Music and copyright

[Daishichimaru]

Everybody knows that music can help to make the movie, and that Autodesk will disqualify teams that violate copyrights. The general solution to this issue is to write the band and ask for written permission and ship that along with the entry. I've found a perfect song to go with mine, but ran into a little problem. The artist is both Japanese and has been dead for several years. This beoing a rather obvious complication to the permission granting process, does anybody know of an easy way to find out where copyright privelages are held for bands that aren't around anymore?