This year is the centennial of the copyright system in Japan. One hundred years have passed since an organized copyright system was first instituted in Japan in 1899 (the year Meiji 32). In the course of a century-long history extensive amendments were made to the Copyright Law in 1970 (the year Showa 45).
This paper reviews the state of copyright protection in Japan up to the enactment of the old Copyright Law in 1899, and the path of copyright legislation during the eventful century since then.

In Japan, as in other countries, the origin of the copyright system in the history of the legal system traces back to social norms for the protection and regulation of printed publications.
The middle of the Tokugawa era, when the publication of printed matter flourished, is considered to be the period when social rules to protect the property interests of publishers began to be established.

Chapter 1: cevelopment of printing and publishing technology

Looking back on the history of publishing in Japan, the oldest printed matter still extant is considered to be the Nara-period (710-794) work Hyaku-man tou darani("Million Tower Dharani", four dharani sutras said to have been completed over the course of five or six years from 764 to 770). ^{[1], [2]}
Woodblock printing is said to have become active in the late Heian period (794-1192), mainly involving the printing of Buddhist scriptures. ^[3] Then, from the Kamakura period (1192-1333) ^[4] to the Muromachi period (1336-1573), not only Buddhist literature but also books in other fields came to be printed. ^[5]
Next, in the Azuchi-Momoyama period (1568-1600), the technology of movable printing using metal movable type, which was invented in Europe in the mid-15th century, arrived in Japan.
Using this movable printing technology, which was brought to Japan by Japanese envoys to Europe and Jesuit priests in the late 16th century, so-called Kirishitan-ban("Christian books") ^[6] were printed, mainly in the Kyushu region, from the late 16th century to the 17th century. But these Christian publications disappeared as a result of the Christian suppression ^[7] that began soon after.
When Toyotomi Hideyoshi made a military expedition to Korea, he brought back to Japan the copper movable type that was being used in Korea. This led to printing in Japan using copper movable type and wooden movable type modeled on it.
SS In the Edo period (1603-1867), "Suruga books," Swhich were printed with copper type, and "Fushimi books," which were printed with wooden type, were produced by order of Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu. But such movable-type printing was used only in the early Edo period, that is, until the mid-17th century, after which woodblock printing came into use once again. One reason cited for this change is that with wooden blocks it is easier to combine phonetic kana characters with the ideographic kanji characters, and easier to attach kana to kanji as diacritical marks to indicate their pronunciation. ^[8]

Chapter 2 : The establishment of norms to protect publishers in the Edo period

Behind this development of printing and publishing technology is the fact that even during the Edo period, and especially during the Genroku era (1688-1704), private publishing flourished, mainly in Kyoto, and it is said that by the beginning of the 18th century there were already nearly 10,000 books in print.
The only legal norms governing publishing at the beginning of the Edo period were publishing regulations for political control; there were no regulations to protect the rights of authors or publishers.
In the Edo period there were guilds of merchants and artisans that were granted special rights: in order to practice a trade, one had to belong to the appropriate guild. In the publishing business, guilds were organized among book wholesalers, calendar wholesalers, and colored woodblock print wholesalers, in a system that prevented nonmembers from engaging in the publishing business. In this way the guilds were able to limit the number of people in their trade and retain the benefits of a monopoly.

As book publishing began to flourish around the middle of the Edo period, people appeared who published duplicate or similar versions of other people's publications without their permission, improperly injuring the interests of the original publishers. Among book publishers in Kyoto, Osaka, and Edo (Tokyo), "guild rules" were enacted to prevent such duplicate editions and similar editions. At first, more book publishing was carried out in the Kyoto-Osaka region than in Edo, and because correspondingly more disputes arose in the Kyoto-Osaka region than in Edo, measures to prevent duplicate editions and similar editions were devised earlier there than in Edo. The oldest of such guild rules that have been handed down to us today is a "memorandum" of understanding among booksellers enacted in Osaka in 1698 (the year Genroku 11). Next, in Edo, we have a record of a "regulation" issued to members by booksellers' governors (guild directors) in March 1727 (the year Kyoho 12) instructing guild members not to produce any duplicate editions or similar editions. Although these rules were a private agreement among guild members, a violator was subject to sanctions that could make it impossible to stay in business, so in effect they had the force of law, and their validity was recognized by the authorities of the shogunate government.

Besides these guild rules, improper publishing was also regulated under orders from the office of the town magistrate. In December 1698 (Genroku 11), the same year in which the above guild rules were enacted in Osaka, the Kyoto town magistrate issued a "town proclamation" to bookshops prohibiting duplicate editions and similar editions. Among the provisions of this town proclamation, when publishing a book one first had to seek and obtain a license from the town consul [9]. Punishments were provided for cases in which an application was made when someone else had already produced the edition concerned, and one could not publish a manuscript created by someone else except with their permission. In Osaka that same year, publishers (bookstores) petitioned the town magistrate to ban duplicate editions and similar editions, and in response, a town proclamation was issued by the town magistrate prohibiting duplicate editions and similar editions. [10] Later, in the late Edo period, town consul Ichiemon Tate issued a government order in 1844 (Tenpo 15) that is considered to be the first private-law order regulating publishing in Japan. [11]

Chapter 3: Discontinuation and continuation of the concept of protecting literary works from the early-modern era to the modern era

Thus, prior to the Meiji restoration, Japan had no organized legislation to protect publishers; there was only partial regulation through such means as guild rules among book publishers, town magistrate proclamations and government orders, which involved nothing more than devising measures to prevent improper acts such as issuing duplicate editions and similar editions.
Publishers therefore enjoyed a certain degree of protection under guild rules and orders of the town magistrate's office, but there was no legal protection for authors.
The existence of a system whereby a publisher belonging to the guild had to obtain the author's consent as well as permission from the town magistrate's office when planning to publish individual works may suggest that even at that time, the concept of protecting the rights of authors existed. However according to these conditions of author consent, there are no records of attempts to protect the personal interests and property interests of authors, and the general view is that the ultimate effect was to protect the first publisher.

How should we understand and evaluate the changes in copyright legislation in the period of transition from the Edo period to the Meiji period?
In this transitional period, as in other areas, completely new relevant legislation modeled on Western systems was introduced to protect authors and publishers. Therefore the system of publisher protection under guild rules that had developed in the Edo period did not develop further but went out of existence. Therefore, the dominant view is that there is no continuity between the private law legislation concerning the protection of authors or publishers before and after the Meiji restoration.
In all countries, the history of the copyright system first began with the protection of publishers' rights. Then, as authors realized that they had rights of their own, they sought to protect such rights from a state in which their rights were recognized only dependent on the protection of publishers, thus creating a natural transition by which the fundamentals of copyright legislation were formed. But in Japan, the concept of copyright did not germinate and develop from publisher protection; rather, the general view is that instead of following the path of development that other countries followed, the protection of publishers was abandoned with the collapse of feudalism, and the concept of copyright was newly imported from abroad and transplanted to the cultural climate of Japan.

In the Meiji restoration, advanced Western ideas suddenly overturned Japanese society in its entirety and the abolition of the feudal clan structure meant a total reform of the judicial and administrative systems, which radically transformed the economic order in which guild members and other businessmen made their living. It must be acknowledged that formally there were discontinuities in every aspect of society.
However, social norms concerning works that were formed in Japan up until the early-modern era, that is, the very concept that respect is owed among publishers to the person who first publishes an original work, did not disappear off with the Meiji restoration but continued even into the modern era. Indeed, one may take the view that the basis that allowed Japanese society to naturally accept the Western concept of copyright after the Meiji restoration had been formed in the society of the early-modern era and was inherited in the modern era.

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Copyright Update Japan 1999 Published by COPYRIGHT RESEARCH AND INFORMATION CENTER (CRIC).