Was Return of the Jedi released in Japan as Revenge of the Jedi?

Question

As is commonly known, the working title of Return of the Jedi was, for some time, Revenge of the Jedi. This was even used on early promotional material and on a teaser trailer.

In this video by Techmoan on the old video format VHD, his copy of Return of the Jedi seems to bear the correct title in English, while the Japanese title translates to Revenge of the Jedi.

(Skip to 15:30)

I can easily imagine a scenario where the working title (Revenge of the Jedi) was translated to Japanese, then changed to Return of the Jedi without retranslating it.

Was at any point in time, Return of the Jedi released as Revenge of the Jedi in Japan?

Or is there another explanation?

Answer 1

The writing on the DVD VHD case in your picture says "ジェダイの復讐" (Jedi no fukushu), which indeed means "Revenge of the Jedi." (ジェダイ is "Jedi" spelt phonetically, whereas "復讐" means revenge.)

The Japanese Wikipedia page appears to say that it was released as ジェダイの復讐 originally and later changed to its current title, ジェダイの帰還 (Jedi no kikan), which means Return of the Jedi. Part of it says (translation courtesy of Janus Bahs Jacquet in the comments):

In America the original publication title was Return of the Jedi, while in Japan the original publication title was Revenge of the Jedi, but later on both were changed to the current title

So it seems that it was called ジェダイの復讐 (revenge) for some time in Japan before being changed to ジェダイの帰還 (return). The page goes on to discuss the reasons for the change, and you can get some of the meaning of it from a Google translation of the page.

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ETA: Since I was curious I asked a Japanese person. She says she remembers it as ジェダイの復讐 (Revenge of the Jedi), and never heard it in Japanese as ジェダイの帰還 (Return of the Jedi) until just now when she looked it up online. But she said she also knew it by its English title, Return of the Jedi. Valorum posted some links in the comments to materials from 1983 that say "Return of the Jedi" in English, but "ジェダイの復讐" in Japanese, like this:

After reading the Japanese Wikipedia page, my Japanese friend told me the Japanese title wasn't changed until 2004, with the change being driven partly by fans asking for the name to be changed.

Answer 2

The film was released as "Return of the Jedi" but some of the posters had the older title "Revenge of the Jedi".

The original teaser trailer for the film carried the name Revenge of the Jedi. In December 1982, Lucas decided that "Revenge" was not appropriate as Jedi should not seek revenge and returned to his original title. By that time thousands of "Revenge" teaser posters (with artwork by Drew Struzan) had been printed and distributed. Lucasfilm stopped the shipping of the posters and sold the remaining stock of 6,800 posters to Star Wars fan club members for $9.50.

_{^{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_of_the_Jedi#Title_change}}

Sample Poster

http://www.propstore.com/product/star-wars-ep-vi-return-of-the-jedi/large-japanese-revenge-of-the-jedi-poster/

Based on IMDB article, it was not released in Japan as Revenge of the Jedi.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086190/releaseinfo

Answer 3

The article on Japanese Wikipedia (unedited translation of Google Translate) says:

Originally published title in the United States was "Return of the Jedi" ("Jedi's return"), the original title published in Japan was "Star Wars / Revenge of the Jedi".

And further:

However, in Japan, production of related products in the name of "Revenge of the Jedi" has already progressed, and since they sought impact subtitles aiming at box office success, they were published as [citation needed], "revenge of the Jedi" in 1983 It was also followed by the "special edition" published in 1997 [4]. In the summer of 2000, fans of this series made a titlist signing campaign in Japan but it did not come true [citation needed], the release of "Star Wars Trilogy DVD - BOX" in 2004, finally translated the original in Japan "Return of the Jedi" has been changed to.

As I understand from the text, the title "Return of the Jedi" was introduced in Japan in 2004.