The Reform of International Civil Procedure Law in Japan

Abstract

The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) submitted a draft for a new legislation on international jurisdiction to the Diet of Japan on 2 March 2010. An English translation of the draft is presented as Appendix 1. The draft is scheduled to amend the Code of Civil Procedure and the Civil Provisional Remedies Act. This article highlights a few of the draft’s characteristic provisions. Flexibility seems to have been the main priority of its drafters. To illustrate the background of the reform the article starts with briefly summarizing the case law on international jurisdiction that Japanese courts have developed during the last 40 years.

The MOJ Draft of 2010 was preceded by a Working Group Draft published in June 2008 and an interim draft of the Drafting Committee published in July 2009. The MOJ Draft adopted in February 2010 is the result of a selection from several choices for each provision, which also included the choice not to create any black-letter rules on certain issues. Therefore it is important and useful to trace the development of each provision in the preparation process by knowing what options the Working Group Draft had proposed and what was taken in the MOJ Draft. Appendix 2 offers a comparative overview of three Drafts in form of a chart.

(The Editors)