Factbook

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    The translation of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ triggered Japan’s first post-war obscenity trial, in 1951[UPDATED: 11-5-2021]

    After Japan signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty with Japan in 1951, full sovereignty returned to Japan bringing the Allied Occupation of Japan (1945-1952) to an end.

    Japan had a new constitution, originally drafted in English that it was putting into place in translation. Legal responsibility for its implementation and new rules and regulations transferred back to Japanese control. This included the regulation of the press, publishers and the media. 

    During the occupation various controls existed including General Headquarters (GCQ), for instance, determining which foreign books could or could not be published in Japanese translation.

    Despite this, Japan’s new constitution, drawn up by GCQ and ratified in 1947, prohibited all forms of censorship and guaranteed freedom of expression. This was a major change to the regulations that governed publishing in Japan, which had seen very limited development since major changes to these laws were implemented in a flurry of new regulations in Japan’s Meiji Era (1868-1912), when newspaper and magazine publishing started to flourish. 

    The post-war, liberal Western-influenced and controlled, atmosphere had a major impact on Japan, even on its publishing. This encouraged the setting up of thousands of new publishing houses and new waves of books arriving in Japan in Japanese translation, often for the first time. 

    In June 1950, a new self-regulation body was established. This became known as the Publishing Morals Committee, Shuppan Butsu Fuki Iinkai. And it was established shortly after the publication in spring of the same year, of Lady Chatterley’s Lover in Japanese translation for the first time.

    The book by D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930), which was first published in 1928, was translated into Japanese by Sei Ito (1905-1969) and published by Oyama Publishing. 

    The publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover tested these new laws and a trial took place on the grounds of Lady Chatterley’s Lover’s content being obscene. A trial that went all the way to Japan’s supreme court, setting a legal precedent that lasted for decades.

    The Supreme Court decision, in this first post-war obscenity trial, defined obscenity as anything “unnecessarily sexually stimulating, (which) damages the normal sexual sense of shame of ordinary people, or is against good sexual moral principles”. 

    According to Kristen Cather in The Art of Censorship in Postwar Japan,“ The Chatterley trial staged a very public struggle to define literary, cultural, and legal identity, engaging a far-reaching debate over the relationship of domestic Japanese and imported Western traditions”.  

    The Japanese Supreme Court concluded that parts of the book, consisting of about 80 pages, were obscene and banned those sections from publication and fined the translator and publisher in a landmark decision that concluded that the sex in Lady Chatterley’s Lover was not normal and was against good sexual moral principles. 

    Despite Japan’s long history of erotic publishing of woodblock prints including Shunpon and shunga in the Edo Period (1603-1688), erotic guidebooks and tales of man-eating demon women, this imported fictional prose about Lady Chatterley and the day-to-day life of her English gamekeeper, that in addition to their intimate adulterous relationship includes “peripheral” passages on pheasant raising and managing a shooting estate, was deemed obscene. 

    A subsequent trial relating to an abridged translation by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928-1987) of a version of Histoire de Juliette by the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) also led to a successful conviction.

    Interestingly Shibusawa, a relative of Eiichi Shibusawa (1840-1931) one of Japan’s most influential early industrialists who helped found many companies including the first Western-style paper mill in Japan in 1875, had written his graduation thesis on the Marquis de Sade.

    The lengthy nine year trial dragged in several famous Japanese authors as witnesses including Shusaku Endo (1923-1996), Shohei Ooka (1909-1988) and the Nobel Prize-winner Kenzaburo Oe helping increase Shibusawa’s public profile.

    For some Japanese critics, even today, pornography and the publication of materials that are on the periphery of falling within scope of Japan’s official definition of the obscene is seen as a subversive tool through which to resist the authorities and assert a type of cultural national independence.

    That said, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, howeverwas not just controversial in Japan. It was banned in the United Kingdom until Penguin books won a landmark obscenity trial in 1960 allowing its full publication in English. This decision had a profound cultural and social impact in Britain.

    It was only in 1996 that the full book was finally published in Japan in Japanese, which allowed newspapers in Britain and America to report on this publishing breakthrough with such headlines as: Japanese to see more of ‘Lady Chatterley’ and Chatterley’ to bare all in Japan.  

    As academic interest in historically ‘obscene books’, many of which seem unremarkable in today’s light, increases, libraries like the British Library are starting to digitise their online collections and are making them available to researchers worldwide through collections like the Gale’s Archives of Sexuality and Gender.

    These books are no longer concealed in special sections in libraries and are just a click away for some subscribers and library users.

    The translation of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ triggered Japan’s first post-war obscenity trial, in 1951 Posted by Richard Nathan
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    The translation of Harry Potter triggered a major tax investigation and fine in Japan[UPDATED: 4-21-2021]

    Yuko Matsuoka, the multi-millionaire Japanese translator and publisher of the Harry Potter novels in Japan, lost a case with the Japanese authorities, who sent her an extraordinary additional tax demand for 700 million yen, US$7 million, for undeclared income of more than $29 million.  

    The Japanese tax authorities alleged that Matsuoka, 62, received more than US$29 million between 2001 and 2004 in undisclosed income. She argued that, as she had been resident in Switzerland since 2001 no tax was in fact due in Japan. After consultation with the Swiss authorities she lost the case, as she had spent too much time in Japan during the period to qualify as non-resident in Japan for tax purposes.
    The translation of Harry Potter triggered a major tax investigation and fine in Japan Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Digital developments forced Japan to update its copyright legislation in 2014 and then again in 2018[UPDATED: 12-9-2018]

    Japanese copyright law was updated in 2014 under the Revised Copyright Act and then revised again in 2018.

    Publishing rights, which have traditionally been limited in Japan to print or paper medium publications, were extended to cover e-books and the Internet for the first time under the new Act in 2014.

    The new Act came into force in January 2015, 146 years after Japan’s first copyright legislation in 1869. And was then partially revised again in 2018, a set of revision that included amongst other things a revision that extended the copyright period on books and other works from 50 years to 70 years.

    The new Act covers: the right of publication; as well as the right to terminate the right of publication; the obligation to publish or transmit online within a six-month period of receipt of manuscript, and other updates required for electronic publishing.
    Digital developments forced Japan to update its copyright legislation in 2014 and then again in 2018 Posted by Richard Nathan
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    It took Japan 20 years to sign up to the world’s first international copyright convention[UPDATED: 2-21-2018]

    It took Japan 20 years, from its launch, to join the first multi-national agreement on copyright.

    Japanese officials attended the 1886 Berne Convention on Copyright in Switzerland, considered to be one of the most important milestone in intellectual property right protection, as an observer, as did the United States. However, despite sending delegations to Switzerland neither nation signed the Berne convention, which led to the modernisation and internationalisation of author intellectual property rights.  

    The French author Victor Hugo (1802-1885), according to historians, was one of the key figures behind the initiative that led to the convention, which 10 countries signed. Other authors still famous today, including Mark Twain (1835-1910) and Charles Dickens (1812-1870), are also known to have lobbied and argued for author rights and better international protection of authors’ commercial interests.  

    Victor Hugo’s novels were first published in Japanese translation around this time, in the 1880s, as was Coningsby (also known as The New Generation), a novel by Benjami Disraeli (1804-1881), the two-time British Prime Minister. Coningsby was originally published in English in 1844.  

    It took Japan almost 20 years, one year longer than the United States, to adopt and become party to the Convention, which has since been updated and amended multiple times. Japan acceded to it in 1899.  

    The Berne Convention helped establish the concept of Country of Origin, stipulated a minimum mandatory term of 50 years of copyright after an author’s death; and provided protection for works published in translation or copies produced outside the country of initial publication.
    It took Japan 20 years to sign up to the world’s first international copyright convention Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Japan introduced its first copyright legislation in 1869[UPDATED: 2-14-2018]

    The Publishing Ordinance of 1869 was Japan’s first legislation on copyright. The regulations in the ordinance covered both the protection of copyright and the regulation of publishers. Prior to this, despite property rights generally being linked to the ownership (legal title) to the print blocks used to print books, the concept of and protection of author rights in Japan was very limited. 

    The ordinance of 1869 was updated becoming the Copyright Law (now known as the old Copyright Law) to comply with the Berne Convention in 1899, and is considered to be Japan’s first modern copyright law, as it complied with the international standard and norms on copyright protection. 

    The United States Copyright Office, in comparison, was created by Congress in 1897. Both nations were relatively slow to develop and adopt the legal frameworks to protect author rights. 

    In contrast, the United Kingdom, which publishes more books per capita than any other nation worldwide and is a major exporter of books and publications, can trace its copyright legislation back to the Statute of Anne 1709. Under that Statute, probably the world’s oldest, copyright lasted for 14 years with a second optional 14 period of renewal, a much shorter term than the current author’s life plus 70 years in the United Kingdom, and 50 years in Japan.
    Japan introduced its first copyright legislation in 1869 Posted by Richard Nathan