Copyright law

[Lang Thompson]

>Japan uses the rule of "shorter term" for foreign copyrights... ie it 
>imposes the above terms on foreign works

I don't know anything specific about Japanese copyright law but Japan is a 
signatory to the Berne Convention which means that they should grant any 
non-Japanese work that's properly copyrighted in its country of origin the 
exact same protection they would to a Japanese work.  This is how Berne is 
supposed to work but whether in the real world it's been ignored or 
modified I don't know.  China never signed Berne as far as I can find.

Lang