To add to the excellent list at CopyrightWatch of authors whose work was freed for all humanity on January 1st...

• SATŌ Kōseki, essayist and renowned kappalogist.
• AIZU Yaichi, poet, calligrapher, art historian, and all-around aesthete.
• OKINO Iwasaburō, a man of whom I have never heard but who evidently liked to travel.
• KOGANEI Kimiko, younger sister of MORI Ōgai and unofficial chronicler of his life.
• ISHIKAWA Sanshirō, anarchist.
• YOSHIDA Genjirō, whose novel Seisaku no Tsuma ("Seisaku's wife") was made into a movie twice.

And last, but not least...

• TAKAMURA Kōtarō, sculptor, painter, writer, and author of Chieko-shō, one of the most well-known books of poetry in Japanese literature: either "the record of one husband's great love for a wife who is blighted by emotional problems", or a work which "show[s] how Kotaro, a supremely egotistical husband, crushed Chieko's spirit."