Last updated: September 1, 2026
By using japanknowhow.com/ you agree to these terms. They're the ordinary terms a small publisher needs, written as briefly as we can manage. If you don't agree with them, please don't use the site.
1. What this site is
japanknowhow.com/ publishes articles and free reference tools about the Japanese language and Japanese culture. Everything here is general information for an American English-speaking audience. It is not professional advice of any kind — not translation, legal, immigration, financial, medical, or travel advice — and you shouldn't treat it as a substitute for a qualified professional who can look at your specific situation.
2. Using the site
You may read, print, and share our pages for your own personal or educational use, and you may quote us with attribution and a link. You may not:
- republish substantial portions of our articles, or our name database, as your own content;
- scrape, crawl, or bulk-download the site in a way that degrades it for other people;
- use automated systems to harvest our data for training or resale without written permission;
- attempt to gain unauthorized access to any part of the site or its infrastructure;
- use the site for anything unlawful, or in a way that infringes someone else’s rights.
If you’d like to use our material beyond ordinary quotation — in a book, an app, a classroom package — just ask. We say yes more often than not. Write to hello@japanknowhow.com.
3. The tools, and their limits
The name converter, Chinese zodiac calculator, phrasebook, and Japanese era converter are provided free and as is. They’re built from openly available sources and established usage, and they involve judgment calls and automated conversion that will not be right for every case.
We make no warranty that any output is accurate, complete, current, or fit for your purpose, and we accept no liability for any decision you make based on it. This matters most for permanent or official uses:
- Tattoos and engraving. Have any Japanese text checked by a native speaker who can see the actual design before it becomes permanent. A rendering that looks correct on screen can read oddly, archaically, or comically in Japan, and no converter can tell you that.
- Official documents. For visas, residence cards, banking, or contracts, use the spelling the issuing institution requires. Official romanization and transliteration follow their own rules.
- Business use. Logos, product names, and marketing copy should be reviewed by a professional translator familiar with the market.
Details of how the tools work and how accurate they are, measured rather than asserted, are on the tools page.
4. Our content and yours
The articles, images, charts, tool logic, and compiled databases on this site are ours and are protected by copyright. Japanese terms, kana, and kanji are of course not — you can’t copyright a language.
If you send us a correction, a suggestion, or a message, you give us permission to use it to improve the site, including incorporating a corrected spelling into our database. We won’t publish your name or your message without asking.
5. Links out
We link to other sites, and some of those links are affiliate links that earn us a commission. We don’t control those sites and we’re not responsible for their content, their accuracy, or their privacy practices. A link is not an endorsement of everything a site does. Our editorial independence policy is on the fact-checking page.
6. Availability
We try to keep the site up and current, but we don’t promise uninterrupted access. We may change, move, or remove pages and tools at any time, and we may update articles as facts change.
7. Disclaimer and limitation of liability
The site and everything on it are provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, japanknowhow.com/ and the people who run it will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or any loss of profits, data, or goodwill, arising from your use of the site or your reliance on anything published here. Where liability cannot be excluded, it is limited to the amount you paid us to use the site, which is zero.
Some jurisdictions don’t allow certain exclusions, so parts of this section may not apply to you.
8. Copyright complaints
If you believe material on this site infringes your copyright, write to hello@japanknowhow.com with the DMCA essentials: identification of the work, the URL of the material, your contact details, a statement of good-faith belief, a statement that the notice is accurate, and your signature. We act on valid notices promptly.
9. Changes to these terms
We may update these terms; the date at the top shows when we last did. Continuing to use the site after a change means you accept the updated version.
10. Governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of the United States and of the state in which the site operator is established, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Nothing here removes any consumer protection you have under the mandatory law of your own country of residence.
11. Contact
Questions about these terms: hello@japanknowhow.com, or the contact page.