is a former Japanese

politician A politician is a person who participates in Public policy, policy-making processes, usually holding an elective position in government. Politicians represent the people, make decisions, and influence the formulation of public policy. The roles ...

of the Liberal Democratic Party who served as a member of the

House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entities. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often ...

in the

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(national legislature). A native of Makabe District, Ibaraki and graduate of the

University of Tokyo The University of Tokyo (, abbreviated as in Japanese and UTokyo in English) is a public research university in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Founded in 1877 as the nation's first modern university by the merger of several pre-westernisation era ins ...

, he worked at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries from 1983 to 1988. He was elected to the House of Representatives for the first time in 1990. Akagi took office as Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries after the suicide of his predecessor, Toshikatsu Matsuoka, in May 2007. Not even two months after being inaugurated, Akagi found himself indicted in a political funding

scandal A scandal can be broadly defined as the strong social reactions of outrage, anger, or surprise, when accusations or rumours circulate or appear for some reason, regarding a person or persons who are perceived to have transgressed in some way a ...

not entirely different from the one his predecessor had been embroiled in - he was alleged to have registered multi-million yen expenditures on an office which did not exist. Akagi was asked to make receipts official but refused. On July 17, he appeared at a press conference with two adhesive plasters on his face, puzzling reporters but still refusing to make receipts official.Plastered Farm Minister still refuses to make receipts official

Japan News Review Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea in th ...

July 17, 2007 Akagi resigned as Minister on August 1, 2007, after the upper house election. Minister of the Environment, Masatoshi Wakabayashi, became concurrent Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and stayed until August 27, 2007, when

Shinzō Abe Shinzo Abe (21 September 1954 – 8 July 2022) was a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party ( LDP) from 2006 to 2007 and again from 2012 to 2020. He was the longest-serving pri ...

announced a new cabinet. Akagi's virtual successor was Takehiko Endo appointed on August 27.

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* in Japanese. Government ministers of Japan University of Tokyo alumni Living people 1959 births Liberal Democratic Party (Japan) politicians Members of the House of Representatives (Japan) 2003–2005 Members of the House of Representatives (Japan) 2005–2009 {{Japan-politician-1950s-stub