Corporate bankruptcies rose 4.6 percent year on year to 1,114 in November, with debts soaring 86.1 percent to 808.27 billion yen, the highest amount this year, a credit research agency said Wednesday.

The surge was mostly attributed to the huge bankruptcy of a single real estate firm.

While the number of failures eclipsed the previous year's level for a second month in a row, the total debt left by the failed firms stayed below 1 trillion yen, according to Tokyo Shoko Research, which covers failures with debts of 10 million yen or more.