New Japanese legislation on cross-border insolvency as compared with the UNCITRAL model law

✍ Scribed by Kazuhiko Yamamoto

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 248 KB
• Volume: 11
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1180-0518
• DOI: 10.1002/iir.98

✦ Synopsis

TheJapanese rule on cross-border insolvency had been severely criticized by many foreign lawyers, 1 because it had refused to recognize the e¡ects of a foreign insolvency proceeding inJapan and also refused the e¡ects of a local insolvency proceeding in foreign States. 2 Practitioners had made many e¡orts to moderate this strict rule in order to recognize in fact some limited cross-border e¡ects of both foreign and local insolvency proceedings. 3 Scholars had undertaken studies to propose new express provisions that recognized cross-border insolvency e¡ects. 4 However, amendment of the insolvency laws was not easily put on the legislative agenda for several reasons.

Nevertheless, the Japanese government decided at last to radically reform the insolvency legislation. One principal point of reform was declared by the government to be the problem of cross-border insolvency rule. 5 Then the work of reform was started in October 1996, while a new international standard on this problem had been just coming into existence, namely the project of the UNCITRAL model law. 6 The United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCI-TRAL) that had been created in 1966 with a mandate to further the progressive