How can you tell a first printing of Kenshin?

Japanese books close with a colophon page, the okudzuke, which records the edition’s printing history in plain type. For a first printing you are looking for the first-printing line: the issue date followed by 第1刷発行, “first printing issued.” Later impressions increment the number, 第2刷, 第3刷, and a long-lived Jump title like Kenshin accumulated many. Volume 1’s story began on September 2, 1994; a colophon showing the first printing of that month and year is the collector’s copy.

Two traps to know. First, the colophon’s issue date is not the street date: the kanzenban volume 1, for instance, was released July 4, 2006, but its colophon reads “first printing issued July 9, 2006,” the publisher’s formal date. Second, pre-2007 printings carry the old ISBN-10 in the colophon (volume 13 was catalogued as 4-08-872283-3) while later impressions show ISBN-13: the identifier itself dates the impression.