The number of corporate bankruptcies rose 12.8 percent in May from a year earlier to 1,724, increasing for the second consecutive month, a private research institute said Thursday.

The amount of liabilities left behind fell 39.1 percent to 1.02 trillion yen but remained above the 1 trillion yen mark for the fourth month in a row, Teikoku Databank said.

The number of failures was the largest since the beginning of the year and the fourth biggest for the month of May since the end of World War II. The total debt was the third-largest for the month of May in the postwar period.