Do Japanese Pokémon cards have 1st Edition stamps?

The marks do not match. The English stamp is a black circle holding a large 1, with EDITION arched over it, printed on the front of the card, on Pokémon cards usually below the artwork at the left. The Japanese stamp sets a large 1 over the word EDITION between two rules, without the circle, and on early Japanese 1st Edition sets it sits next to the expansion symbol rather than opposite it. The stamp also appears on 1st Edition booster packs and boxes on both sides of the Pacific.

Because Japanese 1st Edition marks begin with the same July 2001 release that introduced the current gold card back, the two tests agree: a stamped Japanese card is always a gold back card, and an old back card, printed 1996 to 2001, is always unstamped. A claimed early Japanese 1st Edition card fails both tests at once.

Wizards of the Coast produced 1st Edition runs for every English set from Base Set through Neo Destiny, with one exception: Base Set 2 had no 1st Edition run. The system strained as it went. Release date pressure in the Neo era pushed some 1st Edition runs out alongside, or even after, their Unlimited printings, which defeated the point of a first printing, and when Nintendo gained control of the game, 1st Edition runs were rejected altogether in the West.

The English Base Set carries one more wrinkle no other language shares. Its second printing, called Shadowless, keeps the 1st Edition layout, thin lettering and no drop shadow around the artwork window, but drops the stamp. In every other language, 1st Edition cards were printed in the same layout as their Unlimited counterparts, so no non-English Shadowless equivalent exists.

Japanese 1st Edition runs began with Pokémon VS and Pokémon Web in 2001 and ran for fifteen years, ending with the Expansion Pack 20th Anniversary set, the Japanese counterpart of the Western Evolutions expansion. That is a longer 1st Edition era than the West ever had, and it covers the e-series, the ADV and PCG eras, and beyond.

The surprise is which Japanese printing is harder to find. Quite a lot of Japanese sets have smaller Unlimited print runs than 1st Edition print runs, so for Japanese cards of that era the unstamped printing is often the scarcer one. The Western instinct, stamped means first and first means scarce, runs backwards in Japan. Read a Japanese card by the Japanese schedule, not by the habit the English game taught you.