Legal

Reference pages on Japanese and international law as it applies to manga and anime: Article 175, the Tokyo Youth Ordinance, copyright and doujinshi, the Berne Convention, DMCA, trademark, AI training-data law.

All legal pages

Click any title below to open the full reference page.

• Article 175 of the Japanese Penal Code — Article 175 of the Japanese Penal Code criminalises the distribution, sale, public display, or commercial possession of obscene materials. The statute, enacted
• Copyright and Doujinshi — Japanese doujinshi — fan-produced amateur publications, including substantial volumes of parody (二次創作, niji-sōsaku, 'secondary creation') of commercial
• The 2018 Japanese Copyright Amendment and AI Training Data — A 2018 revision to the Japanese Copyright Act (effective 2019) added Article 30-4, which explicitly permits the use of copyrighted works for the purposes of 'da
• The Berne Convention and Japanese Copyright Export — Japan has been a signatory to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works since 1899. The convention provides the legal framework und
• The DMCA and Scanlation — The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), passed in the United States in 1998, is the principal legal instrument by which Japanese rights holders take down u
• The Tokyo Youth Ordinance Revision — The Tokyo Metropolitan Ordinance Regarding the Healthy Development of Youths was revised in 2010 to add restrictions on the depiction of minors in sexual or vio
• Trademark vs. Copyright for Character Properties — Major manga and anime properties are protected by multiple overlapping legal regimes, not by copyright alone. Character names, character designs, logos, and ser