Corporate bankruptcies in Japan continued to grow in July with combined liabilities topping 4 trillion yen, the largest on record in postwar Japan, a private credit research agency said Monday.

The total liabilities left by companies that failed in July skyrocketed 214.7 percent from a year earlier to 4.26 trillion yen, Teikoku Databank said in a report covering failures involving liabilities of 10 million yen or more.

The number of bankruptcy cases jumped 21.4 percent from a year earlier to 1,617, marking the ninth consecutive monthly rise, it said.

The figure topped 1,600 for the first time since March.

Contributing to the rise in debts was the collapse of department store operator Sogo Co., listed on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Failures of the Sogo group came to 28 cases, leaving liabilities of 2.9 trillion yen, which accounted for 68.5 percent of all debts in the month, Teikoku said.

Another big failure was that of Nagasakiya Co., a Kyoto-based confectioner listed on the Second Section of the Osaka Securities Exchange, with total liabilities of 10.8 billion yen.

Failures of listed firms have added up to eight cases so far this year, already the third largest in the postwar period.

Department store debt

Japan's 56 department store operators are swamped with a combined 3.115 trillion yen in interest-bearing debt, Teikoku Databank said Monday.

The amount -- collated as of the March 31 end of fiscal 1999 -- represents a fall of 2.7 percent from the preceding fiscal year, the private-sector credit research agency said.

However, the fall does not translate into good news for the industry, as their combined sales shrank 3.4 percent to 7.259 trillion yen in fiscal 1999, it said.

"The department store industry has come to perceive the weight of their liabilities as being heavier, because industry members generally have not seen their balance sheets improve much," said an analyst at the agency's information department.

The survey covered all department stores whose balance sheets were made available to investors, including those whose shares are traded over the counter.

The department store with the biggest interest-bearing debts on an unconsolidated basis is Seibu Department Stores Ltd., which is saddled with debts of 446.1 billion yen, up 2.4 percent from a year before.

Sogo Co., which came under close public scrutiny following its July 12 appeal for court protection from creditors, was runnerup, with 246.8 billion yen in debts, down 12.2 percent, on a parent-only basis.

Takashimaya Co. was third with 199.9 billion yen, up 13.9 percent.

All of the 12 department stores whose debts exceed annual sales belong to the Sogo group, with Nara Sogo having the highest ratio of interest-bearing liabilities to annual sales, at 3.4, the agency said.