A draft of new guidelines for managing official documents, released by the Cabinet Office recently, mark a step forward. They would set common criteria for preserving administrative documents needed for reviewing how government decisions are made — an issue highlighted in the series of scandals that have shaken the Abe administration over the past several months. Given that administrative documents are an important common property of the nation and the people, further efforts need to be made to ensure transparency in their management. Loopholes that might allow officials to cover up inconvenient records must be closed.
In the case of the sale of a government-owned tract of land in Osaka Prefecture at a steep discount to school operator Moritomo Gakuen, the Finance Ministry insisted that the ¥130 million price tag — a discount of about ¥800 million from the ¥950 million appraisal value — was a legitimate deal because the cost of disposing of industrial waste buried at the site had to be deducted. Ministry officials, however, have refused to provide further explanations, saying documents detailing the negotiations with the school operator have already been destroyed in accordance with the ministry's internal rules.
On the government's decision to approve the opening of a new veterinary medicine department at a university operated by a close friend of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, documents produced by education ministry officials quoted the Cabinet Office as urging the reluctant ministry to expedite the approval process by citing "the prime minister's intent," leading to allegations of favoritism. But the veracity of the documents were challenged as the quoted officials denied making such statements. Management of official records also came into question when the Defense Ministry initially said the daily activity logs of Self-Defense Force personnel deployed in South Sudan for a peacekeeping mission had been destroyed — only to admit that they had been kept in the form of electronic data.