Early Film Copyright Notices

[Great Hierophant]

In my DVD and Blu-ray collection, every Japanese film print from Rodan to the War in Space ends with the "the end" owari 終 character and a copyright logo. The copyright logo always looks the same, a © inside a larger circle, with the name of the film in Japanse, the English text "Toho Co. Ltd JAPAN" and the year of release. However, I cannot see any contemporary copyright logo for the Japanese version of Godzilla or Godzilla Raids Again from Classic Media. There is a copyright text at the end of Godzilla on the Criterion Blu-ray, but that was computer generated. I could not find a copyright logo on the print of the Seven Samurai Blu-ray from Criterion either. Did Toho have another way of giving the public notice of its copyright prior to 1956? I do not have access to any other pre-1956 Toho or Japanese films at present. The EIRIN mark on the titles to these films just indicates that the film was approved by the Film Censorship board, it has nothing to do with copyright.

Edit : The lack of a copyright notice on these films can be explained here : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/201 ... -will.html