Japanese launch
Taking a global product site into Japanese: search demand and intent research, page architecture, editorial guidelines, and briefs the translators can work from.
Independent web & content strategy — Japanese market
Making global content work in Japan.
世界の戦略を、日本で通じるかたちに。
Not a translation. The same idea, rebuilt for a different reader — which is the whole job.
Web and content strategy for international companies entering or growing in the Japanese market.
The problem
Global content cannot simply be translated.
Search behaviour, language, trust signals, user expectations and content conventions all differ between markets. A page that performs in English is a useful brief for the Japanese one. It is not a source text.
- Search behaviour 検索行動
- Queries run longer and more literal, mixing three scripts in one line. A keyword set rarely survives translation intact — it has to be built again, in Japanese.
- Language 言語
- Register does more work than vocabulary. The same sentence can read authoritative or presumptuous depending on the form it takes.
- Trust signals 信頼
- Specificity reassures: company details, named authors, precise figures, a visible track record. Confident claims without them do the opposite.
- User expectations 期待
- Density that reads cluttered elsewhere reads thorough here. Buyers expect the whole picture before they agree to a conversation.
- Content conventions 慣習
- Structure, length and how directly a page is allowed to sell all shift. So does what a template can carry across without breaking.
Chiho Creative Studio turns a global strategy into a digital presence that makes sense to Japanese readers — and that your team can keep running afterwards.
Services
Direction, not word count.
Five ways in. Most engagements start with one and grow into two or three.
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Japanese Content Strategy
日本語コンテンツ戦略
What to publish in Japanese, why, and in what order. Positioning, messaging, topic architecture and an editorial plan your team can actually run.
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SEO & Search Strategy
検索戦略
Keyword and intent research done in Japanese rather than translated from your English set — then site structure, internal linking and a way to measure it.
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Website Localization
ローカライズ設計
Deciding what to adapt, rewrite or leave alone. URL and hreflang structure, navigation, forms, and the parts of a global template that don’t survive the move.
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Content Direction
編集ディレクション
Briefs, tone-of-voice guidance and editorial review for Japanese writers and translators, so quality holds after I hand the work over.
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Japanese Market Consulting
市場コンサルティング
Market and competitor reading, channel choices, and a straight answer on what will and won’t work here before you commit budget to it.
Approach
Four moves, in this order.
The order matters more than the list. Market insight before strategy; strategy before anyone writes a word.
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Global strategy
現状把握
Start from what already works. Your positioning, your best-performing content, your commercial goals for the market.
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Japanese market insight
市場理解
Read the market as it is: search demand, the competitors already answering it, and the words your buyers use when they are not talking to you.
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Content & SEO strategy
戦略設計
Decide what changes and what holds. Priorities, structure, keywords, and a plan with a sequence to it rather than a backlog.
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Editorial direction & execution
編集・実行
Brief, direct and review the work — writers, translators, designers, developers — until it ships and keeps shipping without me.
Experience
Between international teams and Japanese readers.
Years of Japanese content, SEO and multilingual web projects — working inside global marketing teams as often as alongside them.
Sectors
SaaS · Technology · Fintech · Travel · Digital products · Media
Working with
Global marketing teams, translators, agencies, in-house editors and dev teams
Languages
Japanese — native · English — professional
Based
Japan · Working with teams across time zones
What engagements usually look like
Search recovery
Rebuilding a translated Japanese content library around the demand that actually exists — usually cutting more pages than it adds.
Editorial handover
Setting tone of voice, review standards and a working process, so an in-house or agency team can publish well without a consultant in the loop.
About
独立コンサルタント
I’m Chiho, an independent consultant working where web strategy, content, SEO and Japanese market understanding meet.
Most of my clients already do this well in English. The English site is sharp, the content programme runs, the numbers make sense — and then the Japanese version underperforms in a way nobody can quite explain. Usually the explanation is not the translation. It’s that a set of decisions made for one market was carried into another without being made again.
So I ask the earlier questions. Who is actually searching, and in what words. What a Japanese reader needs to see before they trust a foreign company enough to fill in a form. Which parts of the global template are quietly getting in the way, and which are fine.
I work on small, direct engagements, and I’d rather hand you something your team can run than make myself permanent.
Planning your Japanese content strategy?
Tell me where you are and what you’re trying to reach. If I’m not the right person for it, I’ll say so and point you at someone who is.
Let’s talk contact@chihocreative.com
日本語でのお問い合わせも歓迎します。