He previously held the posts of Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry and Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in the cabinet of Junichiro Koizumi.

In December 2006, Kyodo News Agency quoted Nakagawa as having said the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were "truly unforgivable on humanitarian grounds" and reported the politician's concerns over the possession of nuclear weapons by North Korea.

Abe has made efforts to relink ties with neighbouring China, while Nakagawa officially voiced his concern over the country's growing military expenditure, claiming that, were the situation in Taiwan to deteriorate, Japan would become, by 2020, a Chinese colony.

The total size of the loans could be about US$200 billion (about 20 trillion yen) In some newly emerging economies and small and medium European countries, total assets in domestic financial institutions far exceed the national gross domestic products and those governments might be unable to raise necessary funds to help failing financial institutions through measures such as nationalisation.

[12] Prime Minister Taro Aso told Japan was ready to lend up to $100 billion from our foreign reserves to the IMF if it finds itself with insufficient funds to help emergency economies.

In a communiqué, G-7 ministers committed to acting jointly to support world growth and employment and strengthen the financial sector, while avoiding protectionism.

Loans were made to a number of economies affected by the crisis, including Belarus, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Pakistan, Serbia, and Ukraine.

[13][14] Defunct Defunct Affiliated to the openly revisionist organization Nippon Kaigi,[15] Nakagawa expressed in July 1998 his skepticism about the fact that many schools in Japan taught about forced "comfort women" by the Japanese military during the World War II in history textbooks claiming that there was no evidence that the Japanese government and military were directory involved in recruiting or forcing women to work in the brothels.

Nakagawa had an opposing position to Yōhei Kōno's statement that the Japanese government was directly involved in recruiting and forcing "comfort women" to work in the brothels.

He stated in a radio program that he wouldn't acknowledge Kōno's statement as long as the current Japanese government concealed what he thought to be the truth.

[17] During the G7 meeting of finance ministers in Rome on 14 February 2009, where he signed an agreement to lend an extra $100 billion to the IMF that was described as the "largest loan ever made in the history of humanity",[18] Nakagawa was seen to be slurring his words.

"[30] After his death, his widow Yūko Nakagawa ran for his old seat in the 2012 election, which she won and held until 2017,[35] before being reelected via the Hokkaido proportional representation block in 2021.