Japanese used bookstores are seeing a surge in bulk sales, with some sellers reporting hundreds of books sold per day and sales multiplying fivefold. According to NTV Japan, as reported by Tom's Hardware, many of these orders are suspected to be destined for AI scanning and destruction.
The buying pattern points to AI training operations. Orders are routed to a logistics center in Okayama Prefecture, and one 50-ton consignment was reportedly shipped to the U.S. for Anthropic's destructive scanning process. The genres being bought have shifted from novels and comics to philosophy, history, political history, medicine, law, and Edo-period culture.
Bookstore owners have mixed feelings. The boom is welcome, but removing books from circulation could hurt stock availability and pricing, and raises concerns about loss of cultural works. In Japan, scanning copyrighted works for AI learning is legal unless it unfairly harms copyright holders, but these bulk operations are unlikely to seek permission.