How can you tell a Japanese first printing of Demon Slayer volume 1?

Demon Slayer volume 1 was first published in Japan in June 2016, when the series was a new and unproven Jump serial. Because the boom came three years later, genuine first printings are a small fraction of the copies in circulation, and the cover alone cannot identify one: Shueisha kept the same cover art through printing after printing while the book became the best selling manga in the country.

The evidence is inside. Japanese books print their edition history on the copyright page, typically at the back of the volume, listing the dates of the first edition and of the printing in hand. A first printing shows the first edition date with no later printing line. That page, photographed clearly, is the single document a serious listing should show, and its absence from a high priced listing is information in itself.

Supporting evidence agrees or it does not. First printings carried the original obi band with its launch text and any publisher inserts of the period, and the paper and binding should match a 2016 Jump Comics volume rather than the later boom era reprints. None of these proves a first printing alone, since obi bands travel between copies, but a copy whose printing page, obi and condition all align is a coherent object, while one that asks you to trust the cover is not.

Why it matters is simple arithmetic: millions of later printings against a modest 2016 first run. Buyers should expect to pay for the printing page, not the story, and sellers of genuine copies should expect to be asked for it. The same method, printing page first, applies to every volume in the run and to the fanbooks, whose first printings date from the boom itself.