A recent feature in the Tokyo Shimbun looked into a conundrum that few people know about. Fifty-two years after his death, Ernest Hemingway remains one of the most popular novelists on the planet. Translated into dozens of languages, his books continue to sell well. Whether those works are now in the public domain depends on each individual country's copyright laws. In Japan, the copyright for written works is protected for 50 years after an author's death, but if you look at Hemingway's individual novels there's something strange. "The Old Man and the Sea," which was published in 1952, is now a public domain work in Japan, but "For Whom the Bell Tolls," published in 1940, is not, and it won't be until 2022.
[caption id="attachment_4424" align="alignright" width="300"]
Get thee to a library: Cover of Japanese translation of "For Whom the Bell Tolls"[/caption]