Lawyer Masaki Kunihiro had never dreamed his life would be so busy in the small city of Hamada, Shimane Prefecture.

Lawmakers stand in opposition to a proposed increase in their number at a general meeting of the Japan Federation of Bar Association held in November at the Bar Association Building in Tokyo.

Kunihiro, 54, applied for a post at a Hamada law office that was established in June by the Japan Federation of Bar Associations (Nichibenren).

At the time, he was looking forward to a more leisurely pace of life after escaping the hustle and bustle of Kyoto.

"But since I came here, I've been in demand beyond my expectations," said Kunihiro, who is the only lawyer based in Hamada.

With the help of three clerical workers, Kunihiro has so far taken on 78 civil cases. He has also handled 15 criminal cases as a court-appointed lawyer and provided legal advice on more than 300 occasions.

Before Kunihiro came to Hamada, there was no lawyer in the city of around 47,000 people.

The Hamada office is the first of its kind in Japan, and was set up through a Nichibenren fund used exclusively for establishing such offices across the country.

Nationwide, about 70 of 253 district court jurisdictions and their branches are faced with a scarcity of lawyers, having one lawyer at most operating in the vicinity.

The majority of Japan's 18,000 lawyers are concentrated in the big cities, with Tokyo alone boasting some 8,000 and Osaka around 2,400. To try to rectify the situation, Nichibenren is setting up law offices in areas such as Hamada and is funding the initiative out of its own coffers.

The government, meanwhile, is also aiming to boost the judicial population.

For decades, the issue of the number of lawyers in Japan has fallen by the wayside since it was first addressed in 1964 by the then Cabinet Provisional Commission for Judicial Reform.

Behind the present demand for more professionals in the legal arena lies "the current of globalization," said Tsuyoshi Mori, vice chairman of the Judicial Reform Forum -- a group of scholars and business leaders that is proposing judicial reform with the public need in mind.

"The judicial mechanism must function properly in implementing rules and acting as the umpire in cases of conflict," said Mori, who is also president of Mori Building Co. He said conflict is more likely as the economy opens up in the face of deregulation.

The number of judges serving Japan is also in need of a substantial boost so as to shorten the notorious length of time it takes for courts to process cases, he added.

In this regard, Mori cites cases involving leaseholders of land plots that Mori Building has targeted for development -- one of which took 20 years to resolve.

There are about 21,000 legal professionals in Japan -- 18,000 lawyers, 2,000 judges and 1,000 prosecutors. This amounts to about one legal professional per 6,300 people.

In the United States, there are 941,000 legal professionals -- one for every 290 people. In Britain, the corresponding figure is 83,000, or one in every 710, while in France, it is 36,000, or one in every 1,640.

The Judicial Reform Council, a government advisory body, recently proposed increasing the number of people entering the legal profession annually from the current 1,000 to 3,000.

To this end, the council is also calling for the establishment of law schools to replace the current national bar examination system.

The exam is famous for the fierce competitiveness that it engenders among those taking it, with only 3 percent of applicants destined to pass.

Mori's forum is proposing an increase by 1,000 every year in the number of those passing the bar exam.

This would raise the number of legal professionals in Japan to around 90,000 in 2011 -- roughly the same per capita level as that in France.

Many lawyers, however, are unhappy with this scenario.

When Nichibenren adopted in November its executives' proposal to go along with the council's plan to expand the number of legal professionals, more than 3,400 votes were cast against it while some 7,300 supported it.

Opponents of the proposal say that a drastic increase would lead to deterioration in the quality of lawyers.

Also, the inevitable competition that would ensue among lawyers would mean that they would be unable to engage in voluntary activities in areas such as human rights, due to fears of going under unless they concentrate on profitable areas.

To those who are desperate for easier access to legal services, however, this reasoning sounds like a selfish excuse aimed at preserving lawyers' vested interests.

Mori Building's outspoken president said that the rigors of the current bar exam have not led to the elevation of high-quality judicial professionals. Rather, it provides those who come through it with a narrow-minded sense of being society's elite.

For example, after passing the bar exam, those who choose to become judges are assigned to courts after studying for 18 months at the Judicial Research and Training Institute under the Supreme Court.

They then work as assistant judges for 10 years, eventually becoming fully qualified judges having had practically no working experience outside of court.

Mori is urging the judicial establishment to open its doors to a diverse range of talented people.

He is also calling on lawyers to abandon regulations that maintain the closed-shop status of many legal businesses.

He wants lawyers to work with other legal professions, such as judicial scriveners and patent attorneys as well as foreign lawyers, in order to provide the Japanese public with greater access to legal services.

Kunihiro acknowledges that Nichibenren's ongoing effort to set up law offices in relatively remote places may be a veiled gesture actually aimed at preventing people from criticizing them for monopolizing the law trade.

According to Michiatsu Kaino, a law professor at Waseda University who specializes in Anglo-American law, increasing the number of judges should be a priority.

Kaino acknowledges recent proposals by the Japan Judges' Network -- a group of like-minded judges seeking an open judiciary.

The group's proposals include increasing the number of judges by 500 within five years and eventually raising the total to 7,000 -- more than triple the current number.

The proposals also call for a review of the current career structure and management of judges under the Supreme Court secretariat.

On the other hand, Kaino questioned the state judicial council's proposal to increase the overall number of newcomers entering the legal profession to 3,000 annually, describing it as a sloppy and ill-founded estimate.

"The council hopes to catch up with France, while neglecting to conduct a scientific estimation by taking into account the number and trend of lawsuits here in Japan," Kaino said.

The number of newly filed lawsuits in first civil trials reached some 420,000 in Japan in 1997, or one for every 300 people. The corresponding figure in the U.S. is 15.67 million, or one trial for every 16 people. In France, there were 1.11 million trials, or one for every 53 people.

Kaino also questioned the council's proposal to establish law schools.

He claims that institutes of this kind could become just another elite training ground and undermine the role that existing law departments in universities play in nurturing the legal minds of a wider range of students.

On Friday, the Judicial Reform Council will deliberate on the views it solicited on expanding the number of legal professionals in Japan and the training mechanisms.

The council is scheduled to present its final draft on judicial reform in mid-June.

In Hamada, lawyer Kunihiro is busy trying to build a network with lawyers and other professionals such as judicial scriveners in an effort to enhance legal access for local people and to prepare for the future launch of a law school in Shimane.

"I came here without much thought," he said. "But now I feel the nationwide attention, being the first one to work for a law office of this kind.

"I'm working hard to live up to expectations, and will try to keep up with changing times and information from the big cities."