Today We Officially Launched Our Wave Japan 🇯🇵

Today, I’m thrilled to share a milestone months in the making: Our Wave Japan is live. This project is a unique collaboration with the Institute of Trauma Recovery in Tokyo, where their team worked hand‑in‑hand with ours to bring the Our Wave platform and healing community to survivors across Japan. Together, we’ve internationalized thousands of survivor stories, questions, expert answers, and resources—and built cross‑cultural features that make the experience meaningful, safe, and seamless for Japanese survivors and their allies.

As CTO of Our Wave, I see technology as the scaffolding for something profoundly human: healing in community. When we lower barriers to access, respect cultural context, and protect privacy by design, we help survivors find language for their experiences and connection with people who understand. Today is a step forward on that path.

Why This Launch Matters

Our mission has always been simple in statement and ambitious in practice: build safe digital spaces for survivors of sexual harm, domestic violence, and child abuse—spaces that center privacy, dignity, and choice. Launching in Japan extends that commitment across languages, norms, and systems of care, so that support is not only available but also culturally resonant.

Our community is now 400,000+ strong across 71 countries. The launch of Our Wave Japan isn’t just an expansion of reach; it’s an expansion of relevance. It acknowledges that how people talk about trauma, seek help, and offer support varies by culture—and that effective technology must meet those realities with humility and care.

Built With—and For—Survivors in Japan

From the beginning, this has been a co‑design effort. The Institute’s clinicians, researchers, advocates, and lived‑experience advisors reviewed interfaces, language, and flows side‑by‑side with our product and engineering teams. We tested, translated, re‑worked tone and prompts, and refined moderation guidelines to honor Japanese communication styles and privacy expectations.

The result is an experience that connects Our Wave’s core practices—story sharing, supportive messaging, Q&A with trauma‑informed specialists, and resource discovery—to the needs of survivors in Japan. You’ll find familiar Our Wave features, now adapted to Japanese language, context, and help‑seeking pathways.

What We Built Together

Here’s a look at what’s available starting today:

• Localized Experience: Interfaces, prompts, and guidance crafted in natural, culturally mindful Japanese—not just translated text.

• Story Sharing at the Center: Survivors can publish narratives or artwork in a secure, moderated space, with gentle content guidance that supports reflection and choice.

• Community Support, Thoughtfully Guided: Comments and Messages of Support are available with trauma‑informed prompts that encourage empathy, validation, and respect for boundaries.

• Survivor Q&A, Internationalized: Thousands of questions and expert answers have been adapted for clarity and cultural context so that insights are both accurate and approachable. Upvotes help the most helpful answers surface for everyone.

• Resources for Japan: A curated hub connecting people to trusted organizations and services across Japan—crisis support, counseling, legal aid, and more—organized for ease of discovery.

• Cross‑Cultural Safety Cues: Clear consent language, content previews, and conversation guardrails help keep discussion judgment‑free and survivor‑centered.

• Performance, Accessibility, and Privacy: Technical optimizations for speed, accessibility improvements for better screen‑reader and keyboard support, and privacy practices that preserve the safety Our Wave is known for.

Each of these elements supports a simple goal: reduce friction, increase safety, and widen paths to connection.

Stories First, Always

We’ve learned time and again that stories are where healing often begins. They help survivors name experiences, they help allies learn how to show up, and they help communities shift toward empathy and action. In building Our Wave Japan, we paid particular attention to how story prompts, optional anonymity, and community responses can honor voice and agency in Japanese contexts.

Whether a story expresses struggle, resilience, learning, or hope—all are welcomed and all matter. With internationalized content and guided response options, we’re inviting a wider circle of survivors and allies into conversations that are constructive, compassionate, and safe.

A Community That Learns From Itself

One reason I’m excited about this launch from a systems perspective is the way feedback loops become even more powerful at global scale. Upvotes on Q&A, thoughtful comments on stories, patterns in resource usage—these are signals that help us understand what eases uncertainty, what language resonates, and where we should improve guidance or add resources. As those signals accumulate, they make the platform smarter and more supportive for everyone.

This is how technology can carry care forward: by elevating what helps, minimizing friction, and ensuring survivors don’t have to navigate alone.

How You Can Participate

• Survivors in Japan: Explore story collections, leave a comment when you’re ready, submit a question to the Q&A, or save resources for later. Your pace is the right pace.

• Allies & Supporters: Offer a Message of Support—we provide light prompts to help you communicate care with cultural sensitivity.

• Clinicians, Advocates, and Partners: Share updates for the Resources Hub, collaborate on educational content, and help us reach communities where access remains limited.

• Global Community Members: Learn from Japanese stories and Q&A, and continue contributing your insights—cross‑cultural understanding strengthens us all.

Gratitude

Projects like this aren’t possible without sustained partnership. A huge thank you to the Institute of Trauma Recovery’s director, Sachiko Kita and clinical therapist Ikeda Utako for their tireless leadership, wisdom, and care throughout this collaboration. We’re also grateful to the Institute’s team of clinicians, researchers, translators, and advisors who reviewed language, shaped resource curation, and pressure‑tested the experience at every step.

To our volunteers, moderators, engineers, designers, and the broader Our Wave community: thank you for the countless hours, late‑night reviews, and thoughtful conversations that brought this launch to life.

Final Thoughts

Launching Our Wave Japan isn’t just a new locale on a map. It’s an affirmation of what we believe: healing is communal, culturally grounded, and deserving of the very best design and technology we can offer. By co‑creating with trusted partners in Tokyo and listening closely to survivors, we’ve taken another step toward a world where safe digital spaces are both globally connected and locally meaningful.

If you or someone you love could benefit from a supportive, private, and culturally thoughtful space to read, share, learn, and connect, we invite you to join us. Together—with empathy, evidence, and careful design—we can continue building a community that walks beside survivors, in Japan and everywhere, one story and one act of support at a time.