Copyright dispute forces Japan to redesign coin Japan minted 4.8 million commemorative 500-yen ($5) coins commemorating the 100-year anniversary of Japanese emigration to Brazil. The design features "bronze sculptures of parents and a child standing in Santos, Brazil, where the first batch of immigrants landed in 1908". It turns out that the artist of the sculptures holds the rights to his work and would not give Japan permission to use them on their coins. So the 4.8 million coins will be destroyed and a new design created (at a cost of $50,000 to $100,000). The new commemorative coins will be released in June (10 weeks later than planned). Do you think a few of these "illegal" coins will escape the melting pot?
Knowing Japanese customs and culture, chances are it's very unlikely other than the prototype and trial coins to be held in the Mint of Japan. Here are the original picture of the coin that was supposed to be released: http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nb20070418a5.html I honestly don't like that coin and a bad reason to commemorate.
Can I ask why you think it is a bad think to commemerate this event? I have to say I liked the look of the coin.
I probably mentioned it on coinpeople but I just find it bizarre - in Japan, Brazilians do get discriminated and that's even if they are Brazilian-Japanese with real Japanese blood in them. What is more bizarre is that this would have been the first time Japan releasing a coin in a foreign language other than Japanese and English. (other than territorial coinages)
The largest community of Japanese outside of Japan is in Brazil. It's a very interesting sight to see Japanese speaking fluent Portuguese.
I'm wondering why it didn't occur to the coin designer to check if anyone still owned the rights to the sculpture or not, especially since the sculpture is well known. If it were me that would be the first thing I did after I had the idea before I even put the design on paper. Seems to be a rather huge oversight. Seems a rather odd thing for a nation to commemorate its citizens leaving. Contrast that to many countries that commemorate people immigrating into their country and becoming citizens. Not saying it's a wrong thing to do, perhaps Japan has reason to be proud of the event from their cultural standpoint, but it does seem odd to me. Especially since Japan doesn't exactly go out of its way to honor people who immigrate into Japan (even when they're of Japanese descent). It almost borders on hypocrisy.
The article explicitly says that this was checked before the coin was designed. But what can one do if this migrants association tells the Japanese mint that copyright wise it is OK to use the monument, and then, quite a while later, it turns out that maybe somebody else is the copyright owner? Here is another article about this: http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nb20080501a9.html Not really, I think. If the economic conditions that made those Japanese leave the country (and go to Brazil or elsewhere) still prevailed, such a coin may be a little strange. But that does certainly not apply to today's Japan. So you could even interpret this as "see, we managed to get over this crisis and are doing fine now". Guess that for a country where most of the population has an immigration background, it would indeed be odd to commemorate citizens leaving. But what applies to one country does not necessarily apply to others. Now if people of Japanese descent actually tend to be discriminated against in Brazil (don't know about that), this could in my opinion be a reason not to issue such a coin. Another thing is that apparently both Brazil and Japan plan to issue coins on this occasion. In other words, collectors in two big countries may be tempted to buy both coins, hehe. Christian
Maybe one of the Japanese mint workers will sneak a few out and we'll have another 1933 Double Eagle situation in a few years =P
