Japan s Information Disclosure Law, which vests the sovereign public with a legally enforceable right of access to central government files, took effect on April 1, 2001.
In what was believed to be a last-minute rush to circumvent this new system, many government ministries and agencies destroyed mountains of official documents during fiscal 2000 that ended March 31, 2001.
According to findings later released by Access-Info Clearinghouse Japan, an incorporated nonprofit organization, the volume of documents ditched by the Finance Ministry and the Environment Ministry was more than double that of the previous fiscal year, while the volume discarded by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries surged 21-fold.
Japanese government acknowledges existence of papers on document-tampering Sorry, but your browser needs Javascript to use this site. If you re not sure how to activate it, please refer to this site: https://www.enable-javascript.com/
The construction site for an elementary school of Moritomo Gakuen in Osaka in April 2017 | REUTERS
Jiji May 6, 2021
The Japanese government on Thursday acknowledged the existence of documents related to the tampering of official records about the dubious discount sale of state land to school operator Moritomo Gakuen.
The government plans to submit the documents to Osaka District Court on June 23 for a hearing in a lawsuit filed by the widow of Toshio Akagi, a former Finance Ministry bureaucrat who committed suicide in 2018 over the tampering scandal.