Editorial Policy

Who Writes These Articles

Articles are produced by the EDO ONLINE editorial team. Generative AI is used to draft them, but every article is checked against sources by a person before publication.

These are not written by academic historians. They are an entry point, not a substitute for scholarship or for the primary sources themselves.

What We Base Them On

• Material published by municipalities, museums, universities and the National Diet Library
• Biographical dictionaries and encyclopedias
• Scholarship grounded in primary sources
• Load-bearing facts — dates of birth and death, chronology, place names, heritage designations — are cross-checked against more than one source

Rules We Write By

• We separate tradition from record. Unsupported anecdotes are marked as such rather than stated as fact
• Japanese era dates are converted to the Gregorian calendar and given alongside. A lunar month is never treated as the same-numbered Gregorian month — the gap is one to two months
• Ages are given in completed years. Where a traditional count is the familiar figure, we say so
• Where accounts genuinely differ, we present them side by side rather than picking one
• We do not simplify causation to make a story land better

About the Images

• Cover images use only public domain or CC0 material from Wikimedia Commons. CC BY and CC BY-SA material is not used
• The title, source and licence of each image are stated on the article page
• Where no qualifying material exists, the cover carries a design instead of a portrait, marked "portrait not available." This does not mean no likeness of the person survives

Updates and Corrections

Every article shows its publication date, and revised articles also show the date of revision.

When we find an error, we correct the text. Where the correction concerns a matter of fact rather than wording, the revision date is updated.