INTRODUCTION

THIS ARTICLE CONCENTRATES on three themes where English lawyers might be said to have ‘punched above their weight’ in contributing to the development of the legal services sector in Japan:

• • The development of international finance and securities work for Japanese companies from the early 1960s onwards.

• • The contribution of English lawyers to deregulation of the legal services sector in Japan.

• • The practices developed by the London headquartered law firms who set up offices in Tokyo when the law permitted them to do so in 1987.

BACKGROUND

Although the modern Japanese legal system drew heavily on other civil law systems such as France and Germany, and imported its securities laws from the United States, there has been a strong influence from English law in fields such as insurance and maritime law, and most recently, product liability law which was influenced by the English model. The Meiji constitution of 1889 drew on the work of Professor A.V. Dicey of All Souls College, Oxford.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTERNATIONAL FINANCE AND SECURITIES WORK FOR JAPANESE COMPANIES FROM THE EARLY 1960S ONWARDS

In post-war Japan, US lawyers, numbering sixty-eight in 1955, were instrumental in establishing the first modern Japanese law firms. These lawyers, known as junkaiin, were permitted to practise Japanese law but no additional foreign lawyers were permitted after 1954. Their practice was mainly inbound foreign direct investment (FDI) from the United States and they employed Japanese lawyers to assist them with administrative tasks such as filing foreign exchange applications for investment. Although the junkaiin were, in the main, good lawyers, they did not plan succession well, or indeed concede that their practices could be taken over by a younger generation of Japanese lawyers.

The primary focus of these US lawyers was corporate work but beginning in the early 1960s, Japanese companies began raising finance in the US capital markets. Ken Tsunematsu of Nagashima Ohno & Tsunematsu recalls an issue by Tokyo Shibaura Electric Co., Ltd (now Toshiba Corporation) in 1962, when he was an employee of that company. The issuer's counsel was Thomas Blakemore of Blakemore and Mitsuki (the firm which Ken Tsunematsu later joined). Underwriters’ counsel was John Christensen of McIvor Kauffman & Christensen. Then in the same year, Shin Mitsubishi- Heavy Ltd. (now Mitsubishi Heavy Industries) issued the first convertible bond by a Japanese company.