Write for Japonica!

Send us your stories on Japanese life and culture

Tsuruga-jō in Fukushima. Photo from Pakutaso.

Japonica is a publication for anything related to Japan: Japanese culture, language, travel, current events, all the wonderful things about life in Japan and as well as the many challenges.

Japonica’s editors are Yuko Tamura, Alvin T. and DC Palter.

Most of our articles are published in English, though they often include Japanese words or names. However, we happily accept articles in Japanese and bilingual articles in both languages.

Japonica acts more like a print publication than most Medium publications. We publish one spotlight article each day, along with occasional other articles. We actively promote the articles, especially spotlight articles, to our audience on social media.

Consequently, we review articles closely, and may require you to do some editing before acceptance. We also make small edits and corrections ourselves. We are not simply posting your article on our page, but promoting it to our audience. We only accept articles that we’re proud to have our name on.

If your story is accepted as a spotlight article, it will be scheduled for later release. There can be a 1–2 week queue for spotlight articles. If you prefer not to wait, please indicate that with a note in the article or reach out to the editors and it can be added immediately without a spotlight article promotion. Spotlight articles are published early morning in Japan and announced on social media.

We try to respond to all submissions as quickly as possible, almost always within a day. However, Japonica has only 3 editors who have real jobs, so please be patient.

To become a Japonica writer, simply leave a comment to this article. (But leave a comment, don’t just clap.)

For detailed instructions on how to write an article in Medium and submit to our publication, please see this step-by-step guide.

Please follow the publication here on Medium, as well as our 3 editors. We’re more a community of people with deep interest in Japanese life and culture sharing our thoughts and experiences than a website of generic information about the country. We ask you to follow Japonica on Twitter and LinkedIn so you become part of our community. Read the other articles on Japonica and participate in the discussion.

Japonica’s Acceptance Criteria

1. The article needs to be related to Japan or Japanese culture in some way.
2. The article must be respectful. Discussions of problems and social ills of Japan are encouraged. Racist screeds are not.
3. The article needs to be interesting, well-written, and well-informed.
4. Keep the travel blogs for your personal website. Don’t tell us about your visit to a place, tell us why we should visit. Don’t tell us what you ate for lunch in Osaka, but what we should eat and why.
5. Use only COPYRIGHT FREE images. Please review our image policy. We cannot accept any articles that include copywritten images.
6. No plagiarism. All sources should be noted.
7. Follow Medium’s standard formatting: title, subtitle, image, then text.
8. Submit unpublished articles as drafts. We don’t republish articles that have already been published on Medium except under special circumstances. If the article has been published already, please contact the editors prior to submission. Prior publication on your own blog, substack, etc. is fine.
9. While we don’t have hard rules on article length, 800–1500 words or 5–7 minutes reading time works best for articles on Medium.
10. Most of our readers are Japanese people or non-Japanese with extensive experience in Japan. We look for articles that show aspects of Japanese life and culture by people who know it well.
11. If AI was used to generate the article, it must be clearly indicated at the beginning of the article. We generally don’t accept AI-generated material since we want your voice and opinions about interesting topics, not generic content.

Additional Important Notes

1. Make sure you have “allow private notes” enabled so we can communicate edits and scheduling with you.
2. Let us know your Twitter and LinkedIn accounts so we can tag you as the author when we promote the article.
3. Join the discussion of the article on social media and promote the article to your own network, too.
4. If you’re new to Medium, follow this advice on how to be successful.
5. If you’d like to write for Japonica but not sure what to write, we’ve compiled this list of 30 possible topics. However, articles are not in any way limited to these specific topics.

We look forward to reading and publishing your articles!
どうぞよろしくお願いします。