Selling on amazon.co.jp as a foreign seller: the Japanese listing

Before the listing: the account

Japan is its own account, not part of the North American one, and the listing work starts once it exists.

Amazon's own expansion page for Japan is direct about the order. A seller who already sells on amazon.com with a Professional account creates a Japan account. A seller new to Amazon creates a North America and Brazil unified account first, then adds Japan from the Sell Globally dashboard in Seller Central. Selling plan fees are charged separately for the two accounts unless you link them, in which case Amazon charges the equivalent of USD 39.99 a month or the sum of the regional fees, whichever is lower.

For the listings themselves Amazon points to Build International Listings, which cross-lists products from amazon.com into the Japan store. Where your product already has a Japanese detail page, your offer joins it. Where it does not, a Japanese page has to be written, and the rest of this guide is about writing it. Prices on amazon.co.jp are in yen, with no decimals.

The title, built the way Amazon Japan describes

Amazon Japan gives a formula for the product name. It is the most useful single line on its seller site.

On length, the same page recommends a title of about 60 characters and fewer than 80 (タイトルの長さは約 60 文字、80 文字未満をお勧め), and it rules out subjective claims such as 人気商品 ("popular product") and ベストセラー ("best seller"). The 75 character cap Amazon introduced on 27 July 2026 sits inside that range, so a Japanese title written to about 60 characters satisfies both. Japanese is dense: 60 characters of it carries far more than 60 characters of English, which is why the formula has room for the capacity and the model number.

Amazon Japan also says to put the important keywords, the ones that bring traffic, at the front (重要なキーワード（集客力のあるキーワード）を前に設置する). That is the same rule as everywhere else, and it is the one a translated title breaks first, because translation preserves the order of the sentence it started from. The 75 character title limit covers how Amazon treats a title over the cap.

Three scripts, two widths, no spaces

Japanese writes one word several ways, and a shopper may type any of them. This is the part of the listing that has no equivalent in English.

• Katakana for most product namesMany product nouns are loanwords written in katakana. A kitchen scale is usually キッチンスケール, even though the native word はかり exists. Both are searched, which is what the search terms field is for.
• Kanji and kana for the same wordはかり can also be written 秤, 計り or 測り, and the amazon.co.jp search box suggests all four. Amazon Japan names this exact case in its search terms advice: register the kanji, hiragana and katakana variations, its own example being 浴衣 and ゆかた.
• Full width and half widthLetters and digits exist in two widths. ５ｋｇ and 5kg look alike on screen and are different characters, and in the search terms field the full width version costs three times the bytes.
• No spaces between wordsJapanese prose has no word spacing, so a title reads as a run of characters broken by script changes. The search terms field is the exception: Amazon Japan asks for each word to be separated by a half width space.

Read from the amazon.co.jp search box's suggestions on 28 October 2026. Suggestions move with demand; check your own product's terms on the day you write.

Bullets: five, short, and no full stops

Amazon Japan's bullet advice is unusually concrete, and one line of it is the opposite of what a translator does by instinct.

• Up to five, under 1,000 characters togetherAmazon Japan says up to five bullets per product, and that keeping all five under 1,000 characters combined makes them easier to read. That is a readability guideline, not a field limit. Utlista and the free checker measure each bullet against its own budget as well.
• One pattern across the catalogueIf one product's bullets start with the country of origin, Amazon Japan suggests every product's should. Consistency across a range reads as a brand rather than a set of imports.
• The same words as the titleUse the same expression for important information in the title, the description and the bullets. A translator varies the wording for style, and on amazon.co.jp that turns one product into three slightly different ones.
• Nothing about shipping or priceAmazon Japan says bullets should not carry seller-specific information such as delivery or pricing. Those change, and the bullet is a description of the product.

Search terms: a byte budget where Japanese costs three

This is the field where Japan differs most, in the size of the budget and in how fast Japanese spends it.

The three bytes are not an average in practice: every kana and kanji costs exactly 3 in UTF-8, the encoding Amazon stores. So 500 bytes holds about 166 Japanese characters, and the 250 byte apparel budget about 83. A seller who thinks of the field as "500 characters" has three times the room they really have.

Counted at build time with the same encoder Amazon stores with, not by hand.

Two rows in that table are traps a Japanese keyboard sets for you. In Japanese input mode the space bar can produce the full width space, which costs three bytes where Amazon Japan asked for a one byte half width space. Digits and units typed in that mode can come out full width too, so 5kg becomes ５ｋｇ at three times the cost.

Amazon Japan's list of what belongs in the field is worth having in full: broader terms for the group the product belongs to (its example: キャンプ用品, camping gear, for a pop-up tent), synonyms (小型扇風機 and ミニファン, two ways to say a small fan), and the spelling variants above. What it rules out: other companies' trademarks and product codes such as JAN, ASIN or UPC, subjective words like 最高な ("the best"), temporary ones like 新商品 ("new") or セール中 ("on sale"), words so broad they fit any product, and both upper and lower case of the same Latin word, because search treats them as one. Paste a draft into the free listing checker to see its byte count as you type.

What machine translation gets wrong in Japanese

None of these is a grammar error. Each one produces Japanese a reader understands and a search engine does not reward.

• The dictionary word instead of the shopper's wordA faithful rendering of "kitchen scale" as 台所用はかり is correct Japanese. Typed into the amazon.co.jp search box it brought back one suggestion; キッチンスケール brought back ten. Being understood and being searched for are different tests.
• Full stops on every bulletA translation engine turns each English sentence into a Japanese one ending in 。, which Amazon Japan asks you not to use in bullets.
• One spelling of each wordA translation picks one script for each word and uses it throughout, which is right for prose. The search terms field exists for the spellings you did not pick, and a translated keyword list leaves them out.
• Full width characters and spacesCopy that passed through a Japanese keyboard or a Japanese word processor tends to come back with full width digits, letters and spaces. On screen it looks finished. In the search terms field it spends three bytes per character.
• Selling words in the titleEnglish titles often carry "best", "premium" or "popular", and a translation keeps them. Amazon Japan names 人気商品 and ベストセラー as words not to put in a title.
• The source sentence's word orderA translation keeps the order of the sentence it started from. Amazon Japan asks for the words that bring traffic at the front, and its formula puts the generic product name straight after the brand. A title whose keywords arrive in the source order often has its most searched word in the wrong place.

The amazon.co.jp listing checklist

Everything above, in the order you would check it before an upload.

• TitleBrand, generic name, features, capacity or model, in that order. About 60 characters, never more than 75. Half width digits and units. No 人気商品, no ベストセラー.
• BulletsUp to five, concise, no 。 at the end, one pattern across the range, the same key words as the title, nothing about price or delivery.
• Search termsWords the title does not already carry: kana and kanji variants, synonyms, the broader group. Half width spaces between words. Under 500 bytes (250 in apparel and jewellery), counted in bytes, not characters.
• A native readBefore anything goes live, someone who reads Japanese reads it. Japanese that is grammatical and slightly wrong in register reads as an import immediately.

How Utlista handles Japan

Briefly, because everything above works without us.

Utlista writes the title, bullets, description and search terms for amazon.co.jp in Japanese, from the listing you already have, using the phrases the amazon.co.jp search box suggests rather than a word for word translation. Every field is measured before it can enter the upload file: the title in characters, search terms in bytes, at 249 bytes in every store, which sits inside even Japan's 250 byte apparel budget. You read every listing, then download one file for Japan and upload it in your own Seller Central account. Utlista reads your listings and never writes to your account.

Where this comes from

So you can check it rather than take our word for it.

The title formula, the title length, the bullet advice and the search terms rules are quoted from Amazon Japan's public seller page "Amazon SEO対策" on sell.amazon.co.jp, read in full on 2026-10-28. The English renderings are our translations. The account steps and the linked-account fee are from Amazon's "Expand to Japan" page on sell.amazon.com, read the same day. Amazon's detailed field rules sit inside Seller Central, which is login-gated; your category listing template is the authority and overrides anything here.

The search suggestions were read from the amazon.co.jp search box's completion service on 2026-10-28. The byte counts are computed by the page itself with the UTF-8 encoder. The example title and search terms were written for this page and are not generated output.

Short answers

The questions sellers search for about Japanese listings, answered from the same sources.

How many bytes is one Japanese character in Amazon search terms?

Three, for the kana and kanji a Japanese listing is written in. Amazon stores text as UTF-8, where hiragana, katakana, kanji, full width letters and digits, and the full width space each take three bytes. Amazon Japan's own seller guide says a full width Japanese character averages three bytes.

What is the search terms limit on amazon.co.jp?

Amazon Japan's seller guide says under 500 bytes, and under 250 bytes in clothing and fashion accessories, shoes and bags, jewellery and watches. It also says the length is calculated without half width spaces, commas, semicolons and full stops. Your category listing template in Seller Central is the final authority.

How long should an Amazon Japan product title be?

Amazon Japan recommends about 60 characters and fewer than 80, built as brand, then the generic product name, then features such as specification, colour, size or type, then model number, capacity or weight. Writing to about 60 also keeps you inside the 75 character cap Amazon introduced on 27 July 2026.

Can I sell on Amazon Japan from the US?

Yes. Amazon says a seller with a Professional account on amazon.com creates a Japan account, then can cross-list products into the Japan store with Build International Listings. A seller new to Amazon creates a North America and Brazil unified account first.