Report Presented at the NCC Open Meeting AAS Annual Conference in Atlanta
Image Use Protocol Task Force Status Report-March 2008
By Reiko Yoshimura [and Robin LeBlanc]
April 3, 2008
The Image Use Protocol Task Force, or IUP Task Force was formed following the January 2007 NCC meeting. The mission is to contribute to smoothing the process for North American scholars seeking permissions for the use of Japanese images in exhibitions, classrooms, and scholarly publications.
The task force is co-chaired by Robin LeBlanc, Associate Professor of Politics at Washington and Lee University and myself, Head Librarian, Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution. Robin extends her apologies for being unable to attend the meeting due to her family commitments.
The task force has 14 members representing publishers, museums, libraries and various academic disciplines; members come from both Japan and North America.
The first meeting was held at Harvard University last August and came up with the following four goals and objectives.
- To conduct an online survey to document the problems encountered by individuals to identify common problems.
- To develop a set of guidelines on how to obtain permission to use images from Japan. This also includes a sample letter of requesting permission both in English and Japanese; and a list of useful contacts related to use of Japanese images.
- To clarify the differences in publishing environments of United States and Japan.
- To organize a joint meeting with Japanese image right holders to promote mutual understanding and to solicit their advice on how to improve the process of securing permission to use Japanese images.
The more detailed IUP Goals and Objectives in both Japanese and English are posted on the NCC website (
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~ncc/imageuse.html).
II. Survey result.
An e-mail survey was sent out this past winter to various Japan-related list-servers in North America, Europe and Australia and we received 120 responses by the end of January 2008. After collecting the survey responses, Eiko Sakaguchi of University of Maryland and I conducted a preliminary analysis. Today, I would like to give a brief presentation on the highlights of our findings.
The survey consisted of 12 questions of either multiple choice or narratives on how people are obtaining image use permission from Japan, the problems they encountered, and how they use the obtained images.
Over 85% of the respondents were Japan- or Asia-related scholars, teachers or graduate students from academic institutions, followed by a small number of librarians, independent scholars and museum professionals.
Also, 90 respondents said their professional activities mainly take place in North America.
101 people answered their native language is NOT Japanese, and out of the 101, 90 answered their native language is English.
What is your academic discipline?
This graph shows the distribution of academic disciplines among the respondents. Originally, we received over 40 different answers, so we consolidated them to 10 areas. For instance, law and political science were consolidated to social science. As you can see in this chart, 72% of the total respondents' subject areas belong to the first three categories. They are (1st) linguistics & literature, (2nd) history, and (3rd) visual art and architecture. Also, the finding here is that Japanese images are heavily used in the fields of humanities and social science but not much in pure science.
Describe your image use
The next graph indicates how often the respondents use images from Japan. The majority, 97 respondents answered they are either regular or occasional users. 9 people said, "they need to use them", and 4 indicated, "they would like to, or are planning to use in the future." 5 answered, "they may use images if access issues and permissions were clearer."
How do you use images?
As you see, the images are heavily used in major scholarly and research activities, as primary and secondary sources, and also in classroom teaching or online courses. Other usages mentioned were exhibitions, posters, and personal web pages.
What kind of images do you use?
Out of 903 responses received, the graph on the left is sorted by format of the image content. According to this, art objects scored the highest number of 152 followed by news events with 138. The right graph represents the use of online digital images and moving images. Here, out of 903 answers, 216 or roughly 24% said they use online visual or moving images. These numbers may be growing because online teaching is becoming increasingly common. This also alerts the task force that we need to look into the unique issues involving use of images in these formats.
What was your procedure to contact image lenders?
The highlights of their successful procedure are:
- Made Contact through friends, personal connections, and third parties -including payments handled by them - Many people mentioned in the narratives, although, case by case, if you can find a right contact, things are much easier.
- (Some people reported that they) Prepared a request letter both in Japanese and English, a scanned image that they are requesting to use, and a detailed description and purpose of the planned publication. The description should include information such as the intended audience
(One reported) "I prepared in advance a consent form in Japanese."
- (One respondent) Hired a native speaker to call publishers to obtain an oral permission.
- (Some people) Contacted an intermediate organization such as ArSTOR and DNP Archives.
- (and some) Used commercial databases - Mainichi Photobank, Yomiuri Image Bank.
- (For some lucky people) US Publisher's editor took care of clearing copyright or wrote an official letter for them.
What kind of problems did you encounter?
The respondents reported about many problems. Among them, the following problems were the common concerns:
- Cannot locate appropriate contact or image rights holders.
This issue was the number-one concern in the narrative part of the survey.
(Quote) "Obtaining the rights for a video/film of performance may involve not only the publisher but also the performers whose images are on the video."
(Quote) "The hardest is finding the owner of images used in magazines. It is impossible to find the photographer who took a picture."
- Do not know whom to contact for permission.
One respondent reported that two parties he identified had a disagreement about who should sign off the permission.
- Lack of understanding on Japanese legal issues and their differences from the US, including the interpretation of "fair use."
- Lack of knowledge on the Japanese social protocol.
(Quote) "There seems to be what is deemed a properly polite and respectful way to proceed in procuring images within Japanese temple and museum culture. American publishers do not always understand."
(Quote) "Usually it takes a Japanese intermediary to help mediate the request."
- Language problems - cannot write letters in Japanese or Japanese lenders do not read English.
- Problems in explaining procedural differences to Japanese lenders and US publishers.
A number of respondents reported that even after Japanese lenders waived the permission requirement, their American publishers still demanded for the properly signed documents.
- Payment method- many Japanese lenders require bank transfer in Japanese Yen and do not accept credit card payment.
- Takes too much time to complete the process.
- High price for image use/copyright fee.
- Some lenders are not interested in signing off for permission or rather would like to give an oral permission.
- Some lenders grant permission only to institutional representatives.
- Some lenders require a proxy in Japan.
- Received no response to initial request letter.
- Difficulty in explaining the nature of American "scholarly or academic publication" in which authors do not make profit on their publications. Therefore, in North America image use fee is often reduced or in some cases, waived.
Although these results were from the preliminary analysis they turned out to be very helpful for the task force to proceed our goals. It is obvious that the issue on the copyright or image use permission is very complicated. Every case depends on what kind of images you would like to use and how, and who you are dealing with, etc. However, we also observe some common aspects in the problems which the respondents reported in the survey - they are: lack of understanding legal issues, lack of understanding cultural or social differences between North America and Japan, and communicating problems. The IUP task force hopes to address these issues so that North American image users can expect a more streamlined procedure. The task force plans to conduct more-in-depth analysis of this survey and make the full information available in near future.
III. Our Next Step
Our next project is to organize a meeting with stakeholders in Japan. The NCC has secured funding from the Toshiba International Foundation, Japan Foundation and Harvard University's Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies to have a day-long meeting on June 23 in Tokyo. This meeting will bring a number of our task force members, North American researchers, and a representative from an American academic publisher together with representatives of Japanese publishers, museums, temples, and other organizations in order to increase our mutual understanding of copyright guidelines and permissions granting processes. We will also solicit advice from Japan-side organizations and individuals in developing guidelines for improving the permissions process.
Then, on the basis of this advice from the meeting and information we have been collecting over the past year, we will develop a set of guidelines as I mentioned earlier. This will include preparing guidelines for locating and requesting images; to produce a list of contacts and links to related sites and organizations related to image use. Our hope is that individuals, who use the guidelines, will find it easier to approach Japanese rights holders; and also that Japanese rights holders will find permissions requests easier and less time consuming to process.
