existence. She took the matter to court, and in January 2025 the Osaka High Court ruled in favor of disclosure, revoking the government's earlier decision.

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba subsequently suggested that his administration would accept the high court ruling and not appeal. The government has since admitted the existence of those documents, and said it would release them.

(Japanese original by Akihiko Tsuchida, Osaka City News Department)