Mitsui last year bailed out of its $150 million financing of the Waikiki Landmark condominium, which has stood vacant since coming on the market in 1993, by selling the mortgage for an undisclosed price.

Since then Mitsui has been sued by the developers of the Aloha Tower Marketplace, who claim Mitsui provided less than $100 million of the promised $204 million financing for the marketplace's first phase. The developers also accused Mitsui of reneging on a total of more than $700 million it allegedly promised to finance the first and future phases at Aloha Tower.

The bank has also been sued by the developers of the $185 million Harbor Court condominium in Honolulu, who say Mitsui interfered with operations and made it hard to sell units in the building, still mostly empty.

Mitsui is just one of several major Japanese banks that have posted losses because of write-offs for bad loans in Japan and overseas.

In the fiscal year that ended March 31, Mitsui wrote off the equivalent of $3.8 billion in bad loans, said a company spokesman. Mitsui has not commented on specific loans, including those in Hawaii. In the previous year, the bank had set aside $1.2 billion in loan-loss reserves for expected write-offs of bad loans.

Japanese lenders ran into trouble when they were stuck with bad investments after the land-inflation bubble of the late 1980s burst.