Sources say a former head of major poultry firm Akita Foods has told people close to him that he gave cash to politicians including former agriculture minister Nishikawa Koya.

Nishikawa stepped down as special advisor to Japan's Cabinet on Tuesday, citing personal reasons.

A former head of a major poultry business reportedly has said he gave cash totaling worth about 48,000 dollars to a former agriculture minister while he was in office.

The former head of Akita Foods, headquartered in Fukuyama City, Hiroshima Prefecture, served as an adviser of the Japan Poultry Association and actively lobbied Diet members and the agriculture ministry over industry matters.

Mazda's next-generation CX-5 will graduate from premium to luxury to bolster the firm's upmarket push, according to a recent report. It will again take the form of a crossover, but it might spawn a fastback-like model.

Japanese magazine Best Car learned from company insiders that the next CX-5 will be comparable to the BMW X5 and the Mercedes-Benz GLC. If that's accurate, the people-mover will receive substantial upgrades in the coming years, because the current model is not as big, not as luxurious, and not as quick as either of those SUVs.

U.S. prosecutors claim that the son of Carlos Ghosn made roughly $500,000 in cryptocurrency payments to one of the men who helped smuggle the former Nissan executive from Japan and into Lebanon.

Investigative sources have told NHK that a former Japanese justice minister apparently deleted potential evidence of vote-buying after a magazine published an article about his alleged election law violation.

Prosecutors arrested Kawai Katsuyuki and his lawmaker wife Kawai Anri on Thursday for giving cash to local politicians and others in an Upper House election in which she ran successfully last July.