How many originals should be executed and delivered? This
question is frequently asked by Japanese companies when concluding
a commercial agreement, and is often met with bewilderment by
overseas counter parties who have foregone reliance on manually
executed original agreements in paper form. Despite operating in
one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world,
Japanese companies still often manually execute contracts by
affixing a corporate seal (or less frequently, by placing a
handwritten signature) to conclude an agreement, and keep a
“wet” original. For companies that enter into numerous
contracts, archiving and storing volumes of paper original
agreements can quickly become an expensive proposition and can lead
to innumerable tracking difficulties. The reliance on exchanging
paper original agreements stems in part from the misconception that
an original is always and inevitably required in Japanese dispute
resolution proceedings to provide proof
