About
Quiet Harbor Path

Notes on the buildings, spaces and silences of Japan

Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 28, 2026

This Privacy Policy explains how Quiet Harbor Path ("we", "us") collects and uses personal information when you visit quietharborpath.com (the "Site").

1. Information we collect

2. How we use information

We do not sell your personal information.

3. Legal bases (EEA/UK)

We process personal data based on your consent (newsletter, non-essential cookies), our legitimate interests (running and improving the Site) and legal obligations.

4. Sharing

We share data only with service providers that help us operate the Site — such as hosting, email delivery and analytics providers — under appropriate agreements, or with authorities when required by law.

5. Advertising and analytics

We may use analytics and advertising partners that set cookies to measure traffic or show relevant ads. You can control these through our cookie banner and your browser settings. See our Cookie Policy.

6. Retention

We keep newsletter data until you unsubscribe and contact messages for as long as needed to respond and keep a reasonable record. Analytics data is kept in aggregated form.

7. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may access, correct, delete or export your data, object to or restrict processing, withdraw consent, and complain to a supervisory authority. California residents may request disclosure and deletion of personal information. Contact hello@quietharborpath.com.

8. Children

The Site is not directed to children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect their personal data.

9. Security

We use HTTPS and reasonable safeguards, though no online transmission is completely secure.

10. Changes

We may update this policy; the date above shows the latest version.

11. Personal information under Japanese law

Quiet Harbor Path follows Japan's Act on the Protection of Personal Information (APPI). We use personal information only for the purposes stated in section 2 — sending the monthly letter, answering you, understanding which essays are read and keeping the Site secure — and we will tell you before using it for any new purpose. We do not hand personal information to third parties without your consent, except when the law permits it or when a provider such as our host or email service processes it for us under a written agreement. You may ask us to disclose, correct, add to, suspend the use of or delete the personal information we hold about you; write to the address in section 15 and we will respond once we have confirmed that the request is yours.

12. The monthly letter

Our letter is sent once a month and collects new essays, a note from the editors and, occasionally, a building we are still thinking about. We store only the email address you give us (and a name, if you add one) for this purpose. Every letter ends with an unsubscribe link; once you use it we stop sending immediately and remove your address from the mailing list. We do not track whether you open a letter or which links you follow inside it, and we never pass the list to other publications.

13. Letters and corrections from readers

Readers often write to us about a detail in an essay — a date at Ise, a lattice pattern in a machiya. We keep these messages while we answer or check the point, and for up to a year afterwards so we can trace why an article was changed. We never publish your name or quote your message without your permission.

14. If data is ever exposed

Should we discover that personal information we keep, such as an address on the letter list or a reader's message, has been lost or seen by someone it should not have reached, we will look into it at once, write to the readers concerned and, where the law requires, report it to Japan's Personal Information Protection Commission.

15. Contact

For anything concerning this policy or your personal information, write to hello@quietharborpath.com.