# Local-script rendering

Local-script rendering is the formatted_local field: an address written in Japanese, Chinese or Korean handed back in that script and in the country's own largest-first line order.

Date: 2026-09-17

Local-script rendering is the address written the way its own postal operator prints it in the country's own script and order — prefecture, city, ward, block for Japan; province, city, district, road for China; the largest part first and the building last — where the format table carries such a layout and the address was written in that script.

## What Spaw answers

`formatted_local` carries that rendering for Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao and the two Koreas when every place part of the address — the street line, a building, the district, the town, the area — is written in Han, kana or Hangul with no Latin word among them; the organisation line may stay Latin. The postal mark 〒 is kept, no uppercase rule applies, a named building stands above the street, and the whole thing is null for everything else: a Japanese address written in Latin letters, a mixed-script one, or any country whose local layout repeats the Latin order, which is the case for the seven other entries the table carries.

## What it does not mean

It is not a transliteration. Rendering a Latin-written Tokyo address in kanji would mean inventing characters the customer never typed, so the field answers null rather than guess; `formatted` still carries the Latin layout for every address. A one-line Japanese address is best sent as separated fields, because the parser reads a single line of kanji as one street.

Reference: https://spaw.co/glossary/local-script-rendering