This chapter highlights that the Japan Fair Trade Commission was not able to introduce a leniency programme because of Sadanori Yamanaka, the leading politician within the Liberal Democratic Party for competition law reform; that a leniency programme is essentially different from plea bargaining; and that a leniency programme does not necessarily detract from the rigid characteristic of the surcharge, the financial remedy applicable to infringements of the Antimonopoly Act. The chapter further indicates that, when Yamanaka passed away, the opposition to a leniency programme disappeared, partly because the JFTC was able to show the legislator the substantial difference between a leniency programme and plea bargaining and the possibility of introducing a leniency programme without it claiming any discretion. The leniency programme without discretion has led to useless leniency applications, not enabling the JFTC to pursue an investigation or obliging the JFTC to grant lenient treatment without getting full information. As the JFTC considered the latter problem, the leniency programme was amended in 2019.

This chapter investigates the 2019 amendment of the Japanese leniency programme. The authors’ approach starts by observing that the old leniency programme may have substantially contributed neither to detecting nor to deterring cartels. The question, therefore, is whether the new leniency programme, whereby the amount of reduction of the leniency programme is drastically lowered for subsequent applicants but which can be compensated by entering a consultation process with the JFTC regarding the information to be submitted, is able to address the limitations of the old leniency programme. The chapter concludes that this may not be the case, since the changes to the leniency programme only address the potential of subsequent leniency applications. Nothing is done to attract better leniency applications from the start. To increase deterrence, the authors therefore investigate whether there is still some possibility of tweaking the sanctions in order to compensate for what the leniency programme cannot yet achieve.