Japanese wholesaler Nippan confirms it sold books to Anthropic; U.S. court records list the deal under 'Project Panama'

What happened

On Oct 6–7, 2026, Kyodo, Yomiuri, Nikkei and Jiji reported that Nippan Group Holdings (日販グループホールディングス), a major Japanese book wholesaler, had admitted selling books to Anthropic. It did so in a letter dated Oct 5 answering the Japan Book Publishers Association (日本書籍出版協会, JBPA), which had written to Nippan on Sept 17. The JBPA asked whether the books included its members' titles and how Nippan viewed bulk sales to an overseas company without publishers' permission (Kyodo). It also asked what kind of contract covered large sales to a foreign buyer that has no resale-price-maintenance agreement (AdverTimes). Yomiuri reported that the JBPA asked Nippan to stop supplying or selling books for AI training.

According to people who saw the letter (Jiji), the seller was Nippan IPS (日販アイ・ピー・エス), the group company for overseas publishing and distribution. It signed a deal with Anthropic in November 2024 and sold it books from December 2024 to December 2025. Nippan IPS says it asked about the purpose before signing, but did not understand that the books were for AI training. The letter gave no counts or prices; Nippan said it would answer each publisher's questions. Nikkei reported that the books included titles from JBPA-member publishers. The JBPA shared the letter with about 380 member publishers. Yomiuri quoted a publishing executive: "Nippan is supposed to be in a position to protect Japan's publishing culture. I cannot forgive it for doing something that could undermine that very culture." (English translation by AUTOMATON WEST.)

The U.S. court record

The deal appears in Bartz v. Anthropic (N.D. Cal., No. 3:24-cv-05417), the authors' class action over the books used to train Claude. Exhibit 12 to the plaintiffs' class-certification motion (Dkt. 560-23) was originally lodged under seal and filed publicly on Jan 21, 2026. It holds notes from monthly "Data Partnerships <> Finance" meetings in 2024. Under "Deal Updates Panama" they track "Nippan Japan": a negotiated discount and a draft contract (Sept 18), internal approval (Oct 16), and "Contract fully executed on 11/21" (Nov 27), with a Nippan invoice due on Dec 17. The Sept 18 notes also list "Payment terms for Japan partner (asking to see financial information) before agreeing to 50% upfront / 50% upon arrival". The Nov 27 notes add the Nippan, UDC and World of Books orders to committed spend and plan to "increase scanning budget to capture all closed books". All book counts and prices are redacted. The dates match Nippan's account (deal in November 2024, first sales in December 2024).

Exhibit 15 (Dkt. 560-26), an internal page last updated Apr 13, 2024, defines the program: "Project Panama is our effort to destructively scan all the books in the world." A draft memo of Oct 15, 2024 (Dkt. 554-4) put the books available to buy worldwide at about 40M and warned that "every new vendor or order comes with increasingly less unique books". The meeting notes also track other vendors outside the U.S.: World of Books (UK), UDC (Taiwan), Booxen (Korea) and SBS (Argentina), at different stages.

In June 2025 Judge William Alsup ruled that training Claude on the books was fair use, and that scanning print books Anthropic had bought was also fair use because it only replaced purchased print copies with digital ones; pirated library copies were not covered (Dkt. 231). The ruling says Anthropic's team emailed "major book distributors and retailers about bulk-purchasing their print copies for the AI firm's 'research library'", and that service providers cut the books from their bindings, scanned them and discarded the paper originals. The case then settled. On July 20, 2026 the court gave final approval to a $1.5 billion settlement whose class covers the 482,460 downloaded works on its Works List (Dkt. 680); notices of appeal were filed in August 2026.

How the story unfolded in Japan

• Aug 6: ITmedia ran a Japanese version of Fortune's July 31 story on AI firms buying old books (a Dutch antiquarian bookseller received a 3,000-title order from a Chinese AI company) and on Project Panama.
• Sept 4: Nikkei Business reported, from the U.S. court records, that Nippan had a contract to sell books in bulk to Anthropic. Its headline said a U.S. book distributor had refused (read up to the paywall).
• Sept 17: the JBPA wrote to Nippan and asked for an answer within 20 days (AdverTimes, Kyodo).
• September: Nippan said its group had never sold books knowing they were for AI training (to the Asahi Shimbun, as quoted by Agora on Sept 25). It told AdverTimes it could not discuss individual transactions, "including whether any took place" (translated). A JBPA official told AdverTimes that, with publishing in a difficult state, such sales could also wipe out future business opportunities (our paraphrase of 「将来のビジネスチャンスを潰すことにもなる」).
• Sept 22: NTV reported that online used-book shops had received waves of bulk orders for non-fiction since August, many shipped to a logistics center in Okayama Prefecture. Using trade data (Sayari), it also found records of more than 50 tons of "JAPANESE BOOKS" shipped to the U.S. since 2025 by a group company of the distributor named in the court records. SoraNews24 (Sept 28) and My Modern Met (Sept 29) carried the used-bookstore story in English. No source has tied the used-bookstore buyer to Anthropic or to Nippan.
• Sept 29: MLex reported that publishers were asking whether their agreements with the wholesaler allowed it to supply Anthropic.
• Oct 5–7: Nippan's letter and the reports above.

What is not known

• How many books Nippan IPS sold, which titles, whether they were new or used, and at what price.
• What Anthropic told Nippan IPS about the purpose. Nippan says it asked; the 2025 ruling says Anthropic approached distributors about bulk purchases for a "research library".
• What happened to these particular books. Japanese reports say Anthropic is believed to cut, scan and discard the books it buys, and the Nov 2024 notes budget for scanning the closed orders, but no source documents the fate of the Nippan books.
• Anthropic's view: no comment on the Nippan deal appeared in the reports read.

Sources: Nikkei Business, Nikkei, Yomiuri and MLex were read only up to their paywalls (headlines and opening paragraphs), and the Asahi quote is second-hand. The Washington Post story of Jan 27, 2026 could not be loaded; Publishers Lunch summarizes it. A Cybernews article on the topic could not be loaded (bot check).

Why it matters

The supplier itself has now confirmed that Project Panama bought books in Japan, and the court records show the program also paying for books from Taiwan and negotiating with vendors in Korea and Argentina. In Japan the dispute is about trade terms and consent rather than U.S. fair use: publishers ask whether their distribution contracts allowed bulk sales to a foreign AI company, and they fear losing future licensing deals for specialist books. It also shows how documents unsealed in one U.S. lawsuit can set off disputes in other countries months later.

Changelog

• 2026-10-07: created