Japan and Korea are two of the most lucrative e-commerce markets in Asia, and both are unusually strict about product images. Rakuten Ichiba can quietly drop your listing out of search and ad placements for a border you did not know was banned. Coupang rejects thumbnails carrying promotional text. Naver Smart Store will suppress a listing whose main image shows a product that is not actually buyable at the base price.
None of these rules are hard to follow. They are just different from what you are used to on Amazon, Shopee or Lazada, and nobody tells you until a listing underperforms. Here is what you actually need for each platform in 2026.
Rakuten Ichiba: the 20 per cent text rule is the one that catches everyone
Rakuten runs a formal set of rules called the 商品画像登録ガイドライン (Product Image Registration Guidelines). It applies to the first image of every product and to SKU images. Rakuten introduced the guidelines in 2018, made them mandatory in August 2019, and began enforcing penalties from September 2020.
The three rules
- Text must occupy 20 per cent or less of the image area. This is not just text. Company logos and illustrations count towards the 20 per cent too. The one exception is colour swatches used to indicate product variations.
- No frames or borders of any kind. That means no four-sided border, no L-shaped frame, and no band across the top or bottom. Rakuten also treats visible seams from composited images, blurred edge lines and objects arranged in a line along an edge as border violations.
- The background must be pure white or a genuine photographic background. Pure white means RGB 255, 255, 255 (#FFFFFF). A photographic background means the real background captured when the product was shot, not a flat colour dropped in during editing. A solid non-white background will typically be read as a violation.
Rakuten technical specs
Rakuten recommends 700 x 700px square, with a floor of 500 x 500px and a ceiling of 3,840 x 3,840px. Accepted formats are JPEG, PNG and GIF, though animated GIFs are not permitted for guideline-governed images.
Do not stop at 700px. Rakuten displays product images at 700 x 700px on smartphones, so a 700px file has zero headroom and looks soft the moment a shopper zooms or views it on a high-density display. Upload at 1,200 x 1,200px as your working standard.
Two operational quirks are worth knowing before a bulk upload. Rakuten's image store, R-Cabinet, caps individual file uploads (commonly cited at 2MB, so confirm the current limit inside RMS before you batch hundreds of files), and it expects half-width alphanumeric file names. Files named with Japanese characters, spaces or accented letters will fail on upload, so rename to something like skate-x1-black-01.jpg before you start.
What a violation actually costs
Rakuten does not delete the listing. It removes it from Rakuten Super SALE search results, excludes it from ranking displays, and drops it from RPP advertising. In other words, the listing stays alive but stops getting traffic during exactly the periods when Rakuten sells the most. Sellers often spend weeks blaming their pricing when the real cause is a decorative band across the top of the thumbnail.
Coupang: clean, square, and no marketing copy
Coupang dominates Korean e-commerce and its image guidance is short but firmly enforced.
The main image must be square, on a white background, shot at a clear angle, with the product filling roughly 95 per cent of the frame. Recommended size is 1,000 x 1,000px; the minimum accepted upload is 500 x 500px. JPG and PNG are standard.
The thumbnail rule that trips up new sellers is no added marketing text. No price, no delivery claims, no "BEST", no promotional badges, no brand taglines pasted over the photo. Branding that appears naturally on the product or its packaging is fine and in fact encouraged, because Coupang wants the product's own logo legible so shoppers can identify it in a crowded grid. The distinction is between branding that is physically part of the product and graphics you added in an editor.
Two more Coupang rules have real teeth. Do not show items that are not included in what you are selling, because a photo showing three accessories when the buyer receives one is treated as misleading. And under Coupang's IPR policy, all images must be original: supplier photos or images lifted from another seller need express permission.
Coupang's detail page images are a different format entirely: 780px wide, up to around 5,000px tall, JPG or PNG, under 10MB. Sellers routinely build a 1,200px-wide detail image and then watch it get downscaled into mush.
Naver Smart Store: the representative image must match what you actually sell
Naver Smart Store feeds Naver Shopping search, which is where most Korean product discovery begins. The representative image is what appears in those search results.
Technically Naver accepts images from 160 x 160px upward and files up to 20MB in JPG, JPEG, GIF or PNG. Ignore the floor. The practical standard is 1:1 square at 1,000 x 1,000px or larger, with 1,200 x 1,200px and 1,500 x 1,500px both common; Naver itself recommends at least 1,300px on the long edge. Anything smaller degrades when enlarged and costs you click-through in a search grid where every competitor looks sharp.
Naver's distinctive rules are about honesty rather than aesthetics:
- The product in the representative image must be purchasable at the base price, so no showing the premium variant that only exists as a paid option.
- The image must not combine the product named in the title with products not named in the title.
- Excessive text or watermarking on the thumbnail can restrict exposure. A brand logo is acceptable; price and promotional copy are not.
- White backgrounds or clean cut-outs are recommended.
For detail pages, Naver officially recommends a content width of 860px.
Qoo10 Japan: same brand, different specs from Qoo10 Singapore
If you already sell on Qoo10 in Singapore, do not assume the Japanese site behaves identically. Qoo10 Japan's main image guidance is 750 x 750px as the recommended size, with 800 x 800px or above commonly advised and roughly 400 x 400px as a practical floor, in JPEG or PNG, up to 5MB per file. You can register up to 15 images per product.
The first image must be simple: no heavy decoration, no text overlays, no borders. Qoo10 Japan factors image compliance into search scoring, so a decorated first image costs you ranking points rather than triggering a hard rejection, which makes it harder to notice.
Specification comparison
| Platform | Recommended main image | Minimum | Formats | Key restriction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rakuten Ichiba | 700 x 700px (use 1,200 x 1,200px) | 500 x 500px | JPEG, PNG, GIF (no animation) | Text, logos and illustrations under 20% of area; no borders |
| Coupang | 1,000 x 1,000px | 500 x 500px | JPG, PNG | No added text; product fills about 95% of frame |
| Naver Smart Store | 1,000-1,500px square (1,300px+ advised) | 160 x 160px | JPG, JPEG, PNG, GIF | Must be buyable at base price; no untitled extras |
| Qoo10 Japan | 750-800px square | About 400 x 400px | JPEG, PNG (max 5MB) | No decoration or text on first image; 15 images max |
A workflow that satisfies all four
The good news is that the strictest rule on each dimension is compatible with the others. Build one compliant master and everything else is a resize.
Shoot and edit one master file per product: square, 3,000 x 3,000px, sRGB colour space, pure white #FFFFFF background, product filling roughly 90 to 95 per cent of the frame, zero text, zero borders, zero watermarks. That single file is legal on Rakuten, Coupang, Naver and Qoo10 Japan simultaneously.
Then export the derivatives: 1,200 x 1,200px for Rakuten, 1,000 x 1,000px for Coupang, 1,500 x 1,500px for Naver, 800 x 800px for Qoo10 Japan. Keep JPEG quality around 80 to 85, high enough to avoid compression artefacts around product edges on white, small enough to load fast on the mobile-first traffic that dominates both markets.
Doing that by hand across a 200-SKU catalogue is where most sellers give up and just upload one size everywhere. Batch tools exist for exactly this reason: PixelPrep takes your master files and outputs every marketplace size in one pass, padding non-square originals onto a clean square white canvas rather than cropping the product edges off.
One more thing worth building into the workflow is renaming files to half-width ASCII before upload. It costs nothing, and it is the difference between a batch upload finishing and a batch upload failing at file 47 on Rakuten.
Pre-upload checklist
- Square 1:1 aspect ratio, minimum 1,000 x 1,000px master
- Background is pure white #FFFFFF, verified with a colour picker rather than by eye
- Product occupies 90 to 95 per cent of the frame with even margins
- No added text, price, badges, promotional copy or taglines on the first image
- No borders, frames, bands or visible composite seams
- Only items actually included in the purchase are shown
- The pictured variant is buyable at the listed base price
- Colour profile is sRGB, not Adobe RGB
- File name uses half-width alphanumerics and hyphens only
- File size within platform limits, JPEG quality 80 to 85
- Images are original or licensed, since supplier photos need written permission
Work through that list once per product and you will not be the seller wondering why a well-priced listing never surfaces during Rakuten Super SALE.