I suspect that the call for more lawyers in Japan was based on an unthinking and simple minded comparison of bengoshi numbers with those for US lawyers (and perhaps UK solicitors) while failing to recognize that lawyers in the US and solictors in the UK perform many functions that are handled by other legal and tax professionals in Japan, things such as drawing up wills, checking property deeds, and the like. Even if the propensity to litigate was exactly the same, Japan would not need as many bengoshi because other legal and tax professionals already handle legal and tax matters not involving litigation that might well be the work of lawyers in the US or solicitors in the UK.

As for civil litigation, I have not checked numbers, but there does seem to be an increase in IP (intellectual property) litigation. Judging by Nihon Keizai Shinbun articles, IP suits between Japanese companies and to an even greater extent vis a vis Korean, PRC, and ROC companies seem to be quite common.
I find this "amusing" in that when Japanese companies were charged with IP infringement by US and European firms in the 1970s and 1980s, the usual Japanese response was a cultural argument
- the Japanese had a different notion of IP or if there was a dispute it should be settled by "negotiation"
(favorable to the Japanese side) rather than litigation because Japanese had a cultural aversion to litigation (despite the historical record showing otherwise).

Could it be that what goes around comes around - that IP culture is a function of whether or not you have any worth protecting with expensive litigation?

EHK