Storefront API products search for tags containing specific Japanese characters is not available

Topic summary

A developer is experiencing issues with Shopify’s Storefront API when searching for products using Japanese character tags.

The Problem:

  • Search queries targeting products with the Japanese tag “半袖Tシャツ” (short-sleeve T-shirt) return no results
  • The query uses the format query: "tag:半袖Tシャツ"
  • However, it has been confirmed that the products with this Japanese tag do exist in the store

Technical Details:

  • The developer is using a standard GraphQL products query with parameters including sortKey, reverse, and pagination
  • The query successfully returns product data for other searches, but fails specifically with this Japanese character tag

This appears to be a character encoding or search indexing issue affecting Japanese language tags in the Storefront API. The discussion remains open with no resolution provided yet.

Summarized with AI on November 23. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
query (
  $query: String
  $first: Int
  $sortKey: ProductSortKeys
  $reverse: Boolean
  $after: String
) {
  products(
    first: $first
    query: $query
    sortKey: $sortKey
    reverse: $reverse
    after: $after
  ) {
    edges {
      cursor
      node {
        id
        title
        availableForSale
        tags
        images(first: 1) {
          edges {
            node {
              id
              url
            }
          }
        }
        compareAtPriceRange {
          maxVariantPrice {
            amount
            currencyCode
          }
          minVariantPrice {
            amount
            currencyCode
          }
        }
        priceRange {
          maxVariantPrice {
            amount
            currencyCode
          }
          minVariantPrice {
            amount
            currencyCode
          }
        }
        variants(first: 30) {
          edges {
            node {
              id
              availableForSale
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
    pageInfo {
      endCursor
      hasNextPage
      hasPreviousPage
      startCursor
    }
  }
}
{
  "query": "tag:半袖Tシャツ",
  "first": 1,
  "sortKey": "CREATED_AT",
  "reverse": true,
  "after": null
}

Search results do not return products with the Japanese tag “半袖Tシャツ”

It has been confirmed that the nodes query returns the product