It does, but protection is limited to documents and communications kept by registered attorneys-at-law. Japanese lawyers (bengoshi) and foreign lawyers registered as foreign attorneys in Japan (gaikokuhojimubengoshi) are subject to a statutory obligation of confidentiality. Under the Civil and Criminal Procedure Codes, they may refuse to testify as witnesses in relation to knowledge acquired in the course of their professional duties as lawyers. There is no attorney-client communication privilege as such.

Aside from privilege in the litigation context, the Antimonopoly Act was amended on 19 June 2019 and came into force on 25 December 2020, with the key revisions introducing a new privilege-like mechanism within the antitrust investigation regime of the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC). By way of this new mechanism, digital and documentary materials containing confidential communication between a subject party of an investigation and its legal counsel, if certain conditions are satisfied, shall be treated as inaccessible by JFTC investigators and will be returned to a party, even if wrongfully confiscated in the process of a JFTC investigation.