Privacy Policy

Effective April 2026

What We Collect

When you make a purchase, we collect your email address to process payment through Stripe and to deliver your design. We do not store your email address in a database. A copy of your order confirmation is retained for customer support and proof of purchase.

Payment is processed entirely by Stripe. We never see or store your credit card information.

When you browse the site, our web server automatically collects standard access log data: your IP address, browser type, pages visited, and the date and time of your visit. This data is used to maintain site security and diagnose technical issues.

When you search for a name, we store the search term to help us decide which new designs to create. Search records do not contain any personal information — only the term searched.

When you visit pages, we record which pages are viewed and general browsing patterns to improve the site. These records contain no personal identifiers.

Cookies

The site uses two small cookies to understand how visitors navigate:

• Session cookie (_sid): An anonymous identifier that links your page views during a single visit. Contains no personal information. Expires after 30 minutes of inactivity or 2 hours, whichever comes first. Cannot be read by JavaScript or other websites.
• Return visit cookie (_rv): An anonymous identifier that tells us you've visited before, so we can understand how returning visitors use the site over time. Contains no personal information — just a random code that links your visits. Expires after 30 days. Cannot be read by JavaScript or other websites.

Neither cookie contains your name, email, or any personal details. Neither is shared with third parties. Both are encrypted and cannot be tampered with.

During checkout, Stripe sets two additional cookies: __stripe_mid (device identification for fraud prevention, 1-year expiration) and __stripe_sid (session identification, 30-minute expiration).

No advertising or tracking cookies are used.

How We Use AI

We use AI to help us behind the scenes — specifically, Anthropic's Claude.

What AI does for us: research your name against our scholarly sources, assemble what we need to know about a customer when they write in (so Eri or Tim can reply with full context), and study aggregate site patterns — which names are searched, which pages get visited — to decide which new designs to brush.

What AI does not do for us: write replies to you. Every word a customer reads from us is written by Tim or Eri. AI also does not make our calligraphy — every Japanese character on this site was brushed by Eri Takase herself.

We value Anthropic's work on the safety and trustworthiness of AI. That's why we use them exclusively for any AI work that touches takase.com — there are cheaper providers, but trust matters more in something that can see what our customers send us.

We do use other AI tools (like xAI's Grok) for internal consults — research, second opinions, thinking through hard problems. Those tools never see customer data. Not your name, not your email, not your search, not your message. That line is firm.

Data Sharing

We do not sell, rent, or share your personal information.

Four third-party services handle data on our behalf:

• Stripe processes payments and the email address tied to your purchase. See stripe.com/privacy.
• PayPal processes payments when PayPal is selected at checkout. See paypal.com/privacy.
• Postmark delivers transactional email (order confirmations, replies to messages you send us). See postmarkapp.com/privacy.
• Anthropic provides the Claude AI assistant described above. See anthropic.com/privacy.

These services see only the data needed to do their job. None of them are advertising platforms. We do not share customer data with anyone else.

Data Retention

• Order records: Retained for customer support, refunds, and tax purposes.
• Server access logs: Retained for site security and product improvement. IP addresses in these logs are not linked to individual identities.
• Search and browsing data: Retained indefinitely for product improvement. These records contain no personal information.

Your Rights

To request deletion of your data, ask questions about this policy, or exercise any other right you have over your data, contact tim@takase.com.

If you live in the European Union, the United Kingdom, or California, you have additional rights under your local laws (access, deletion, portability, opt-out of sale). We honor those rights — same email.

Contact

Takase Studios, LLC tim@takase.com