The nation's prolonged recession forced more small and midsize firms into bankruptcy in October, with the number of failures surging 11.7 percent from a year earlier to 1,911, the worst since the nation's asset-inflated bubble economy burst a decade ago, a credit research firm said Wednesday.
It was also the third-highest number of corporate bankruptcies in a single month in postwar Japan, according to Teikoku Databank Ltd.
Unable to cut costs further, smaller companies are collapsing at an increasingly rapid pace, while long-standing firms are scrambling for credit as their assets continue to deteriorate.