Submission terms & photo licence — Mei ID Desk

In brief

You keep the copyright in your photos and words.
You give us a free, non-exclusive permission to publish them on Japanese Knife Index, credited to the handle you choose.
You can withdraw that permission: email us and we take your photos and text down, normally within 7 days.
Only send photos you took yourself (or have the photographer's permission to send), of a knife you have in hand.
Nobody is paid or rewarded for submissions. Owner reports must be your own honest experience.
A reading is not an authentication or appraisal.

1. Who we are

Japanese Knife Index (“JKI”, “we”, “us”) at japaneseknifeindex.com is edited, published and operated by The JKI Editors (JKI編集部), Tokyo, Japan (the “Operator”). Contact: [email protected].

2. What the Mei ID Desk is

You can send us photos of the signature (mei, 銘) on a Japanese knife and ask us to read it. You may also add an optional owner report: short ratings and a description of your experience with the knife. The service is free. We do not buy, sell, value or broker knives, and we never charge for a reading or for faster handling.

We read cases in the order received and may decline any request, for example when the photos are not clear enough or we have too many requests. We aim to reply within about a week but do not guarantee an answer or a date.

3. Who can submit

You must be at least 18 years old (or the age of majority where you live) and either own the knife or have the owner's permission to send photos of it.

4. What you confirm when you submit

Your photos. You took the photos yourself, or the person who took them has allowed you to send them to us on these terms. They are not copied from a shop, an auction listing, social media or any other website.
A real knife in your hands. The photos show a real knife that you own or have in hand now.
Your own honest experience. Any owner report describes your own genuine experience with that knife and is written by you. You may use translation or spelling tools, but not text generated to stand in for an experience you did not have.
No undisclosed incentives or conflicts. Nobody has paid, rewarded or asked you to write a report or to give a particular rating. You have told us, using the disclosure options on the form, if you received the knife free or at a discount not open to the public, or if you (or close family) work in the knife trade. You will not submit an owner report about knives made or sold by a business you work for.
Accuracy. What you tell us about the knife (where and when you got it, what the shop said) is true to the best of your knowledge, and you will tell us if the knife is currently listed for sale.
Other people's information. Your photos and text do not include other people's personal data (faces, addresses, names) without their permission.

5. The licence you give us

You keep the copyright in your photos and in the words of your owner report. By submitting, you grant the Operator a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to:

store and copy your submission so we can read it, moderate it and keep the records described in our privacy notice;
if you chose to publish, show your photos and text on japaneseknifeindex.com (the case page, the Mei ID Desk index and the relevant maker page), in The Index Letter newsletter, and in posts on JKI's own official social-media accounts that point to the case;
make the technical and editorial changes needed to do that: resize, crop, re-encode, correct exposure, remove metadata (including location data), blur personal information, and add a small watermark with “JKI” and the case number. We will not change the meaning of your owner report; if we remove something (for example a phone number or a link), we say so on the page;
let our hosting and service providers process the files only as needed to run the site.

We credit published photos to the handle you give us, or “Anonymous” if you leave it blank. We do not sell or license your photos to anyone else, and we do not use them in advertising for other businesses.

Withdrawing your permission

This licence is revocable. Email [email protected] from the address you used (or quote your submission reference) and tell us what to remove. We will take the photos and/or text off the site, normally within 7 days, and not use them in future newsletters or posts. We cannot recall newsletters already sent, and we cannot control copies made by others (such as search-engine caches or web archives), but we will delete our own social-media posts that show your photos and use available removal tools where we can. We may keep a minimal internal record that a case existed and was withdrawn (see the privacy notice). The editors' reading text may stay published without your photos unless you ask us to remove the whole case.

Reuse by others

Photos on Mei ID Desk pages are not published under a Creative Commons or other open licence, and the licence above does not let anyone else reuse them. If you would like to reuse a photo, write to [email protected]; we will pass your request to the contributor, who decides. The editors' reading text is © The JKI Editors; short quotations with a link to the case are welcome.

6. Moderation

A person checks every submission before anything is published. We publish, decline or remove content only under our content & review policy, which also lists everything we will not accept. We never decide whether to publish an owner report based on whether its ratings are high or low.

7. A reading is not an authentication

We read and translate the mei from your photos and give our opinion of who most likely made the knife, with a confidence level and sources. We do not handle the knife, certify that it is genuine, or value it. A case page must not be presented as a certificate of authenticity, for example in a sales listing. See the full disclaimer.

8. What you must not send

Fake or paid-for reviews; reports about your own business's knives; photos you do not have the right to share; spam, advertising or affiliate links; content that impersonates a maker, shop or another person; content that is unlawful, defamatory, harassing, obscene or discriminatory; anything meant to help sell a counterfeit. If we find that someone has broken these terms, we may remove all of their submissions and refuse future ones.

9. Liability

We provide the Mei ID Desk free of charge and in good faith, as an information service. To the extent the law allows, the Operator is not liable for decisions you or others make on the basis of a reading, including buying or selling a knife. Nothing in these terms limits any rights you have under the consumer-protection laws of the country where you live, or liability that cannot legally be limited.

10. Changes and governing law

Each version of these terms is dated. A change applies to submissions sent after it is published; we will not widen the licence for photos you have already sent without asking you. These terms are governed by the laws of Japan, without depriving you of the protection of mandatory consumer laws where you live.

Version 2026-10-17. See also: Content & review policy · Submission terms & photo licence · Submission privacy notice · Not an authentication · Corrections · Affiliate disclosure.