Japan 2023
Supported by the Association of Corporate Counsel
Assistant division director, legal and general affairs division | Chiyoda Corporation
Senior operating officer, general counsel and head of law, patents and compliance in Japan | Bayer Holding
Deputy general counsel, general manager, legal operations unit, legal group | JERA
Director, member of the board, executive officer, group general counsel | Panasonic Holdings Corporation
Executive officer, head of legal and human resources compliance | MiSUMi
Chief legal officer, executive officer | Gibraltar Life Insurance Company
Chief legal officer, Northeast Asia (Japan and Korea) | Air Liquide Japan
Group legal and compliance director | LVMH Moët Hennessy-Louis Vuitton Japan
Senior executive officer, general counsel, and chief data protection officer | JMDC
General manager, legal and intellectual property | Bandai Namco Entertainment
Vice president, executive officer; managing director of legal and intellectual property division; group privacy officer | Sega Sammy Holdings
General counsel and executive officer | JGC Holdings Corporation
General manager, legal department, legal and corporate affairs division | Chiyoda Corporation
Head of compliance and corporate legal department, legal division | Accenture Japan
Chief legal officer, group compliance officer and corporate officer | SoftBank Group Corp.
General manager of the legal department | Sojitz Corporation
Head of legal, Japan | Olympus Corporation
Dual-qualified in both Japan (2000) and New York (2006), Yoshiaki Sakurai’s legal career began with Nishimura & Asahi, where he practiced wide variety of areas including Corporate, M&A, Litigation...
Managing executive officer, general manager of legal division | Mitsui & Co.
Associate general counsel and Japan legal director | Amazon
Angela is a senior international lawyer with more than 28 years’ experience at top global law firms and as general counsel for leading global corporations headquartered in the United States....
General counsel and chief compliance officer, Japan, Australia and New Zealand | Alcon
Anthony joined Alcon Japan in July 2020 as General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer, Japan and in January 2023, was promoted to also cover Australia and New Zealand. Anthony has...
Director and head of legal, Japan | Abbott
Arshad Karim is Director/Head of Legal, Japan at Abbott Japan LLC since June 2023. Prior to Abbott, he was Director & Associate General Counsel at Twitter for over four years, responsible...
Head of Japan/JPBU ethics and compliance, global ethics and compliance | Takeda
Chika Hirata joined Takeda in June 2018 and is currently the Head of Japan/JPBU Ethics & Compliance. She is in charge of strategic planning and leading global initiatives for global...
Chief legal officer | Square Enix Holdings
Hajime Seki is currently chief legal officer at Square Enix Holdings and leads the global legal and IP team for the Square Enix Holdings Group. He has 30 years of...
Country counsel for Japan | HP Japan
A graduate of the Gould School of Law at the University of Southern California, Hiromi Shiraishi has held positions with established law firms in both the United States and Japan,...
Senior vice president, general counsel and general manager, legal and compliance division | ITOCHU
General manager, HR and legal training department, legal division | Mitsui & Co.
General manager, legal department, administration and CSR division | FURUKAWA Electric
Vice president and executive officer, chief legal officer, general counsel, deputy CRMO, and officer in charge of audit | Hitachi
Senior director, head of legal | Tapestry Japan
Mizuho Uchida is a highly accomplished in-house legal counsel over 18 years of extensive experience in corporate law with the focus on Fashion Laws in Luxury/Retail Business. Mizuho’s proficiency in...
General counsel Japan | HSBC
As general counsel for Japan at HSBC, Naoki Hamada takes on a wide variety of roles for the global banking giant, having ultimate responsibility for legal matters in Japan. In...
Group legal counsel | Johnson Controls - Hitachi Air Conditioning
Vice president, legal and compliance and general counsel | Novo Nordisk
Representative corporate executive officer and general counsel | Oracle Japan
Co-head of Japan legal, executive director and assistant general counsel | JPMorgan Chase & Co
Senior counsel, legal and compliance, Korea and Japan | GE Healthcare Pharma
General counsel, executive vice president, chief operating officer | Dentsu Group
Manager, legal department | Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
Senior counsel, legal | FedEx
Takahisa Shimizu is the senior legal counsel, legal of FedEx Express. Takahisa supported the integration of FedEx Express and TNT Express, particularly on local legal matters, and played a key...
General counsel, representative executive officer | Unilever Japan
Assistant general counsel, head of legal and compliance | Cardinal Health
Senior vice president, group general counsel and chief compliance officer | Marelli
Managing counsel | McKinsey & Company
Yoshimi Tomizawa is managing counsel, Asia East of McKinsey & Company. Based in Tokyo, she manages a group of nine legal professionals based in Japan, Korea, Australia, Indonesia and Singapore,...
Head of legal - Japan | Google Japan
At the head of a sizeable in-house legal team for one of the most prominent and innovative companies in the world, Yuko Noguchi combines her legal expertise with acute business...
Corporate senior cice president and CLCO (executive officer) | NEC Corporation
The GC Powerlist: Japan is a milestone event for in-house lawyers in the Land of the Rising Sun. For the first time ever, The Legal 500 is able to highlight, award and bring together the greatest corporate counsel in the world’s third-largest economy in the way that only a GC Powerlist can. Many congratulations to all of the successful GCs who made it in to the final list, which has been one of the most competitive and thoroughly researched ever. That this list is long overdue goes without saying, given the size, development and international reputation of the Japanese in-house legal community, and it is a career highlight of mine to be able to present this meticulously crafted publication to you.
In The Legal 500’s GC Powerlist research team, we are often asked what makes the GC Powerlist series unique. There are many things that set it apart, but in my view the most important is that we recognise the full breadth of the legal community in a country or region that we research. While the big hitters at the large domestic and international companies make an appearance, we are also keen to speak to those from smaller companies and even sole GCs at startups. We know from experience that operating at a less well-established company or one with a smaller legal spend can often make for fertile innovation ground. For instance, take a look at Kahoru Sakurai’s quick start upon taking over at his relatively young company:
‘Kyash is a Fintech company that has been challenging the Japanese market for six years. I joined the company in 2021, and within the initial three months I successfully implemented a governance system by adopting software and internal rules. This system streamlined the approval flow and centralized all necessary corporate items through the creation of a corporate portal site. Over the following three months, I implemented 80 internal rules while managing my daily legal tasks. After completing the first stage of governance implementation, I focused on enhancing specific areas such as individual information protection and counterparty management. These efforts aimed to establish a strong foundation for our eventual IPO. In March 2022, our legal team played a pivotal role in the Series D financing. While working closely with outside counsel on negotiations and drafting, my team executed the deal, including shareholder meetings, the signing process, press releases, and filing with the BOJ.’
The more established companies in Japan have been making some impressive – and unique – innovations as well, as Akiko Kikuchi of Bayer details in her interview:
‘One innovative tool we have implemented is “Compla-san”, an award-winning game application for compliance training which we developed from scratch. Most recently, during our Global Compliance Week, we hosted a Compla-san competition in which employees took part to compete for prizes. The event culminated in an award ceremony for the winners which we held in Metaverse space.’
Innovation is of course key, but the core skill of a top GC (alongside legal expertise) is communicating good advice to the businesspeople in their organisations collaboratively. Hiroshi Mori of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group talked about this aspect of the role eloquently:
‘In-house lawyers should build strong relationships with their business partners by building a sense of trust between one another, always deepening mutual understanding of the business so that they remain on the same page. An important factor in this is to keep open equal communication between the counsel and the business partners.’
This is just a snapshot of the highly illuminating interviews that we have done over the course of our research for this publication with the leading lights of the Japanese in-house legal community. I would encourage you to read on to learn more about what makes the modern Japanese GC tick.
Many thanks to our partners EY for making this key legal event possible, and thank you to all the in-house lawyers who spoke to us as part of our painstaking research process for this first-ever Japan edition of the GC Powerlist. Congratulations again to all of those who made the final cut, and we look forward to next year!
Joe Boswell
Global Editor: The Legal 500’s Powerlist Series
The Legal 500
Legal 500 was proud to host the second edition of the GC Powerlist: East Africa 2025 in Nairobi, honouring the top General Counsel, Chief Legal Officers, Legal Directors, and senior in-house legal professionals across Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Rwanda. This year’s reception brought together over 100 of the most influential and innovative corporate counsel from the region, and was an unrivalled success, cementing Legal 500’s role as the leading voice in recognising in-house legal excellence across Africa.
The evening was opened by Joe Boswell, lead editor of the GC Powerlist publication at Legal 500, who highlighted the growing prestige of the East Africa edition and the increasing challenge of selecting honourees from such a deep (and rapidly growing) pool of talent.
Guests were then treated to some particularly relevant insights from distinguished speakers. Rachel Musoke, Head of ENS Uganda, delivered a thoughtful welcome that reflected on the importance of collaboration between private practice and in-house teams. This was followed by a powerful keynote from Habil Waswani, Company Secretary & Director Legal Services and Regulatory Compliance at Kenya Airways, who shared reflections on leadership, regulatory stewardship, and the evolving role of corporate counsel in East Africa.
The highlight of the evening was the certificate ceremony, where this year’s honourees were formally recognised. Certificates were presented by senior representatives of ENS, including Désiré Kamanzi (Head of Rwanda), Rachel Musoke, Nigel Shaw (Head of Kenya), Donald Nyakairu (Executive, Uganda), Dieudonne Nzafashwanayo (Executive, Rwanda), Rahema Nakirya Ssemyalo (Executive, Uganda) and Binti Shah (Executive, Kenya) whose participation underlined the depth of the firm’s support for the GC Powerlist initiative.
The GC Powerlist: East Africa 2025 reaffirmed The Legal 500’s commitment to shining a spotlight on the region’s most talented in-house lawyers. With an even stronger field of candidates, this year’s edition stands as a powerful testament to the influence and expertise of East Africa’s legal leaders. Habil Waswani’s excellent speech, which got a raucous reception from those in the room, is reproduced below with his permission:
‘My name is Habil Waswani, and I have been an inhouse legal practitioner for the past 21 years in different sectors (having done law-firm practice for 2 years before that). Tt is indeed a true privilege and honour for me to be here tonight, surrounded by the sharpest legal minds and calmest crisis-handlers the East African corporate world has to offer.
First, let me thank the Legal 500 and ENSAfrica teams, for organising such a fantastic event and for bringing us together in such style. Congratulations to each of tonight’s honourees. You represent the very best of general counsel in this very dynamic corporate space the businesses we support operate in. Strategic, ethical, resilient, and, let’s be honest, often underappreciated leaders of industry.
I am so happy that this evening is not about contracts, or compliance checklists, or board packs. Tonight is about celebrating you, the people behind all of that. The steady hands guiding companies through complexities, uncertainties, and ensuring that the opportunities that lie within those difficult circumstances are lawfully realized.
We all know the role of GCs has evolved. We are no longer tucked away at the end of a corridor marked “Legal” or labelled the proverbial “cost centres”. These days, the GCs sit at the big table – helping drive corporate strategy, shaping desired culture, providing leadership and safeguarding business reputations. We have become indispensable partners to businesses, interpreters, navigators, protectors… and on some (many) days, therapists with law degrees. And yet, we mostly do it all so quietly. No victory laps, no press releases. Often, success for us means the expected disaster didn’t happen.
But tonight, we break that rule. Tonight, we raise a glass to the GCs who’ve blazed the trail courageously, with clarity, conviction, and tremendous resilience that only matches the expectations of the Leadership Guru John Maxwell when he said, “resilient leaders don’t wait for the storm to past — they learn to dance in the rain”. You have managed to balance growth and governance, risk and reward regularly. And, of course, always managed to deal with those 10pm messages: “Hey, just a quick question…Are you able to talk right now…?”
Let this evening serve as a reminder that you are not just experienced legal advisors. You are leaders — spear heads and enablers of execution — and without a doubt critical pillars of business strategy.
To all the honourees, congratulations once again for the well-deserved recognition. This is for the heavy lifting that you do, the standards you uphold, and the impact you make – quietly, consistently, and brilliantly so. You’ve earned this spotlight.
