Japanese used bookshops report 5x sales as bulk buyers strip shelves
Tom's Hardware, citing the broadcaster NTV, said records show a 50-ton consignment of Japanese books shipped to the United States for scanning and pulping.
Used bookshops in Japan are seeing a surge in bulk orders. Tom's Hardware reported on Thursday that records point to a 50-ton consignment of Japanese books shipped to the United States for scanning and destruction.
The report rests on NTV, the Japanese broadcaster, which Tom's Hardware read in machine translation. NTV said some shops selling through online marketplaces are moving hundreds of books a day, and that sales have run five times normal on some days.
NTV said the 50-ton shipment went into Anthropic's scanning process, which destroys the books. Anthropic is not quoted in the report, and this paper has not confirmed the claim. Tom's Hardware has previously reported similar scanning operations in the United States and Europe.
The buying pattern is what drew attention. Multiple accounts ask for shipment to one logistics centre in Okayama Prefecture, according to NTV, and the operator of that centre declined to answer its questions. A shop in western Japan received an email from a foreign company asking about tens of thousands of books.
A Tokyo bookseller told NTV that novels and comics used to sell best, and that recent bulk orders have been in philosophy, political history and medicine. Using copyrighted works to train models is legal in Japan unless it can be shown to harm the rights holder's interests unfairly.