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Although, as mentioned above, the Supreme Court itself has not completely
omitted some concern shown by High Court in terms of the laundering issue, Japanese

scholars do not concern themselves with it, at least in terms of dealing with choice-of-law. 33

In addition, the concept of secure transaction as seen by these Japanese scholars
is very similar and coherent with the “materialistic” (or “réel”) concept of secure and
stable transaction in terms of the substantive laws. Once brought into the country, any

interference from abroad is expected to be excluded. The principle of lex loci rei sitae
in the real material sense, which they suppose in line with the concept of secure

transaction, can in fact have the function of working in favor of legal-title laundering,
by way of combination with the substantive law, which also excludes the causality of
transaction, possibly affecting the ownership.

IV. Antagonism over the “secure and stable” transaction

1. Interpretative issues regarding art. 192 of the Japanese Civil Code

After judging on the choice-of-law issue, the Supreme Court faced

an interpretative issue regarding Japanese Law chosen as the applicable law, not only
for transactions after registration, but also for transactions before registration.

the transaction to be maintained on the legal basis of the market of the place of physical existence of the movable
object. The critical point is whether to identify in an absolute manner the parties’ reliance on the legal basis of
the market in the international commerce to be always located at the place of physical existence. For this point, see
HARATA (supra note*) 376.
33 Very remarkably, it might be possible for us to find a nuanced difference in attitude between the Supreme
Court’s judgment and the Supreme Court legal research clerk’s report. See OJIMA (supra note 30) 312. Ojima said
in his report on the judgment that there is no problem caused by the instability of choice of law due to the traveling
of cars in the case in which cars are not in the state ‘ready for use’ and the immediate acquisition of their ownership
is a matter of dispute, and went on to say that, with the principle of lex loci rei sitae adopted, we would face such
a trivial [sic] issue of whether to regard as unjust a case in which a transferee deliberately brings a car (transaction object)
to a place where the laws are more favorable for his/her immediate acquisition of ownership and that such
a phenomenon is natural [sic] because of the divergences in domestic laws between countries.
In this discourse on the report, it is very difficult to find any concern over legal-title laundering, while
the Supreme Court itself has never explicitly refused such a consideration.

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