Attorney
Kiyoshi Aoki

Greeting

 In April 1992, I registered as an Attorney and joined the Sawai Law Office, established by Hidehisa Sawai, the current Representative Attorney of the Shin-Yotsuya Law Offices. In April 2002, I participated as a Partner Attorney in the establishment of the Shin-Yotsuya Law Offices.

 Since my registration as an Attorney, I have handled a wide variety of cases at the firm, including advisory services for companies of various industries and sizes, debt recovery, building evictions, neighborhood disputes, residential environment preservation, boundary disputes, patent infringement, unfair competition prevention cases, real estate transactions, asset management contracts, voluntary guardianship contracts, will preparation, inheritance disputes such as inheritance division and reduction claims for legal portion.

 Additionally, I have dealt with third-party committees for corporate accounting fraud, business succession (business transfer, stock transfer, company split) in manufacturing, construction, and service industries, civil rehabilitation, special liquidation, and bankruptcy filings. One particularly memorable case in the past was the case involving obstruction of collection concerning the substitution of mortgage proceeds, which resulted in a significant precedent-setting victory at the Supreme Court on January 30, 1998.

 Alongside these activities, I have been involved in the operations of the Housing Loan Credit Management Agency, the predecessor of the Resolution and Collection Corporation (RCC), since 1997. From 1999, I deeply engaged in the handling of non-performing loans of failed financial institutions at the RCC and became an Executive Officer in February 2008. In this role, I contributed to the procedural aspects of statutory business revitalization, utilizing servicer and trust functions for non-performing loan processing, and deepened my knowledge of legal procedures for corporate restructuring under the Companies Act as well as accounting and tax issues in business revitalization.

 In addition to corporate legal affairs and general civil cases such as debt collection and business revitalization, I also took on roles such as a committee member and specialist investigator for the Building Review Board, which functions as an administrative appeal review mechanism in local government building administration and urban planning. This sparked my interest in the overall administration of local governments. Since 2015, I have been providing advisory services to local governments, handling various issues such as administrative procedures, information disclosure procedures, protection of personal information in administrative agencies, bullying problems in schools, adjustment of interests among citizens, and coordination between mayors and councils. I believe that more young attorneys should get involved in local government work to revitalize local governance.

 I am confident that the practical experience I have gained through my diverse legal work allows me and the members of Shin-Yotsuya Law Offices to meet the various needs of our clients.

Biography and Career

Born: March 1957, Tokyo
March 1975: Graduated from Tokyo Metropolitan Igusa High School
March 1981: Graduated from Keio University, Faculty of Law (LL.B.)
April 1981: Joined Aoki Yasushi Patent and Law Office
October 1989: Passed Japan’s Bar examination
April 1992: Registered with the Daini Tokyo Bar Association
April 1992: Joined Sawai Law Office
January 1998: Obtained Supreme Court ruling overturning the original judgment (new precedent on substitution of mortgage proceeds)
October 2002: Founded Shin-Yotsuya Law Offices
December 2002: Specialist Investigator for the Tokyo Building Review Board
April 2007: Member of the Shibuya Building Review Board and the Bidding Evaluation Committee
October 2007: Legal Consultant for Shinjuku Ward (Current)
February 2008: Executive Officer at Resolution and Collection Corporation (RCC)
June 2012: Councilor of the Yokoyama Taikan Memorial Museum (Current)
October 2013: Member of the Tokyo Land Use Review Committee
April 2018: Councilor of the Shinjuku Council of Social Welfare (Current)
April 2018: Member of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations’ Committee on Collection Companies (Current)
April 2020: Chairperson of the Shibuya Building Review Board (Current)
April 2022: Auditor of the Daini Tokyo Bar Association

Books and Articles

“Compilation of Tort Cases” (GYOSEI)
“Corporate Restructuring at RCC” edited by the Resolution and Collection Corporation (KINZAI)
“Administrative Procedure Act” edited by Yasushi Aoki (GYOSEI)
“Compilation of Tax Cases (General Tax Act Edition)” (GYOSEI)
“Practical Guide to Private Workouts: 100 Q&As” edited by the Japan Network of Bankruptcy Lawyers (KINZAI)
“Corporate Restructuring: The Role of Regional Financial Institutions as Seen from RCC Cases” edited by the Resolution and Collection Corporation (KINZAI)
“Achieving Compliance in Pharmaceutical Companies, Revised Edition – Overview of Relevant Laws and Voluntary Standards with Case Studies” (co-authored) by Yakuji Nippo, Limited