Editorial policy and funding

Japan IR Index is researched and edited by Joe Chang in Tokyo. He worked in investment banking and as a company CFO before investing in Japanese companies. More on the About page.

The Index is unpaid work. It takes no money from any company it covers: not for coverage, scoring, corrections or anything else. There is no advertising, sponsorship or paid placement. The scores, sources and method are free for anyone to read and use.

Joe Chang does no paid investor-relations or disclosure work outside the Index. He may hold shares in companies covered here; scores follow the same rules whether or not he does.

• Every score rests on a public document, recorded with its link and the date it was checked.
• A zero records where we looked and when.
• A question we have not checked yet is shown as not reviewed. It is never counted as zero.
• A company cannot pay for a score, negotiate it or approve it. Evidence a company sends us is checked the same way as anything we find ourselves.
• We do not certify companies or issue marks or badges. A score describes the English material we found on the review date.
• A score that changes because we corrected a research error or changed a rule is a change to our record, not to the company’s disclosure, and is never described as an improvement by the company.
• Disclosure scores say nothing about investment merit and are not investment advice.

All 128 companies are scored against GNT-BDS v1.1.1. Version 1.1 was fixed on 20 October 2026; version 1.1.1, on 21 October, clarified several rules after an independent audit, with the same questions and weights. If the questions, scoring rules or weights change, the change gets a new version number and a dated entry in the revision history. Scores that moved because of a rule change are labelled “Rule change” in the change log, with the previous score. Methodology →

AI tools help with searching, comparing documents and drafting. Every score is checked against the published document.

If something is wrong, please tell us. How to report it, how quickly we reply and how changes are labelled are set out on Contact and corrections.