Branding & Creative Company in Tokyo

Script count is the hidden variable in Tokyo identity work: a scoped Tokyo brand identity (strategy, naming with JPO clearance, wordmark in kanji and romaji, type and colour system, basic guidelines), a full four-script brand system including motion, keigo voice guide, Figma design system, Reiwa-era calendar handling, and Premium Display Act claims register, or listed-company rebrands with rollout across digital, retail, packaging, and signage. Tokyo rates sit above Osaka and Fukuoka because of the Dentsu, Hakuhodo, and Granpa talent premium.

Japanese brand work uses kanji (logographic), hiragana (phonetic for native words and grammar), katakana (phonetic for loanwords and emphasis), and romaji (latin script for international audiences), with optional English overlay where relevant. We pair faces deliberately — for example A1 Mincho for editorial weight in kanji with Source Han Sans JP for UI, or commissioned Morisawa or Fontworks faces for premium identities. The type system documents which script carries which message (product names often in katakana or romaji, headlines in kanji-heavy mixed script, body in standard mixed script), spacing rules for full-width and half-width punctuation, and vertical-text (tategaki) handling for editorial or signage. Source Han Sans JP and Noto Sans JP are the open-source defaults when budget rules out Morisawa.

Japanese brand voice is not one register. Consumer brands typically use teineigo (polite desu-masu form) for warmth, while B2B and financial services use sonkeigo (respectful, elevating the customer) and kenjougo (humble, lowering the speaker), often layered. Casual D2C brands targeting younger demographics may drop into plain form (普通形) for intimacy, the way LINE and some Mercari surfaces do. We define the keigo level per audience and per surface in the voice guide, with do-and-don’t examples drawn from your actual product context. We do not paste English-style superlatives translated into Japanese — that reads as foreign brand awkwardness, not Japanese brand voice.

Yes. We run trademark clearance searches against the Japan Patent Office J-PlatPat database before final naming, covering the relevant Nice classes (typically 9, 35, 36, 38, 41, 42 for SaaS and services), and we coordinate filings through Japanese benrishi (registered patent attorneys) since trademark prosecution in Japan sits with benrishi by statute, not designers. For brands expanding from Japan into the US, EU, UK, Korea, Singapore, and Australia, we coordinate Madrid Protocol designations through the JPO. We document the filing strategy in the brand governance pack with phonetic clearance for katakana and romaji renderings, since Japanese trademark conflicts often turn on sound similarity, not just visual similarity.

The Act against Unjustifiable Premiums and Misleading Representations (景品表示法, the Premium Display Act) is enforced by the Consumer Affairs Agency (消費者庁) and prohibits misleading quality, price, and origin claims. Every claim a Tokyo brand makes (best, number one, lowest price, made in Japan, environmental, comparative) needs substantiation, and the agency has been increasingly active on stealth marketing rules since the 2023 amendment requiring disclosure of advertising. Our brand engagements produce a claims register listing every public marketing claim, the substantiation source, the review date, and the responsible internal owner. We also document stealth marketing disclosure obligations for influencer and PR work commissioned under your brand.

Japanese brands routinely reference the Reiwa era (令和, beginning May 2019) alongside the Western Gregorian calendar, particularly in corporate communications, anniversary milestones, regulatory filings, and traditional brand contexts. We document a calendar handling policy in the brand voice guide specifying which contexts use which calendar (typically Gregorian for digital UI, Reiwa or paired notation for press releases, corporate documents, and anniversaries), and we build the date components in the design system with both renderings available. We also account for era transitions in long-lived brand assets, since the previous Heisei era ended in 2019 and printed materials with era-dated copyright lines became visibly stale.

Both. We have run brand evolutions for listed Japanese clients where a wholesale Muji- or Sony Design Centre-scale rebrand is overkill but the existing system has drifted across product, marketing, and corporate touchpoints. Evolution work tightens the kanji and romaji wordmark, refactors the colour and type system across four scripts, rebuilds the Figma library, refreshes keigo voice for current audiences, and produces the governance playbook. We respect the nemawashi consensus process — brand decisions at Japanese listed companies typically circulate through ringi-sho approval, and we plan the review cadence around that, not against it.

Yes. Foreign brands entering Japan through Shibuya, Marunouchi, or Roppongi offices typically need a localisation layer that converts a Western identity into something Japanese audiences accept. We deliver the four-script naming (often a katakana rendering of the original, sometimes a new kanji compound), JPO trademark clearance and Madrid Protocol designation, keigo voice tuning, type pairing in Japanese, Reiwa-era calendar handling, and Premium Display Act compliance for the launch campaign. We do not simply translate the English deck. We have shipped this localisation layer for Western SaaS, retail, and consumer brands entering Japan through subsidiary or joint-venture structures.