Event Report

Legal 500 launched the fifth edition of GC Summit Japan in Tokyo on October 3rd, bringing together the top in-house legal leaders and professionals from across Japan at the beautiful Grand Ballroom of the Peninsula Hotel, opposite the Imperial Palace. Gathering over 150 attendees, the event provided a great opportunity for legal teams to dive into the main challenges they’re facing and explore new opportunities among peers.

Opening remarks were provided by the highly accomplished and universally respected GC of Fujitsu, Kyoko Mizuguchi. Her speech touched upon a number of issues, but went into detail on technological advancements for in-house legal teams and how these can be used to increase efficiencies.

Tsuyoshi Ikeda of Ikeda & Someya was joined by associate Aya Yasui on stage to lead an extremely detailed look at their firm’s specialist subject, that of competition law. They had assembled a crack panel to feed in to the session, with Naoko Teranishi of The Japan Fair Trade Commission, Naokuni Kuwagata of Novartis Pharma and Keiko Uchida of Roche Diagnostics.

Rimon Law’s Intellectual Property session followed, which provided the four speakers on stage ample opportunity to showcase both their expertise and their engaging personalities. Eric D. Kirsch​​​​ and David E. Case of Rimon Law were joined by Natsue Ishida, managing director of legal and intellectual property division at SEGA Sammy Holdings and Nobumasa Hiroi, global general counsel of Mujin for this hugely interesting discussion.

The post-coffee break session on Global Whistleblowing Systems in association with GI&T Law Office was extremely detailed, providing a practical look into the challenges faced by in-house lawyers in Japan in implementing global systems that meet varying regulatory requirements across jurisdictions. Mihoko Kawamizu (general counsel of Philips) and Koh Yamaki (senior manager, compliance dept., Hitachi) gave extremely valuable insights into their own companies’ systems and how they were set up, with founding partner Kengo Nishigaki being joined by Hiroko Miyazaki, Patrick Forman and Yuji Yamamoto of GI&T Law Office to give their expert perspectives.

Kenta Ikeb and Izuru Goto of City-Yuwa Partners then took to the stage to give their take on the current regulatory landscape for digital assets in Japan. Aided by a meticulously researched presentation, they provided a thorough overview of the state of play.

Atsumi & Sakai’s session on cybercrime received very positive feedback from the audience and inspired a lot of questions. Takafumi Ochiai and Daniel Jarrett of Atsumi & Sakai were joined by an interesting mix of in-house counsel: Brian Yu of Tencent, Mina Hoshizawa of Bayer and Andreas Höppel of Koki Group. Together, they outlined the threats and countermeasures each of their organisations face, providing an overview of the current cybercrime landscape for large corporates in Japan.

The next panel, managing international disputes, featured partners from two major international law firms (Peter Harris of Clifford Chance and Dominic Sharman of Baker McKenzie) and senior corporate counsel from two large international companies (Tomoya Hashimoto of Marubeni and Ryo Asakura of Olympus Corporation) to provide a balanced outlook of potential challenges in international disputes. As well as the theoretical side of matters, we looked at practical examples of challenges faced in disputes, advice on when to settle and potential traps to avoid, making this session a standout.

Finally, the Legal 500 invited a panel of some of Japan’s top general counsel from a variety of industry sectors to form a panel conversation on the changing role of in-house counsel, moderated by Editor Joe Boswell: Naoki Hamada, general counsel Japan, HSBC; Fumika Ito, general counsel, SAP; Toshimi Itakura, general manager, legal department, Sojitz; and Yuichiro Watanabe, lead counsel, Airbnb Japan were the hugely talented individuals who lent the benefit of their expertise to the audience. As well as discussing the ways in which corporate counsel’s responsibilities have changed in the past ten years, we discussed how to chart a rewarding career path as an in-house counsel and how to achieve the best work-life balance.

With every year, the audience for our Japan GC Summit grows, both in numbers and the seniority of attendees. We look forward to putting on an even more impressive 2025 event, and if you would like to be a part of it, please get in touch with [email protected]

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