The three rules that govern every Rakuten main image
Rakuten's 商品画像登録ガイドライン (product image registration guideline) reduces to three hard requirements for the first product image and every SKU image:
| Rule | What it means | Common violation |
|---|---|---|
| Text under 20% | All text elements combined may occupy no more than 20% of the image area | Stacked promo badges: 送料無料 + ポイント10倍 + 50%OFF |
| No frames or borders | Decorative outlines, rules and boxed edges are prohibited | A thin brand-colored border around the whole thumbnail |
| Photo or solid white background only | Either the real background captured with the product, or flat white | Compositing the product onto a different photo |
The 20% text rule is stricter than sellers assume, because logos and illustrations count as text elements. A brand mark in the corner, an icon-based badge, and a Japanese product name across the bottom are all measured together against the same 20% ceiling. If you want a promotional callout, treat it as a budget: pick the single highest-value message rather than stacking four.
Where the rules stop applying — and why that matters
This is the single most useful thing to know about Rakuten image compliance: the guideline applies only to the first product image (第1商品画像) and SKU images. From the second image onward, you are free to build the dense, text-heavy, information-rich creative that Japanese e-commerce shoppers actually expect.
Don't fight the guideline by cramming compliant-but-cluttered messaging into image one. Build a clean, guideline-safe hero, then move your spec tables, size charts, comparison grids and campaign banners to images 2 through N where no restriction applies.
This split is what makes Rakuten meaningfully different from Amazon, where a pure-white background is mandatory on the main image and text is effectively banned outright. Rakuten permits a genuine photographic background on image one — a lifestyle setting, a styled surface, a real environment — as long as it was captured with the product rather than composited afterward.
Rakuten vs. Amazon vs. Yahoo! Shopping: the compliance gap
Amazon (main image)
- Pure white background required (RGB 255,255,255)
- No text, badges, watermarks or borders at all
- Product must fill roughly 85% of the frame
- No props or additional objects
Rakuten Ichiba (first image)
- Photographic background OR solid white — both allowed
- Text permitted up to 20% of image area
- No frames or borders
- No composited backgrounds
- Images 2+ are unrestricted
The consequence for multi-marketplace sellers is that a single hero asset rarely satisfies both. An Amazon-compliant white-background hero is valid on Rakuten, which makes white background the safe common denominator — but it forfeits the atmospheric, in-context first image that performs well in Rakuten's search grid. Most brands running both channels maintain two hero variants per SKU.
How to audit a thumbnail before you upload it
Rakuten publishes guideline-conformance tooling and third-party thumbnail checkers exist, but you can catch the majority of failures manually in under a minute per image.
- Measure the text box, not the glyphs. Draw a rectangle around every text element, logo and illustration. Sum the areas. Divide by total image area. If you are above 15%, you are close enough to the line that a reviewer may disagree with your math — trim.
- Check the outermost pixels. Any continuous line tracing the image edge reads as a frame, including a subtle drop-shadow rectangle or a mat-board effect.
- Ask whether the background was really there. If you removed the original background and dropped in a wooden tabletop from a stock library, that is a composite and it violates the rule. A photograph shot on a wooden tabletop does not.
- Verify SKU images individually. Colorway and variant images are held to the same standard as the first image, and they are the most commonly overlooked failure point in large catalogs.
Guideline violations don't always surface as an upload rejection. Non-compliant images can be excluded from Rakuten's search and campaign placements while your listing remains live — so the symptom is a quiet traffic loss, not an error message.
Producing compliant Rakuten images at catalog scale
The operational problem is not understanding the rules — it's applying them across hundreds of SKUs with variant images, seasonal campaign refreshes, and a second Amazon-compliant hero for each product.
Two thirds of that effort — cleanup and variant generation — is mechanical work that AI product photography handles directly. Generating a clean white-background hero from an existing photo satisfies both Rakuten and Amazon simultaneously, and per-colorway variants can be produced from a single source shot rather than re-photographed. Tools like Retouchable generate marketplace-ready hero images from source photos, which collapses the cleanup-and-variants portion of the workflow.
Keep the compliance review step human. It is the cheapest 10% in the chart and the only one where an error costs you search visibility.
A pre-launch checklist for Rakuten listings
| Check | Applies to | Pass condition |
|---|---|---|
| Text + logo + illustration area | Image 1, SKU images | ≤ 20% of frame |
| Border or frame present | Image 1, SKU images | None |
| Background type | Image 1, SKU images | As-shot photo or solid white |
| Composited background | Image 1, SKU images | Not permitted |
| Spec tables, size charts, campaign banners | Images 2+ | Unrestricted — use them |
| Amazon variant of the hero | Cross-listed SKUs | Pure white, no text |
Run this against every SKU before launch and again after any seasonal creative refresh — campaign badges added in a hurry are the most frequent way a previously compliant image drifts over the 20% line.