Sumikawa Law Office | Japan | English Speaking Lawyer | Attorney at Law
Law firm in Kawasaki city next to Tokyo and Yokohama. All attorneys (lawyers) can speak English.
In Japan, July 23 (Marine Day) and 24 (Sports Day) are public holidays for the year 2020. This is due to the fact that the Tokyo Olympics were scheduled to be held in 2020.
The Olympic Games have been postponed, but the holidays remain the same.
For this reason, our office will be closed on July 23 and 24 in 2020.
Attorney Sumikawa is now accredited by the Small and Medium Enterprise Agency as a “Support agencies for business innovation” (Certified Support Agency, NINTEI-SHIEN-KIKAN).
Due to the COVID-19 situation, we feel it is necessary for our office to further enhance our support for small and medium-sized businesses.
There are several benefits to small and medium-sized businesses when they receive support from a Certified Support Agency. Please refer to the Mira-Sapo website for details.
Added the information about notarization cost for creating a Notary Deed Will (notarized will in Japan) at the Notary Public Office (Kosho-Yakuba 公証役場)
Cost for Creating a NOTARY DEED WILL
The Japanese government explained at the House of
Representatives on May 29 that the foreign companies (with branch in
Japan) are not eligible for the subsidy program (Jizokuka Kyufukin 持続化給付金).
You can see the actual discussion in the video linked here.
http://www.shugiintv.go.jp/jp/index.php?ex=VL&media_type=&deli_id=50247&time=15608.0
See around 4:29:50 of this video.
For now, it is not possible for foreign companies to apply for the subsidy program.
We’ll provide information here, if we catch any update about this matter.
Acceptance of Requests for Subsidy Program for Sustaining Businesses Starts
Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) website
Japanese courts are now suspending many court dates in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
They started suspending the court dates after the Japanese government has declared the state of emergency on 7th April 2020. And now, following the extension of the declaration until the end of May 2020, the court dates scheduled in May are being suspended in many courts throughout Japan.
As there are many new potential cases which weren’t filed because of the voluntarily “stay home” in April, the court will likely to be very much over-scheduled after they re-open the suspended court dates after the end of May.
There are several different procedures at the court. Two major procedures are lawsuit (“Sosho”) and conciliation (“Cho-tei”). Japanese legal system requires conciliation procedure to be held before the lawsuit for several types of cases. This includes many family procedures such as divorce. Which means, if you want to file a divorce case to a Japanese court, you will first have to file for a conciliation procedure. You cannot go to lawsuit directly.
As the conciliation procedure includes more “close, detailed and long conversations” in a small room compared to lawsuits, there may be considerable delays for conciliation procedures for a long period of time (maybe more than several months).
For people who have serious and urgent legal issues at this moment, it will be important to move quicker than usual, taking into account the possibility of significant delays at the court.
