Abstract
The Money Lending Business Law (MLBL) was laid in the Diet in December 2006, and enforced at the end of June in 2010. Based on MLBL, a debtor was obliged submission of a withholding tax record or other documents upon screening and banned from lending exceeding one third of an individual annual income (cap-amount-regulation). This regulation has had a big influence on both borrowers and lenders in Japan's lending market since 2006. In this paper, (1) we reviewed MLBL's legislative process mainly from public information of the Government, (2) we tried to show the reason that the cap-amount-regulation was introduced only into the nonbank lending market. (3) we paid an attention to discussions on the law making process by both Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Japan's Financial Services Agency (FSA) between March 2005 and December 2006. In particular we analyzed a series of comment on public articles by Mr. Yoshitake Mashuhara who was deeply involved in this process as the Diet members responsible for policy-making of the MLBL in the LDP, and Mr. Yuji Yamamoto , who introduced MLBL in the Diet as the Minister of FSA in responsible December, 2006. Furthermore, we conduced hearings from some persons who had concerned the law decision process in those days, such as the representable (as of 2006) of the industry, journalist, lobbyist and so on. Through the above research, a conclusion that FSA not only hurried up to lay MLBL in diet in fear of the emotional public opinion to lenders, and lacked of estimating the influence of the cap-amount-regulation contained in MLBL can be introduced. Therefore, in near future the government should undertake an objective reassessment of MLBL, particularly the cap-amount-regulation as soon as possible.
