Hague Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters

Summary

The "Hague Service Convention" provides for international service of legal documents in a timely and uniform manner to foreign defendants, by a Central Authority in the foreign Convention country.  If you are involved in a legal dispute in a court that is outside Japan, against a Japanese citizen who is not resident in the same country as the court, you may need to deliver legal documents to them via the methods of this treaty.  If you do not, and if you try to enforce a decision issued by the court in Japan, the Japanese citizen or Japanese court can claim that the legal documents were not properly served.  Then the court order or verdict would not be enforceable in Japan.

The text of the treaty is self-explanatory, but some countries make reservations or declarations. Most commonly, these involve objection (or notably the lack of an objection) to parts of Article 10, which concerns whether or not you may serve legal documents without going through the country's designated Central Authority.

Article 10
Provided the State of destination does not object, the present Convention shall not interfere with -

1. the freedom to send judicial documents, by postal channels, directly to persons abroad,
2. the freedom of judicial officers, officials or other competent persons of the State of origin to effect service of judicial documents directly through the judicial officers, officials or other competent persons of the State of destination,
3. the freedom of any person interested in a judicial proceeding to effect service of judicial documents directly through the judicial officers, officials or other competent persons of the State of destination.

In particular, you should never use mail for service in a country who has declared a formal objection to it, i.e. to paragraph a.  Paragraph b prohibits embassy and consular officials from serving documents.

• Adopted: 5 November 1965
• Entry into force:  10 February 1969

Japan Status

• Signed: March 12, 1970
• Entry into force: July 27, 1970
• Reservations and Declarations

It is declared that the Government of Japan objects to the use of the methods of service referred to in sub-paragraphs (b) and (c) of Article 10.

It is declared that Japanese courts may give judgment if all the conditions specified in the second paragraph of Article 15 are fulfilled.

Note that according to the U.S. Department of State website Service of Process in Japan, although service by postal channels is not considered an infringement on sovereign rights and thus not prohibited, it is unlikely to be considered valid in a Japanese court.

• Japan's Central Authority is

The Minister of Foreign Affairs
2-2-1 Kasumigaseki, Chiyoda-ku
Tokyo 100-8919, Japan
tel.: +81-3-3580.3311

CRN Japan Position and Practical Applications in Japan

This is an important treaty for authenticating and validating legal activity against a Japanese citizen for violating divorce, custody and visitation related court orders issued by a non-Japanese court.  But we believe that  in some family law cases, Japan is circumventing this treaty in order to protect Japanese citizen parental abductors.  The Japanese Central Authority (the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) may refuse to deliver documents under the Hague Service Convention using one of the following methods.

The Japanese Central Authority may claim that errors in an destination address makes delivery impossible, even if the abducting parent is for all practical purposes living there, yet has their official Residency Registration (jyuminhyou) elsewhere.  This may be the case, for example, when the abducting parent is living with the grandparents in order to get help in caring for the child.  If the abducting parent was living overseas, this address is also likely to be the only one known to the left-behind parent.  The Japanese government has access to both Family Registration (koseki) and Residency Registration (jyuminhyou)  records for all citizens, which are required by law to be kept up to date.  So if the Central Authority was making a true attempt to deliver the documents, they could easily find the current address of the recipient.  In some cases, a foreign parent can access these documents also, but only at great cost of time and money.  In other cases, such as when the birth or marriage with the foreign parent was not registered in Japan, the foreign parent is not able to access these documents at all.

It also appears that Japan's Central Authority uses the postal service for delivery.  This allows the Japanese recipient to refuse service of the legal documents simply by refusing to accept a piece of mail.  But Given Japan's objection to paragraphs (b) and (c) of Article 10 of the Hague Service Convention, the only alternative method to deliver legal document is the postal service itself.  Catch-22.  (But see note above that delivery by postal channel may not be accepted in a Japanese court anyways.)

Additionally, there is a documented case where the Metropolitan Police Department, the Tokyo District Court and the Japan Postal Service have conspired to prevent delivery of the foreign legal documents.  According to a note the left behind parent received on the returned legal documents, the Metropolitan police asked a court to issue an injunction against delivery because the sender (a US lawyer representing the left behind parent) was a "dangerous person".

These factors can make the service of foreign judicial documents on an unwilling Japanese recipient impossible.  The Japanese government (the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and the Japanese courts are actually using the Hague Service Convention to prevent delivery of international court documents to Japanese parental abductors.

Source of Treaty

• English Source (local copy HTML : PDF)
• Japanese Source (local copy HTML : PDF)

Accepts Individual Complaints?

• Unknown

Additional Information

See also country specific pages for information on companies that effect service in Japan according to this treaty.

• The Hague - Service Section
• How to Serve Process on a Japanese Citizen in Japan for Foreign Court Proceedings
• Issue: Japan may use the Hague Service Convention to prevent foreign legal documents from being served on Japanese parental abductors