Shipping & Returns

Shipping

We ship worldwide from Japan.

Orders are dispatched within two business days.

If your country is not offered at checkout, please contact us before you order.

Service	Typical transit	Tracking	Insurance
FedEx	about 2–7 days	Yes	Yes
EMS (Japan Post)	about 3–12 days	Yes	Yes
e-Packet (Japan Post)	about 7–30 days	Yes	No

Transit times are estimates for the journey itself and do not include time spent in customs.

Orders of three items or more qualify for free shipping with the code FREE3, for delivery to the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union and Australia.

Combining orders.

Separate orders going to the same delivery address are packed together and sent as one parcel, as long as none of them has been sent yet. You do not need to ask.

Each order is charged its own shipping fee at checkout. If the combined parcel costs less to send than the shipping you paid, we refund the difference after it has been sent.

If you would rather have your orders sent separately, please let us know through the contact form as soon as you can, with your order numbers.

Orders going to different addresses, and orders that have already been sent, are not combined.

Tracking.

Every parcel travels with a tracking number.

In some countries the tracking information is not updated along the way, and for e-Packet shipments to Australia and Brazil it is not updated at all.

If your tracking has not changed for more than a week, please contact FedEx or your local post office directly.

Addresses we cannot deliver to.

We are unable to ship to P.O. Boxes in any country, or to APO and FPO addresses. An order placed to such an address has to be cancelled.

Delays.

Each parcel leaves us with its paperwork complete, but clearance in the destination country can add a considerable delay. This is most common across Europe.

Packing.

Orders are packed by hand.

Customs and import taxes

Import duties and taxes are not included in the item price or the shipping fee. They are charged by the destination country, not by us.

The carrier may also charge a customs clearance fee. That fee is set and collected by the carrier, is separate from the government's tax, and on a lower-value parcel it can be larger than the tax itself.

We declare the full price paid and describe each item as it is; we cannot declare a lower value and we cannot mark an order as a gift.

Because a shipping label carries only the delivery address, any request for duties or taxes goes to the recipient at that address.

The customs descriptions and HS headings we declare, the way charges are collected, and what happens to a refused or unclaimed parcel are set out in full on Customs & Import Taxes.

Returns and refunds

We accept returns within 14 days of the day your order reaches you.

The item must be unused, in the same condition in which it reached you, and in its original packaging, and a receipt or proof of purchase is required.

Only regular-priced items are eligible for a refund; sale items are not refundable.

Return postage.

Return postage is paid by the buyer, and the original shipping fee is not refundable. Where a refund is issued, the cost of return shipping is deducted from it.

For an item valued over 75 US dollars we strongly recommend a trackable or insured service, as we cannot guarantee receipt of an untracked return.

How a refund is processed.

Once your return has reached us and been inspected, we will email you to confirm whether the refund has been approved or declined. An approved refund is applied to your original method of payment.

A refund cannot be processed while an item is in transit, on its way back to us, or has not reached us.

What we cannot take back.

We cannot accept a return, exchange or refund for an order that was refused, returned, delayed or disposed of because of import duties, taxes or a customs clearance problem.

What we sell, and how we describe it

Our catalogue covers two areas. The first is Japanese woodblock prints: original ukiyo-e, and reproductions printed by hand. The second is antique Japanese books, together with books about Japanese art.

All of our books are authentic, with the vast majority printed in the Edo and Meiji eras. Where a book is a modern reprint of a classic, that is stated in its product description. We do not sell replicas.

With the antique pieces the same item seldom passes through our hands twice. Reproductions are a different matter, and a design can return to the shelves.

Every item is listed with a condition note and a full set of photographs. The photographs are part of the description, so please look at them closely before you decide.

Each listing is a single item, photographed on its own, so the piece you receive is the piece in those photographs. This holds for the antique books, the original ukiyo-e and the hand-printed reproductions.

The one exception is our Modern Book category, where a title shares one set of photographs.

We handle and sell antiques under Japan's Secondhand Goods Business Act, licensed by the Aichi Prefectural Public Safety Commission, licence number 542551604000.

Contact

Use the contact form on this site and include your order number, and someone here will read and answer your message.