Taichi K.

Native Japanese Copywriter | Localization & SEO | Japan Market Content

Your Japanese is probably correct. That may be exactly what is wrong with it. The words check out and the page still doesn't work, because the order things are said in and the way trust gets built still belong to the market it was written for. So I write, rather than translate. ■ EIGHT YEARS, ENGLISH INTO JAPANESE I'm a native Japanese copywriter based in Nara, Japan. For the past eight years I've written Japanese content and marketing copy for companies bringing their products into this market. Most of that work turns out to be taking things out. English marketing copy persuades by pushing: superlatives, urgency, direct address, the same promise restated three ways. Translated accurately, that push reads as pressure in Japanese, and pressure makes a reader here close the tab. So most of my time goes to working out what the original was trying to achieve, then finding a way to achieve it that works in Japanese. It is usually quieter and shorter than the English. ■ WHAT I TAKE ON Landing pages · Product and category pages · Brand and campaign copy · UI text · SEO content Send me English source copy, and what comes back is Japanese built for how this market reads and decides, along with an English version that shows you what the Japanese actually says. ▸ Japanese copywriting Regulated categories included, cosmetics and skincare among them, where the 薬機法 (Pharmaceutical and Medical Devices Act) limits what a product is allowed to claim and a literal translation of an approved English claim will often say more than the law allows. ▸ Localization and editing UI strings, product copy, and existing Japanese pages that need rebuilding rather than proofreading. ▸ Japanese SEO content Written around what Japanese users actually search for, not around a translated keyword list. My SEO content has ranked #1 in Japan for a competitive marketing term. ■ IF YOU ARE LAUNCHING IN JAPAN Tell me what you are putting out and what isn't landing. I'll tell you what I would change and what it would take.