We are glad to hear that there is a rise in the mood to assist in the construction of legal frameworks: however, there are problems we must resolve before proceeding.

If working institutions and NGOs act independently, we cannot provide
coordinated legal technical assistance. Looking at it from the recipient
country's perspective, they are more likely to say "I don't know why, but
the Japanese are coming from all over and telling us different things."
For a project to be effective, it is necessary to know which institution is doing what. Although we are trying to promote the exchange of information
among working institutions, we do not have sufficient information in hand to
provide a forum to do so.

The problem that domestic institutions are facing is that there is no system which can provide information such as translated versions of Japanese and other countries' legal systems or can compile law texts which could be used jointly.

At any rate, since it has only been four to five years since we started providing legal technical assistance, so we at still at point in which institutions are trying to start their projects.
Therefore, we are still trying to figure out how to resolve the problems we are now facing.
Our support infrastructure is in the midst of organizing itself. Under these circumstances, one bit of good news is that there is a plan to establish a new base by building a department solely for legal technical assistance in the Osaka Fifth Regional Government Office Building in 2001.
Osaka was chosen as the location since it a major economic center,

closer geographically to Asia than is Tokyo, and with the completion of the Kansai airport, the distance to many Asian countries has been shortened. At the same time, there is high hopes for Asia from the financial circle, academic circle and legal professionals in Kansai, thereby making their support system much more solid.
It is hoped that in future, that this new base will conduct research, gather and compare different legal systems and their operations, and then distribute this information to different countries, inclusive of Japan.
When this new location is set in place, we believe that our support system
will be much more structured.