Privacy Policy

The International Therapy Association acquires personal information by appropriate means in the following situations.

• When you apply to compete and while the Championship is run: your name (including its romanised form), country or region, contact email address, profile details such as photos, career history, salon and social media accounts, the division you enter, and your payment status
• When you register as a judge: your name, country or region, profile details such as photos, career history and specialities, and the information needed to assign judging divisions
• When we invite you as a judge (before you register): your name, country or region and contact details (email address, and phone number for WhatsApp or similar) that we know from public information, past championships or introductions, used to send you the invitation
• When you create an account or log in: your email address and display name (if you log in with a Google account, the email address, name and other details Google provides to us)
• When you apply for spectator tickets: your name, email address, country or region, number of tickets and payment status
• When you apply as a volunteer: your name, email address, phone number, preferred roles and dates, the languages you speak, and your message
• When you apply as a supporter (sponsor): your company or school name, contact person, email address, phone number and enquiry
• When you contact us or answer a survey: your name, email address and the content of your enquiry or answers
• When you subscribe to the newsletter or allow push notifications: your email address, name, display language, and the delivery address for notifications (an identifier issued by your browser)
• When you browse this website: your IP address, browser and device type, the pages you view, the referring page and similar (see the Cookie Policy for details)

To stop our forms being abused through repeated submissions, we record a value derived from your IP address that cannot be converted back, together with your browser type. Card numbers and other payment details are entered directly on the payment page of our payment provider (Stripe). The Association never receives or stores them.

The International Therapy Association uses the personal information it acquires for the purposes below. Except where permitted by the Act on the Protection of Personal Information or other laws, personal information will not be used beyond the scope of these purposes without the consent of the individual.

■ Competitors and judges (1) Contact regarding the championship (2) Uses necessary to run the championship (producing name plates, displaying names in the treatment area, calling names on stage, and similar) (3) Publication of championship results (website, social media and similar) (4) Introducing participants on the official website operated by the Association, and publishing the results of the highest-placed participants (5) Live broadcast on sites and social media operated by the Association (6) Processing entry fee payments, issuing receipts and invoices, and handling refunds (carried out jointly with the seller, Prorium Inc.; see section 15) (7) Preparing and sending invitation letters to judges, and assigning judging divisions (8) Publishing judges' public profiles (photograph, bio, career, social links, seminar information and so on) on the Judges page and Seminars calendar of the official website, automatically creating social media images from that content, and cutting out the background of profile photographs (9) Inviting judges, confirming participation and contacting them up to the day of the event (by email, WhatsApp or similar)

■ Members (accounts) (1) Authenticating logins and preventing impersonation and misuse (2) Providing My page (checking your applications, editing your profile, choosing how widely it is shown, and similar) (3) Recording your agreement to our terms and policies

■ Spectator ticket applicants (1) Processing payment, issuing and sending admission passes (QR codes), and checking them at the entrance (2) Contacting you about schedule changes or cancellation, and handling refunds (payments and refunds are handled jointly with the seller, Prorium Inc.; see section 15)

■ Volunteer applicants (1) Selection, arranging roles and dates, and contacting you about the event days

■ Supporter (sponsor) applicants (1) Proposals, agreements and correspondence about sponsorship, and providing sponsor benefits

■ Enquiries and surveys (1) Answering enquiries and passing them on to the right person (2) Compiling and analysing responses to improve the Championship and our services

■ Newsletter and push notifications (1) Sending announcements about the Championship, entries, tickets and similar, and our newsletter (you can unsubscribe at any time from the link at the end of each email) (2) Sending push notifications to devices on which you have allowed them

■ Browsing this website (1) Displaying pages, remembering your language and keeping you logged in (2) Understanding traffic and page speed statistically to improve the website (Vercel Web Analytics and Speed Insights; handled as statistics that do not identify individuals) (3) Preventing unauthorised access and abuse through repeated submissions

■ Use of generative AI We use generative AI services (Claude by Anthropic and ChatGPT by OpenAI) to translate and summarise enquiries and survey answers and draft replies, to match questions asked at the on-site help desk with prepared answers, and to translate published profiles, news and similar into other languages. We send only the text needed for each task. Because we use these services through their APIs, the providers' terms do not allow the content we send to be used to train their AI models. Replies to enquiries are checked by a member of our staff before they are sent.

The International Therapy Association may film the championship. Where a participant appears in video or still images, those images may be used for the following purposes. (1) Publication on the official website operated by the Association (2) Sharing video and images of the championship with participants (3) Provision to news organisations and media (newspapers, television, magazines and similar) (4) Publication on the social media, YouTube channels and websites of related organisations

The International Therapy Association manages personal information appropriately and takes preventive measures against leakage, loss and damage, through its operational structure and staff training, effective use of information systems (restricting access to electronic files containing personal information with passwords, changing passwords regularly, using antivirus software and similar), and supervision of subcontractors.

The International Therapy Association will promptly erase or destroy personal information that is no longer necessary to achieve the purpose of use, including after the Championship has ended. Account information is erased when you ask to close your account. However, payment and accounting records that the law requires us to keep, and the records needed to honour unsubscribe requests (email addresses), are kept for as long as necessary.

The International Therapy Association will not disclose or provide personal information to third parties except in the following cases. (1) Where the individual has consented (2) Where work is outsourced to a third party within the scope necessary to achieve the purpose of use (3) Where disclosure is required by law, or where provision is made in accordance with law (4) Live broadcast on sites we operate, our website and social media (5) Where personal data is used jointly with Prorium Inc. as described in section 15

Where an individual requests disclosure, correction, addition or deletion of their personal information, suspension of use or erasure, suspension of provision to third parties, or notification of the purpose of use, the International Therapy Association will respond without delay in accordance with the Act on the Protection of Personal Information, once it has confirmed the identity of the individual. Please note that we may decline to respond where the requirements of the Act are not met, or where the law provides that the Association may decline.

How to make a request, identity verification and response times are described in section 14.

Requests for disclosure, correction, addition or deletion of personal information, along with opinions, questions, complaints and other enquiries about the handling of personal information, are received at the contact details below. Address: Kurashima Shibuya Building 4F, 2-3-8 Shibuya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0002 Organisation: International Therapy Association Representative: Takuto Kawakami Email: info@japan-massage-championship.com

The International Therapy Association may change this privacy policy in order to respond to changes in the laws relating to personal information, or to better protect the personal information of participants.

Competitors and judges may add external links to their profile, such as social media accounts, an official LINE account, a salon website or a booking page. These are published at your own discretion and on your own responsibility. Linked sites are outside our control. We accept no responsibility for any dealings, transactions, solicitations or disputes that arise on them. Content you publish may be copied in ways we cannot control, including search engine caches and third-party archives. We cannot guarantee that such copies disappear when you remove a link. Please make sure you are comfortable publishing something before you do. If you list the name or website of a salon that employs you, please obtain their permission first. You can edit or delete anything you have published at any time from My page. Competitors can choose between "Public", "Region only" and "Private" for how widely their profile is shown. Judges' profiles are published after the organizers review them and with the judge's consent. Changes a judge makes after publication take effect immediately, and the organizers check them from time to time. To hide any item or take your page down, contact us at the address in 8. We hide pages within 3 business days and delete data within 14 days. After the championship, judges remain listed as past judges until they ask us to take their page down.

The International Therapy Association entrusts all or part of the handling of personal information to the providers below, to the extent necessary to achieve the purposes of use. We have agreements with them that set out how personal information must be handled (terms of service and data processing agreements), and we supervise them as necessary and appropriate.

• Supabase, Inc. (USA): database, login authentication and storage of files such as photos (data stored in Frankfurt, Germany — AWS eu-central-1)
• Vercel Inc. (USA): delivering this website and server processing, traffic measurement (Web Analytics) and page speed measurement (Speed Insights)
• Stripe, Inc. (USA) and its group companies: payment of entry fees and spectator tickets, and issuing receipts and invoices (payments are processed through Stripe by the seller, Prorium Inc.; see section 15)
• Resend (USA): sending email
• Anthropic, PBC (USA): translation, summaries and draft replies using generative AI, and matching help desk questions with prepared answers
• OpenAI (USA): translation, summaries and draft replies using generative AI (as a backup when Anthropic's service is unavailable)
• Dropbox, Inc. (USA): storing and sharing competition photos (including photos of competitors) and the photos and videos published on this site
• LINE WORKS Corp. (Japan): internal notifications to our staff about applications and similar
• Google LLC (USA): managing judge invitations and preparing lists with spreadsheets and documents (viewed by our staff only)
• WhatsApp (Meta Platforms, Inc., USA): inviting and contacting judges

Of the providers listed in section 11, those based outside Japan receive personal information as third parties in a foreign country. We provide it only after confirming that each of them has a system in place, through contracts and similar means, for continuously taking measures in line with the Act on the Protection of Personal Information (a system that meets the standards set by the rules of the Personal Information Protection Commission).

■ Countries where personal information is handled

• USA: the servers of Vercel, Stripe, Resend, Anthropic, OpenAI, Dropbox, Google and WhatsApp (Meta), and Supabase's operation and maintenance
• Germany: where Supabase stores our database and files

■ Data protection systems in these countries (based on the Personal Information Protection Commission's survey of foreign data protection systems)

• USA: there is no comprehensive federal data protection law. Instead, there are sector-specific federal laws and state laws such as the California Consumer Privacy Act. Some laws allow government agencies to obtain information for purposes such as national security.
• Germany: the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applies. The EU and Japan recognise each other as providing an equivalent level of protection for personal information (mutual adequacy decisions).

■ Main measures taken by the providers Encryption of data in transit and at rest, access control, independent audits and certifications (such as SOC 2, and PCI DSS for payments), and contractual bans on using data for other purposes under data processing agreements.

■ The Association's own security measures In addition to the measures in section 4, we limit which staff can use the admin screens, and our database restricts what each user can read and write (row-level access control).

On request, we will provide information about the measures taken by these third parties in foreign countries. Please contact us at the address in section 8.

This website uses cookies to remember your language and keep you logged in. When you view pages, information may also be sent to external providers in order to play videos, measure traffic, process payments and similar. We do not use cookies or external transmission for advertising, such as behaviourally targeted ads. The Cookie Policy lists the cookies we use and, for each destination, what information is sent and why.

Requests under section 7 (“disclosure and other requests”) are handled as follows.

■What you can request

• Notification of the purposes of use
• Disclosure of retained personal data (please tell us your preferred method, including provision as electronic records)
• Correction, addition or deletion of the content of retained personal data
• Suspension of use or erasure of retained personal data
• Suspension of provision of retained personal data to third parties
• Disclosure of third-party provision records (records of provision to, and receipt from, third parties)

■How to make a request If you have an account, you can request account closure and deletion of your personal data from the “Close account & delete data” section of My page. To make a request by email, send it from your registered email address (or, if you have no account, the email address you used when applying) to the contact address in section 8 (info@japan-massage-championship.com) with the subject “Request for disclosure of personal information”, including:

• Your name
• What you are requesting (one of the items above) and information that identifies the personal information concerned (type and approximate date of your application, etc.)

■Identity verification For requests made from My page, being logged in to your account confirms your identity. For requests made by email, we will send a confirmation email to your registered address (or the address you used when applying) and treat your reply as verification of your identity. We do not ask for identity documents.

■When and how we respond Once your identity has been verified, we will respond without delay, in principle by email. If we cannot comply with all or part of a request, we will tell you so and explain why.

Entries and spectator tickets are sold by Prorium Inc., the seller (see the legal notice under the Act on Specified Commercial Transactions). To accept payments, issue receipts and handle refunds, the Association and Prorium Inc. jointly use personal data as set out below (Article 27(5)(iii) of the Act on the Protection of Personal Information).

■ Personal data used jointly

• Name
• Contact details (email address, country or region)
• Details of your entry or spectator ticket application (division entered, number of tickets, amount, and similar)
• Payment status (whether and when you paid, the amount, refund status, and similar)

Card numbers and other payment details are entered directly on the payment page of our payment provider (Stripe) and are not part of this joint use. Neither the Association nor Prorium Inc. receives or stores them.

■ Joint users

• International Therapy Association
• Prorium Inc.

■ Purposes of use Accepting entry and spectator ticket applications, processing payments, issuing receipts and invoices, handling refunds, and answering enquiries about these

■ Party responsible for managing the personal data International Therapy Association Address: Kurashima Shibuya Building 4F, 2-3-8 Shibuya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0002 Representative: Takuto Kawakami Enquiries are received at the contact point in section 8.

If you live in the European Economic Area (EU member states, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway), the United Kingdom or Switzerland, we handle your personal data in accordance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the UK GDPR and the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection, in addition to sections 1 to 15.

■Controller The International Therapy Association (contact details in 8). For personal data relating to payment of entry fees and spectator tickets, we are joint controllers with Prorium Inc. (15).

■Legal bases

• Performance of a contract: accepting entries, judge registrations, account sign-ups, spectator ticket and volunteer applications, and the related communication, payment and admission checks
• Legal obligation: keeping payment and accounting records
• Our legitimate interests: publishing championship results, photographing and publishing the championship (3), preventing unauthorized access and repeated form submissions, statistical analysis of site usage, and translating and summarizing enquiries with generative AI
• Your consent: publishing judges' profiles and using judges' images (consent given at registration), sending newsletters and push notifications, and publishing competitors' profiles and external links (10)

You can withdraw consent at any time. Withdrawal does not make processing before withdrawal unlawful.

■Information you must provide If you do not provide the items needed for an application, we cannot accept that application. Newsletters, push notifications and publishing a profile are optional.

■Retention periods

• Member accounts: until you close your account (deleted within 30 days of your request)
• Entry and judging records: 3 years after the championship (published results remain as the championship record)
• Judges' profiles: until you ask us to take them down or delete them (10)
• Spectator tickets: 1 year after the championship
• Volunteers, supporters (sponsors) and enquiries: 1 year after the matter is completed
• Payment and accounting records: 7 years, as required by law
• Records needed to honour an unsubscribe request (email address): for as long as the request stands
• Values used to prevent repeated submissions (IP addresses converted so they cannot be restored): for the same period as the application or other record they belong to

■Your rights In addition to the requests in 7 and 14, you have the right to data portability, the right to object to processing based on legitimate interests, and the right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority in your country. We normally respond within one month.

■International transfers Transfers from the EU and the UK to Japan rely on the adequacy decisions for Japan. Transfers from Switzerland, and transfers to our service providers in the United States (11), rely on the standard contractual clauses in each provider's data processing agreement, the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework or similar safeguards.

■Automated decision-making We do not make decisions with significant effects on you by automated processing alone. Judging at the championship is done by judges.

■Age Competitors must be at least 18 years old at the time of the championship (Participant Rules). If you are under 18 and apply for a spectator ticket or as a volunteer, please obtain the consent of a parent or guardian.