May 8, 2017

Meet Kana Miyamoto of JPy Magazine

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kana Miyamoto.

Kana, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Born and raised in Tokyo, married my husband who was in the same scuba diving club after graduating from college. First started my job at an ad agency J. Walter Thompson Japan where I enjoyed working and saved up for three and a half years. Then after resigning in 2005 my husband and I left for the states to start my new life as a student. We started our first year living in the OC since I was a fan of the TV show “The OC” (I would love to live in the OC once I get rich!). In improving my English, I attended a college in the OC where I majored in business and marketing. There, I began to think about the state and possibilities of the Japanese international students. Since I finished college in Tokyo, had some work experience and then came back to school, I felt like other students were my younger sisters and daughters who I had to look after for. I started thinking that Asian girls has much more possibilities and opportunities. I attended college for two semesters and launched a website with the theme of “supporting women working overseas” and then started publishing free magazine JPy in September of 2007. What led to the launch was the fact that I loved writing in Japanese and upon meeting a Japanese photographer (or a Japanese student that loves taking photos) it made us possible to express what was on our minds. Because we did not have enough budget and publishing was changed to digital printing we started as a web magazine and published our first paper magazine as our one year anniversary. I think going against the mainstream like that was more original and us-like at the time. Presently, with free magazine as the base, I conduct research, marketing, event and anything that connects Tokyo and LA. I would want my company to stay trendy so that my daughter that I had right after the launch of magazine would want to work at my company when she becomes teenager.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I don’t think any day within the past 10 years was smooth. Sometimes I worry when I have a day with no problem since publishing magazine involves something unexpected every time. It’s like playing a game to continuously fight the enemies. Also, we wouldn’t have beat the enemies if we weren’t a team. I’m thankful that I had support from many others when I started my own business, but I truly think I’m not the “boss” type. I believe that the environment grows the people and I do follow for 10 years but I don’t think I still can’t be a boss with dignified matter.

JPy Magazine – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
With “happiness is infectious” as the motto, I’m in charge of the media “JPy” that supports Asian women abroad. With LA as the base, there are free paper magazines in NY, SF, and Tokyo and the online magazines are downloaded all over the world. We promote the “KAWAII” culture to the world and specialize in promotions linked to events. The cover models for the magazines are models with Asian background. Since Japanese girls have strong feelings in becoming beautiful with their research skills so we feature these “tips to becoming beautiful” but I don’t think other magazines do this in this niche business. Since we are based in LA we also support Asian businesses that would like to start in the US. In the past four years, we have been featuring the influencers of LA and Tokyo as cover models and we’re always impressed of their appealing powers. I think JPy has its own essence that we can work closely with these models with accessible images. In the future, I would like to work on promoting what we find in LA to Japan.

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
The magazine is celebrating our 10th year. We’ve survived!! If the person like me (not-entrepreneurial type) can do this, many other young Asian girls might think “I can do it as well!” I teach business to the international students from Japan, and some of the students already started their own business like me. I am very happy about that. I really feel like I’m their mom now 😉

If you had to start over…. Since the first three years was nothing but failure I don’t think I can look at the first issue because it’s too embarrassing! But that doesn’t mean I want to revisit and do it all over. I do think that we come this far because we started this business like a club where we were willing to show our success as well as failure. The only think I want to change would probably be the cover of the first issue!

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