Japan professor Kyoko Ishida

Unpopular or Unfamiliar Dispute Resolution?

– How Japanese people view ADR–

Kyoko Ishida

Abstract

This paper discusses how Japanese people view ADR from the recent empirical survey. Although Japanese government legislated the ADR Act in order to promote use of ADR 12 years ago, Japanese people do not use ADR so actively to date. Compared to the number of civil disputes brought to the District Courts (about 180,000 cases annually), the number of cases brought to private ADR institutions is very small. Cases brought to bar associations’ ADR Centers are about 1,000 cases annually, and cases brought to the Traffic Accident Consultation Center of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations (TACC) are also about 1,100 cases annually. Why do Japanese people rarely use ADR?

We, the ADR Research Group composed of about ten scholars, conducted a survey for those people who actually used ADR provided by bar associations from October 2014 to January 2016 and another internet survey with 2,000 samples in February 2016. This is the first survey in this scale focusing on ADR in Japan. Through these two surveys, we aimed to grab both how users find ADR and how general people view ADR. My report shows an overview of major findings from these surveys.

It may be surprising that about 80% of respondents of the internet survey answered that they have never heard about ADR. Among 389 respondents who answered that they have heard of ADR, 32.9% learned it from media, 27.2% learned it from the internet. Only 6.4% learned ADR through a lawyer or a bar association. This means that the lawyers and the bar associations are not functioning as a connector to ADR. Given the finding from the users’ survey that those who used ADR generally satisfied with this private dispute resolution services, the author argue that it is the responsibility of lawyers and bar associations to effectively teach citizens about ADR and connect them to these services. Current situation, the low use of ADR, in Japan is not due to its unpopularity, but due to desperate unfamiliarity of ADR.