The most recent issue of Shonen Jump in Japan included a statement on the contents page from the editors asking readers not to post chapters from the magazine on the Internet, stating that these “unjust internet copies are deeply hurting the manga culture, mangakas’ rights, and even mangakas’ souls.”  Although scanlation sites have been around for years, and even helped generate interest in manga here in North America, this was an unprecedented direct appeal from a Japanese publisher (Shueisha) in the actual pages of a hugely popular manga magazine.

According to Rich Johnston of Bleeding Cool, who broke the story, the appeal actually had an effect.  One site, Ritual Scan Forge, which has posted chapters of Shonen Jump standards like Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece in untranslated form almost as soon as they were published (making the site a prime source for scanlators), has evidently stopped posting new chapters.

With American publisher Viz Media getting top series such as Naruto and now One Piece caught up with the publication of the Japanese tankoubon collections, Shonen Jump’s appeal appears to be designed to attempt to prevent the posting of individual chapters on the Net even before they are collected into trade paperbacks in Japan.