The Research and Training Institute of the Ministry of Justice conducts international cooperation activities, in various ways, including the provision of legal technical assistance to help establish and strengthen good governance in recipient countries. Its international cooperation activities contribute significantly not only to the sound development of good governance, but also to the strengthening of measures against international crimes as well as the assurance of smooth economic transactions in those countries, thereby enhancing the status of Japan in the international community.

In the field of criminal justice, the Ministry of Justice has been cooperating with the United Nations in terms of policy making and implementation in the area of crime prevention and the treatment of offenders, mainly in the Asia/Pacific region, through its financial and human resource contributions to the United Nations Asia and Far East Institute for the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders (UNAFEI). In the sphere of civil and commercial law, the Ministry has provided legal technical assistance with a focus on cooperation in the drafting of fundamental legal codes, as well as assisting capacity building for legal practitioners. In 2007, some new initiatives were launched, such as the Regional Seminar on Good Governance for the Southeast Asian Countries in Bangkok, organized by UNAFEI and attended by criminal justice practitioners from across the region. Another is a new project cooperating with China in its effort to revise the Civil Procedure Law and the Arbitration Law.

Taking into account the number of requests from various countries to Japan for legal technical assistance and other types of international cooperation, the Ministry of Justice is determined to continue and further enhance its international cooperation activities in criminal law as well as civil and commercial law, and to strengthen its collaboration with relevant organizations, in order to help establish good governance based on the rule of law in the respective recipient countries.