01 Independence
No payment, gift, or complimentary meal determines whether a restaurant is covered or how it is described, and hosted visits, press dinners and arranged tastings are not accepted. If that ever changes for a particular piece, the piece will say so in its own first paragraph, not in a footnote.
02 Corrections
When a fact in a published article turns out to be wrong, we add a dated correction note at the top of the piece describing what changed and why. We do not quietly edit or remove the error.
If you have found one, the contact form reaches the desk; choose “Correction to an article” and tell us which piece and what is wrong.
03 Updates
Prices, seasonal menus, hours, and reservation details change. We review every restaurant and guide page at least once a year and display the date it was last updated.
04 Sources
Every number in this publication traces back to a primary source — a government body, a specialist book, or an institution's own published record — named in the sentence, not just a footnote. See how we research for the full method.
05 Advertising
Sushi Journal carries no advertising and no sponsored articles. No restaurant has paid to appear here, and no payment has influenced which restaurants we cover or in what order. Any paid item would be labelled “Sponsored” in its header and kept out of every ranking and recommendation.
06 AI use
A first draft may be assisted by AI. Nothing reaches publication on that basis. Before a piece goes up, an editor on the desk checks every fact against a primary source, rewrites or deletes anything that cannot be traced, and a second reader repeats the check independently. We publish under a single masthead byline rather than invented individual names, and the desk — not the tool — is answerable for what is published. See the editorial desk.
07 Images
Except where a photograph is credited to AutoReserve, no image on this site is presented as documentation of a particular restaurant: none shows an identifiable face, a shop name, a sign or a logo, and none is a record of a real place, a real meal or a real person. Those pictures illustrate a craft — the rice, the knife, the counter — and nothing more. Where a photograph is credited to AutoReserve, it shows the restaurant named beside it and is published with AutoReserve’s permission.
The diagrams are different: they are drawn by the desk from the figures cited in the article and on the sources page, because a chart is worth no more than the numbers behind it. The mark on our bylines is a mark, not a portrait — we publish under one desk byline, so there is no face to show.
