Patients and next of kin filed 199 suits against state-owned hospitals between January 1995 and last August, according to a recent government reply to a parliamentary questionnaire filed by House of Representatives member Nobuto Hosaka.
The annual tally of legal suits filed against state hospitals rose every year except in 1998.
An official at the Health Policy Bureau of the Health and Welfare Ministry said: "We cannot generalize whether 199 suits in five years, or 40 to 50 cases per year on average, are a lot.