Hanko Stamp Maker (Free, No Sign-up)
Create a Japanese hanko stamp image for free. Enter a surname or company name and generate a round personal seal, a square company seal, or a dated seal as a transparent PNG you can drop straight into Word, Excel, or a PDF quote. Everything is drawn in your browser, so nothing you type is sent to a server.
Types of hanko and when to use them
| Type | Typical use | Common size |
|---|---|---|
| Round seal (mitome-in) | Everyday acknowledgement: internal circulars, receipt of documents. | 10.5–12 mm diameter |
| Square seal (kaku-in) | Company documents such as quotes, invoices and receipts. | 21–24 mm per side |
| Dated seal (date-in) | Clerical work where the date of receipt or processing is recorded. | About 30 mm diameter |
| Registered seal (jitsu-in) | Contracts that require seal registration, such as property deals. | 16.5–18 mm diameter |
| Bank seal (ginko-in) | Opening a bank account and withdrawing funds. | 12–15 mm diameter |
What is a digital hanko?
A hanko is the personal seal used across Japan in place of a handwritten signature. A digital hanko reproduces that seal impression as an image file, which you paste directly into a Word, Excel or PDF document. As remote work spread, travelling to the office purely to stamp a document became hard to justify, and digital seals became a common way to keep the familiar paperwork flowing.
This tool draws the seal in your browser and exports it as a PNG with a transparent background. Because the background is transparent, the image can sit on top of table borders and text without covering them with a white square. Nothing you type is uploaded: both the text and the resulting image stay on your own device.
How to make a hanko stamp
- Enter the text Type a surname or company name. Up to eight characters are supported, and four or more are split into two vertical columns automatically.
- Choose the seal type A round seal for everyday acknowledgement, a square seal for quotes and invoices, or a dated seal to record a processing date.
- Adjust the look Vermilion is the traditional colour, though some companies use indigo so digital stamps are easy to tell apart from originals. Mincho gives the most seal-like appearance.
- Download the PNG The file is saved with a transparent background. In Word or Excel, set the text wrapping to "In front of text" so you can place it freely.
Tips for getting more out of it
- The PNG is saved with a transparent background. After pasting it into Word or Excel, set text wrapping to "In front of text" so you can position it over table borders freely.
- Some companies deliberately use indigo rather than vermilion for digital documents, so that a scanned original and a digital stamp can never be confused.
- Generate at a larger size (400 px or more) and scale it down where you paste it. Enlarging a small image afterwards leaves the outline looking soft.
- A dated seal exists to record when something was received or processed, so pick the date the work actually happened rather than leaving it on today.
- Square seals normally carry the company name. If the name is long, dropping the legal form keeps the characters large enough to read.
Where a digital hanko helps
Quotes and invoices
Place a square company seal on a PDF quote before sending it to a client. The document looks properly issued without printing and stamping it by hand.
Internal approval routing
Drop a round seal into the approval box of a circulated document, so approvals keep moving even when reviewers work from different sites.
Acknowledging deliveries
Use a dated seal to record when a delivery note or receipt arrived, leaving the date visible on the document itself.
Working from home
Signal your approval without going into the office, which removes the trip made purely to stamp a sheet of paper.
Hanko terms explained
- In-ei
- The impression itself, that is, the mark left on paper. A digital hanko reproduces this impression as an image.
- Mitome-in
- An unregistered seal used for everyday acknowledgement, such as confirming receipt. Usually round.
- Kaku-in
- A square seal carrying the company name, stamped on quotes, invoices and other outward-facing documents.
- Jitsu-in
- A seal registered with the local municipality, used for legally weighty contracts such as property transactions.
- Date-in
- A seal with a date in the middle, used in clerical work to record when a document was received or processed.
- Electronic signature
- A cryptographic mechanism proving authorship and integrity of a document. Legally distinct from a hanko image.
Frequently asked questions
Side Note — Where the seal came from
Seals are far older than you might expect. Cylinder seals were already in use in Mesopotamia around 3000 BC: rolled across wet clay, they left a continuous band of imagery identifying the owner. In other words, a device for saying "this is mine" appeared before writing itself had fully settled.
Seals reached Japan around the first century, and the gold seal unearthed on Shikanoshima in Fukuoka is the emblematic example. Those early seals belonged to rulers demonstrating authority, not to ordinary people. The hanko became something everyone owned only after the Meiji era, when an 1873 decree required a registered seal on formal documents.
What is striking is that although seal culture spread widely across East Asia, the habit of stamping everyday paperwork survived mainly in Japan, Korea and Taiwan. China moved to signatures, and Korea shifted steadily towards electronic signatures from the 2000s onwards. In Japan it took the spread of remote work around 2020 to make "commuting purely to stamp a document" visible as a problem, after which administrative procedures were revised in short order.
That said, stamping was never purely irrational. It showed at a glance who had checked a document, and stamping in sequence made the approval chain visible. A digital hanko is arguably a transitional invention: it keeps those advantages while removing the one constraint that no longer made sense, namely the paper.