Originially from: World Arbitration and Mediation Review (WAMR)

The Prospective Revision of Japanese Arbitration Law
by
Tatsuhiko Hagizawa*
Characteristics of International Commercial Arbitration in Japan
—With Primary Emphasis on Problems Associated with Revising the
Japanese Arbitration Law
1. Characteristics
The number of international commercial arbitration cases in Japan has
always been quite small. Despite the volume of Japan’s commercial activity, the
Japanese Commercial Arbitration Association (JCAA) has counted fewer than ten
new arbitrations per year in Japan. In contrast, international arbitrations before
the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission (CIETAC),
China’s international arbitration body, have numbered more than five hundred per
year in recent times. As more parties choose CIETAC as the administering
agency, the JCAA’s economic basis has weakened to the point where the JCAA
has dismissed some of its higher level personnel.
2. Reasons for the Minimal Use of Arbitration — Two Possible Explanations
for the Minimal Use of Arbitration
(a) Supply of Arbitrators
The JCAA’s list of possible arbitrators only contains seventy-one names.
Among the seventy-one arbitrators, only twenty-nine are Japanese. One reason
that the JCAA has such a small number of Japanese arbitrators is that very few
Japanese lawyers speak English fluently enough to qualify as a JCAA arbitrator.
(b) The Existing Law
The current Japanese law on arbitration—called the Arbitration Procedure
in Book VIII of the Law Concerning Means for a Public Peremptory Notice and
Arbitration Procedure1 (“Law”)—is clearly out of date. The Law has essentially
not been revised in over a century.2 The JCAA, however, has not lagged far