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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Freshgavin (talk | contribs) at 07:26, 11 November 2005 (→Subway Station Names). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Archived discussions

See also the old discussion of the name order in the article title.

Japanese translation note

The former article "Japanese translation note" is now available at

City names

Discussion continued from Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style for Japan-related articles/Cities

I am not so sure about what I might accomplish here but I want to try to write about some historical background and sort out things. (I have been following the debate but has been distracted by a snap election in Japan :) I was hoping to see some consensus to emerge but it didn't happen very unfortunately.
Among issues we have here, one is about the procedure; that's how to come up with a convention and enforce it. I am the who started this page with a hope to ensure the consistency in style and, more importantly, gives a quick guideline to those who contribute to Japan-related articles. In other words, I believe the manual of style must both be consistent about style and reflect the views of the majority of contributors. I don't suppose that there is a correct style and an incorrect one but one that is preferred by many and and one that is preferred by few. To reflect the preferences of contributors, we, however, should look at not just the sheer numbers of contributors but those who do actual many contributions to many articles. In this case, the likes of Rick Block do a lot of tedious but very invaluable edits, and we must agree that we can't ignore the voices of those and the manual of style, if any, needs to be something preferred by such people. They may appear to be authority figure policing articles, but that's something we badly need in wikipedia. I have seen so many valuable contributors leaving wikipedia because they think the editing process here is not functioning, and we all should agree that
In any rate, we are probably all aware of problems so I don't have to repeat here. Instead, I started a new page Explanatory note for Japan-related articles. Some people (i.e., User:WhisperToMe and Jefu) have suggested to put a footnote at each article to inform readers about the conventions. So I thought we can put a link to this page at each article in the form of footnote, and we can prevent disparity from arising between those who follow this manual of style and those who are unaware of it and obliviously create inconsistency when they try to fix a problem. -- Taku 01:11, August 26, 2005 (UTC)
Sounds like a good idea. I think part of the problem is, as you said, many people are unaware of the conventions and why they arose. I commented a little more on the footnote idea below. CES 02:26, 26 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hm.. I thought I made an edit here, but it appears not. Resuscitating the tail of the discussion for the moment, can be packed away again if anything is actually resolved.

I disagree strongly that this is a case of needing to 'educate the ignorant' - this is a case where editors focused on the specialist need to learn from common useage. As I see it, editors had a problem with not having a naming scheme for Japanese cities, and came up with a nice simple rule. But when they met valid objections on various talk pages for requested moves, rather than actually trying to rethink the idea and gain concensus on a revision, instead held a quick poll in this tucked-away corner of wikip and then used that as an excuse to railroad the proposal through.

Personally I think the current wording of the MoS (J) is overly prescriptive, and fails to acknowledge that there are always difficult cases and exceptions where rigidly applying a set rule is detrimental. Note how the 'Person names' section addresses the fact there is not a complete consensus on the issue, and links to the relevant discussion. I'd suggest that the placenames section needs to be changed *now* to something similar - by someone who has the diploma or whatever that's required to be allowed to edit the page without just being unthinkingly reverted. At the moment this section just doesn't reflect either consensus or the reality of current (apparent) policy. -- zippedmartin 21:57, 6 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Japanese Dates

Would a mention of the Japanese system of naming years be useful? I just found an example of some one refering to "Showa 33" as "Hirohito 33" - [[1]]. 07:06, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

A short paragraph with a link to Japanese era name would suffice I think. JeroenHoek 11:35, 6 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Now for my next pet topic: dates. This will only be of interest to people interested in pre-Meiji Japanese history, but I'm noticing a lot of date problems, misunderstandings and inconsistencies in Wikipedia. As many of you probably know, Japan used a lunisolar calendar prior to January 1, 1873. I think we should adopt a standard of primarily using Japanese months and dates for dates prior to this. The reasons are:

  1. Virtually all Japanese language history sources use Japanese dates exclusively. In fact I don't think I've ever seen one that has taken the trouble to actually convert them into Western dates, because there is no need to do so.
  2. Although I'm not as familiar with English language Japanese history sources, I'm pretty sure that using Japanese dates is the standard in English sources as well.
  3. Note that this has no effect on dates after January 1, 1873 (Gregorian), which is the date that Japan adopted the Gregorian calendar, so dates from modern Japanese history would remain as is (this is also the standard in Japanese history books.)

In any event, this has to be a one or the other proposition. If we end up with some articles that use Japanese dates and some that use converted Gregorian or Julian dates prior to 1873, we will end up with a confused mess when trying to compare when various Japanese events happened in relation to one another.

The only exception I would propose is events that are added to the "On this day in history" pages. For events in Japanese history prior to 1873 that are added to these pages, I think they should be converted to Western dates. I've actually been adding a number of such items, and what I have been doing is converting pre-1873 dates to Gregorian, adding the Japanese historical event to that particular date in Wikipedia, and then including a parenthetical at the end of the entry that gives the date according to the traditional Japanese calendar (to avoid confusion.)

Assuming this is acceptable, the only problem is what we should do about the Wikipedia rule on dates that other calendars can be used, so long as the date is given in Julian and/or Gregorian as well (See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Different Calendars. Do people think this is really necessary? If so, what format would you suggest for doing so? One way to do it is to footnote the Japanese date and include the Gregorian or Julian equivalent in the footnote. In that case I think the Japanese date should not be linked (since it would link to the wrong date anyway) but the date in the footnote should be linked. For an example, please see: Emperor Konin of Japan. Any thoughts? -Jefu 07:44, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

Western dates have an obvious advantage in that you can subtract them. It's hard to guess how long the Onin War was when you know that it ran from Onin 1 to Bunmei 9. Knowing that the years were 1467 and 1477 makes it easier. Fg2 12:09, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I wasn't very clear. I'm talking only about the months and days. I do not mean to suggest that we should use Japanese eras for the years. For example, January 18, 1467 by the Japanese calendar (the date that fighting between Hatayama Yoshinari and Hatayama Masanaga broke out, which escalated into the Onin War) was actually February 13, 1467 by the Julian calendar (which is the one Wikipedia mandates since the date was before October 15, 1582.)

It seems like having both dates would be best ... I think either way you have the potential for confusion as some sources will use Japanese dates and others will use Western dates (and the sources might not make it clear which they are using). Wherever possible, I'd suggest having both dates, with the Western date given priority (although the articles are on Japanese subjects, this is still the English Wikipedia). CES 13:45, 17 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
When you say "Japanese subjects," you are using Japanese to refer to a culture/country. But when you say "English Wikipedia" you are using English to refer to a language. In other words, I don't think this has anything to do with the language. I think it has everything to do with the culture. While I don't necessarily disagree that we should probably have both dates (and that is what the Wikipedia style requires), I do not necessarily agree that priority should be given to Western dates. I also note the following from the preface to Volume 1 of The Cambridge History of Japan: "Years recorded in Japanese eras (nengō) are converted to years by the Western calendar, but months and days are not." This is exactly what I am proposing, except that we should probably also include the Western dates (Gregorian or Julian as the case may be) in footnotes, which goes a step beyond The Cambridge History of Japan. -Jefu 15:15, August 17, 2005 (UTC)
What would be the problem with using both sets of dates? john k 15:33, 17 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Hoo, boy, this is a tricky one. Not sure quite what to do...
While I'm pondering, a few comments on the language/culture issue. For the vast majority of languages around the world, language and culture are deeply connected. That's not the case for English (and there are a few others where this is true, like Spanish). Still, English is the primary language (i.e. language spoken at home by the majority of people) in only a few sizeable countries (UK, US, Canada, NZ, Australia) , and they all have fairly similar cultures. So it is cultural, too. Noel (talk) 13:30, 18 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Not a problem really, just a bit of a pain to calculate since virtually all sources that give specific dates give Japanese dates only. What I would really like to do with this dialog is come up with a standard format for presenting dates and add a section in this article explaining whatever format we come up with. An example of my proposal can be seen in the article Emperor Konin of Japan. I think footnoting is far less clumsy than putting two dates in the actual text along with labels for which one is which. But I'm certainly open to other suggestions. -Jefu 15:41, August 17, 2005 (UTC)
Hmm...I have to say that it seems really weird having dates not line up like that, and with it only noted in footnotes. I think if people see a date, they will assume it is the Gregorian or Julian date. At any rate, events of significance in both Japanese and western history (like Perry's visit), should certainly give both dates. john k 15:56, 17 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I looked at two articles on the Japanese Wikipedia. ja:大政奉還 gives dates using both systems and ja:大化の改新 doesn't specify (but the date they gave links to ja:6月12日 (旧暦) which is the old system). Not quite sure where this leaves us... Fg2 05:52, August 18, 2005 (UTC)
Part of the question is what is typical in the West when speaking about Japanese history. I've got to believe that using Japanese dates without conversion is the norm. I don't have that many English language resources on Japanese history prior to 1873 (partly because there simply aren't very many), but I did check two huge standards. Sansom's books seem not to give specific dates for events, only years. One specific date I noticed while leafing through them was the date that the Treaty of Amity was signed with the United States, which was translated into the Western date (which, in hat context, I think makes perfect sense, but for most of Japanese history, it probably does not.) What's the point in giving the primary date of Taika no Kaishin as July 10, 645 when virtually everyone familiar with this event knows it as June 12? And my second source was the Cambridge History of Japan which, as I mention above, uses the Japanese dates as is and only translates the year into Western years (and converting the year is common practice among Japanese historians as well.) The problem with giving primarily Western dates, other than the fact that for 95% of the events in Japanese history there is simply no need to do so, is that the resources out there that people are liable to check are overwhelmingly Japanese and they of course use Japanese dates. If there were tons of English language books on Japanese ancient history that took the trouble to translate all the dates into Gregorian or Julian, I might understand the preference. But as long as we footnote the dates and make it clear that they are Japanese dates that are standard for use in speaking about Japanese history, I think we should be fine. I honestly think translating the dates and giving the western dates will introduce confusion rather than quell it. -Jefu 06:38, August 18, 2005 (UTC)
Someone else, who may join the discussion here shortly, seems to have an issue with using January, February, etc. when talking about months in the old Japanese calendar. I'm not at all animated about this issue. I think as long as you make it clear that we are talking about Japanese dates in the footnote, who cares if you translate ichigatsu as January? The calendars don't line up anyway. Although using phrases for Japanese dates of, for example, "the 12th day of the sixth month, 645" may provide a stronger signal than a footnote that the dates are Japanese and not Western (to respond to a concern raised above), you would then have the problem of what to do about the leap months (known as uruuzuki in Japanese). In the Japanese calendar there were essentially repeated months every few years to keep the months basically aligned with the seasons. So in a year where the repeated month is february, you would have ichigatsu (first month, or January), nigatsu (second month, or February), uruu nigatsu (leap second month, or Leap February), etc. But if you start translating months into english using ordinals you get into a weird situation where it looks like you are using ordinals, but where the leap month (which is the third ordinal month) wouldn't be referred to as the third month. I think it just gets too bizarre. To me it is far more preferable to use the month labels that English speakers are already familiar with and just append "leap" to the uruuzuki. So in my example above you would have January, February, Leap February, March...December. Anyway, we'll let him speak up on this issue when he joins the conversation. -Jefu 06:38, August 18, 2005 (UTC)
I am absolutely, utterly, opposed to using "January" instead of "first month". For one, it's simply wrong (and mis-leading to our readers); the two system are just different, end of story. Second, a lot of the time the months don't even approximately match up, because the lunar New Year often fell a long way from January 1 (e.g. in Meiji 5, when they converted, the 2nd day, 12th month was December 31st; I see one source that says "The first lunar month of the year always corresponded with the sign Pisces during the months of February and March"). Add in intercalary months, and it gets even worse. Either convert the dates properly (see my note below), or leave them in the Japanese calendar. Noel (talk) 23:09, 18 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I'm slowly beginning to see how the Japanese convention makes sense. If we do make one (Japanese dates) the standard, I would advocate allowing editors to add the other (Western dates) at their option. And an article on the traditional Japanese system of dates, with content like what you just wrote, would be helpful for readers. (It could go in Japanese calendar, but that article's already pretty far-reaching; certainly, a link from there would be useful.) Fg2 07:08, August 18, 2005 (UTC)
My proposal, which I would suggest we add to this Manual of Style, is that authors use Japanese dates prior to 1873 (unless, of course, you don't know it for some reason, but I doubt that would happen) and footnote it. The footnote would say that it is a Japanese date and not a western date, and it would give the Western date, which thanks to several online sites, are relatively easy to convert. I don't think I would advocate using Japanese dates without indicating in some manner that it is, in fact, a Japanese date. For an example of the style I propose see Emperor Konin of Japan
And I would be happy to write an article, or add to the existing one, about the old Japanese calendar. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jefu (talk • contribs) 07:34, 18 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Can you please point us to these several online sites? Thanks! Noel (talk) 23:09, 18 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
If most dates in source books about Japanese history are given with the Japanese date, but if this date is indeed easy to convert as the above user indicates (please sign your posts!), why not use both in the article then? This is the English wikipedia, and by English I of course refer not only to the language but the culture of English speakers, most of whom assume a date is in the Julian/Gregorian system when they see a date. Leaving out the western date would be inappropriate in my opinion. CES 12:52, 18 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I was wondering: is there a reason why English-language sources of Japanese history use the Japanese date? Is that just a convention that arose from translating Japanese sources? No matter which way we end up going with this, we'll need a footnote. CES 13:10, 18 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, I don't know. It's going to be one heck of a lot of work to convert Japanese dates, isn't it? (Which may be a good part of why nobody does it! :-) Is there a table somewhere which says which months were short (29 days) and which were long (30 days) in each year? (Since the pattern changed every year, with no two years ever using the same pattern, at least in theory.) I seem to recall seeing one in some reference book, but I can't recall where. (I know that in the Edo period e-goyomi were produced as a way of propogating that information, because of the government monopoly on printing of calendars.) And then there are the inter-calary months, but tables of years with those are common.
One thing I'm not too sure about is the start date (in the Western calendar) for each Japanese year; is that easy to work out (based on whether or not the previous year had an intercalary month, etc), or was is based on astronomical events (which would of course require more research)? Actually, a (large :-) table which simple allowed on to look up a Japanese year, and see on which Western dates each Japanese month of that year started would be the best of all, but does one exist? Without some practical means of conversion, the issue of whether we should convert them may be moot. Noel (talk) 13:30, 18 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I located that table of long/short months; it's in Egoyomi and Surimono, by Matthi Forrer - but it only covers dates from Genroku forward. (I scanned in the first page here if anyone wants to see what it looks like.) We ought to have this info in Wikipedia, so if there's no online source, I volunteer to scan the table in and OCR it (although I'd like a hand for proofreading, etc).
Before I do any more on this, though, can I ask Jefu to point us to those online sources that do date conversion? No sense in duplicating anything... Noel (talk) 23:21, 18 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I understand it might be a fag, but I think editors should try and convert dates as they write. It's silly to expect readers (of English, primarily familiar with the western calendar) to sidetrack and read an article on Japanese dating systems just to be able to learn about the history of Japan, then perform on-the-fly date conversion, for each and every article on a pre-Meiji topic. Also, I like the wiki feature of having clickable dates in history articles that give context - currently these pages tend to be quite euro-centric, but that won't change unless there's date conversion from other systems. I agree a page explaining conversion is needed, either way. --zippedmartin 23:46, 18 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

As to Noel's comments above, I don't understand the opposition to using the names of dates that are already familiar to English readers. What does "February" convey to an English speaker other than "second month of the year"? Do you think that when a reader sees "second month" they don't automatically generate an association with the word "February" anyway? To give a perfect example of how this does not create confusion, I give you the Japanese language. The second month of the year is called nigatsu whether one is speaking about the old calendar or the new. And although nigatsu is literally second month. Japanese readers don't go around saying "Oh, that's nigatsu in the year 740, so it may have been more like what I think of now as ichigatsu." The only important thing is to convey to the English reader that the dates are Japanese dates. And if we provide them with a conversion (which I think can done fairly easily), we can actually pinpoint them to the exact date in the calendar they are accustomed to. And by the way, what do you propose we call Leap February for a year where the second month is repeated under your proposed system? -Jefu 23:52, August 18, 2005 (UTC)
Just as an example of how dates can convey different information, the attack of the Forty-seven Ronin took place on December 14 according to the Japanese traditional calendar, and that's barely (or not even) winter. But it was January 30 by the Western calendar, very close to dead center of winter. Similarly, knowing whether a battle or campaign began before or after the harvest can be of interest (if the soldiers also farmed). Fg2 01:58, August 19, 2005 (UTC)
I would support having bracketed info, such as "1973 (Shōwa 48)," but anything beyond that -- as in "January 1467 (February 1467)" -- could get exceedingly confusing. Exploding Boy 00:57, August 19, 2005 (UTC) -- Added: I think that for the majority of the readership, having Western dates be primary in the articles makes the most sense. I'd be quite happy to see a footnote that explained that X Western date correspnds to Y date by the old Japanese calendar, however. Exploding Boy 01:04, August 19, 2005 (UTC)
I don't have a 'proposed system' - I just raised an objection (basically that of the ExplodingBoy addition above). As I presume the unsigned comment saying only "talking only about the months and days" is yours, the worst implication of your proposal is at least nullified, in that the reader still gets a comparative clickable 1473 etc. History articles should really not require the reading of lengthy calender debates though, just to mentally place events 'in the right order'. --zippedmartin 01:16, 19 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I can't believe we're having this discussion about writiting "day X, 1st month" (say) as "January Xth". There's a very simple reason not to do so: it's incorrect. Day 1 of First Month is not January 1! HELLLLLOOOOOO! This is supposed to be a quality encyclopaedia, not a place where we knowingly include incorrect data because we're too [insert choice phrase] to do it right.
Jefu may have a bit of a point that naive readers may read "3rd day, 4th month" and mentally translate it to "April 3rd". The solution, however, is to stop using the word "month", which gives naive readers the impression that it is the "months" they are familiar with that are being referred to. Use some other word/phrase: "calendar period", "lunar month", whatever.
We have only two viable choices: i) use Japanese dates, and make absolutely clear that these dates are in the Japanese lunar calendar, or ii) convert them properly to the correct Western-style calendar dates. I don't have a strong preference one way or the other; I lean to the second (for the convenience of the bulk of our readers) - but only if we have an easy way to do the correct conversion. Noel (talk) 02:37, 19 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

These slow Wiki servers are really making it hard to post comments. I thought I responded earlier to the question of sites for date conversion, but it was either never accepted or it disappeared. Anyway, the site that I always use for date conversion (and it converts correctly into Gregorian and Julian) is here: [http://www2s.biglobe.ne.jp/~yochicaz/]. The problem is it is in Japanese and I haven't found one in English. Anyway, it is easy to navigate. In the menu on the left there is a section of links that all say "VB Script" or "CGI" after the link. Click the third from the bottom. In the frame that appears top right, the entry fields are year, month, date. The next button is "Convert", the second button is "Clear", the left radio button is to convert Japanese to Gregorian/Julian and the right radio button is to convert Gregorian/Julian to Japanese. The answer appears in the main frame and appears after the "-->". The numbers that result are year, month and date. -Jefu 03:18, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

Interesting. Can you figure out how it works, to make sure it's correct? I.e. does this site really have a complete database of the dai and sho month patterns for each year? (See the link I provided above to my scan of one page of such a table.) If so, is there any way to pull that information out, so we can include it in an article (well, OK, maybe it's a separate page, given how long it's going to be :-) on the Japanese lunar calendar system? Noel (talk) 04:33, 19 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I just discovered something very cool. If you go back to the left side and click on the last link in the script section (two down from the one I mentioned above) you will get a Japanese to Western only conversion function. This time the input is a box where you input YYYY M D separated by spaces. To input the leap month, you need to input YYYY 閏M D. Anyway, if you put in a nonsense date, the panel below will give you a sort of warning that includes the short and long months in that particular year. So for any particular year you can just enter YYYY 1 31 (which will be a nonsense date for every year in the Japanese calendar). The long months are marked with a 大 and the short are marked with a 小 (the leap month is marked with a 閏 before the month and I'm not sure what the 13 is...). Anyway, I just checked about half of your scanned list and it all appears to be correct. I also sent an e-mail to an e-mail address I found on the site to see if the guy will send me his script. We'll see what happens. I could easily create an English language form on my own site that uses English input and accesses his script, but I'm actually more concerned about the site going bad. He hasn't updated it in several years. -Jefu 05:33, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

And as for Noel's and Fg2's points above, the issue of how to name the months certainly isn't as clear as you both make it out to be. If it is, you're going to have to let all 130 million Japanese, including the thousands of historians here, that they need to relabel their months when speaking of the old calendar to avoid the mass confusion that you are saying would ensue. Japanese have happily been reading for years that the attack of the 47 ronin happened on December 14th (12月14日) even though everyone here draws precisely the same association with that date that anyone who lives in a part of the Northern Hemisphere where there are four distinct seasons. And making people go through the mental gymnastics of calling months first month, second month (or even more ridiculous first lunar month, first calendar unit, first dodecaunit, or whatever), when they're going to mentally translate into the months they are accustomed to anyway, is a very pedantic writing style as opposed to a user friendly writing style, that aids in understanding. The word "February" conveys exactly the same concept as second month, which is the same information that is conveyed to a Japanese reader who reads "２月." The only important thing (and I agree it is very important) is to signal to the reader that the dates are given in a different calendar. Calling it 14th day of the 12th month isn't going to let people know that it was the end of January any more than calling it December 14th will. And if you footnote December 14th and note that this was January 30th by the Julian calendar, this is in no way inferior or more confusing than calling it the 14th day of the 12th month and noting in the footnote that it was January 30th. -Jefu 03:18, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

The thing is that I expect most Japanese know full well that "1st month" means one thing in 1800 and something quite different in 1900. However, I doubt one Western reader in 1,000 knows that. Which is why it's safe to 'overload' (to use the computer science term) the term '1st month' with two different meanings in Japan - and not safe to do so in the West.
And as far as "pedant"ry goes, if that's what it takes to avoid including knowingly incorrect data, well, yeah, we'll have to live with it. Writing "January 3rd" on something when we know that it didn't happen on the day known to most readers as "January 3rd" is just plain wrong.
Besides, if we adopt your suggestion to write "3rd day, first month" as "January 3", then when someone is reading a Japanese-subject article and comes across "January 3", how exactly do you tell if it's really January 3rd (Western), or "3rd day, first month"? People just aren't going to be careful, and always give whatever little mark distinguishes one kind of "January 3rd" from the other. However, if we use a completely different syntax for Japanese dates, and only ever use "January" for Western-calendar dates, there's no problem.
If we want to put in Japanese dates, we have to include some explicit sign that they are in a different calendrical system - "lunar month" is a least a "heads up" that something funny is going on. The other option is to (correctly) convert all dates to Western-system date (Julian or Gregorian, as the case may be, depending on how old they are). Noel (talk) 04:33, 19 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Let me go home and check my Cambridge History of Japan on this point. I know that they use Japanese dates without conversion, but I don't remember how they translate them. To be honest, I never even imagined this particular issue would be such a sticking point with people, probably because I've been reading Japanese dates that use the same words for both old and new for so long that it never even occurred to me that you wouldn't use January through December when translating into English as well. I mean I can see the point you are trying to make, but it certainly is not so obviously "wrong" to me. I still don't understand what February conveys to an English reader other than "second month of the year." Using anything else just seems far too bizarre for any added benefit. -Jefu 05:33, August 19, 2005 (UTC)
Well, I can't speak for all native English speakers, but to me they have always been the names of months in the Western calendar, with no particular ordering significance. (Ironically, the names "September" - "December" are in fact originally Latin names whose literal meaning is "seventh month" (sic!) through "tenth month" (sic)! In other words, they are off by two!) But I think you've put your finger right on it - when one's native language's name for a month is simply "Xth month", it's easy to take away the meaning as being ordering; but when it's just a random name, with no other meaning, you tend to lose a lot of that sense. Noel (talk) 16:50, 19 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, it looks like I stand corrected. I stopped at the Maruzen near Tokyo Station this evening and checked out a number of English books on Japanese history. All of them used "Third Day of the Fifth Month" format for dates (one book didn't capitalize the words). The only book that used January, etc. was the Keene book about Emperor Meiji, but they were all converted dates (which makes sense for that period of history, even though the first several years were under the old calendar). It still seems rather bizarre to me, but I guess it is because I'm so used to reading dates in Japanese which uses the same term for modern months and months under the old calendar. Anyway, I'll drop my objection to using numbered months. But I do think the primary dates should be Japanese and the converted dates should be in parentheses or in footnotes (maybe parenthese in text but footnotes when the dates themselves are already in parentheses like the birth and death dates for someone). But I'm still not sure of what to call the leap month. Should it be "Third Day of the Leap Fifth Month" or "Third Day of the Intercalary Fifth Month". I sure don't want to have to use intercalary. Nobody would have any idea what it means. Any other suggestions? -Jefu 11:54, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

There's an article at Intercalation. "Leap month" or "intercalary" could link to it. Fg2 12:16, August 19, 2005 (UTC)
Okay. In that case I guess using intercalary wouldn't be so bad. On further reflection "Intercalary Fifth Month" does sound better than "Leap Fifth Month." although the intercalation article itself needs to be expanded a bit to discuss the insertion of months into lunisolar calendars. -Jefu 12:23, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

Isn't the most important thing to convey the information in such a way that readers will understand it readily? What on earth is wrong with giving the Western date -- we're still talking about the same moment in time after all, and the Western date is the one that will be understood by the majority of readers -- as primary, and providing an explanation of the corresponding Japanese historical date by way of a footnote? Exploding Boy 19:10, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

The biggest reason is that translated dates aren't used by anyone to my knowledge. People reading and studying Japanese history prior to 1873 are going to be exposed to Japanese dates, whether they are reading in English or Japanese. Why should Wikipedia be an exception to that? It is Japanese history after all. -Jefu 00:32, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

Noel as an old hacker I would have thought that you would have suggested date conversion automation. No idea if it works but here is an example:[2]

There are good reasons for putting in conversions, it will help none experts if they wish to compare history in Japan with contemporary history elsewhere. Most English speaking none experts will have no idea when an event took place in Japan if the year is not described in the Gregorian/Julian calender. As to the conversion of the month/day, if it is needed then it should be done correctly (whatever that means see below). For example the campaign season was presumably in the northern hemisphere summer in Japan and, if so, a battle which take place out of the usual campaign season would be be notable. It may well be that experts feel more comfortable with Japanese dates, but those should be included as secondary dates as they are going to be a minority of the potential audience.

In the middle ages in Europe dates are often written as "In the third year of the reign of XXX", (and the day of often given by the saint of the day), but people expect them to be converted into the Julian/Gregorian calender in contemporary articles. (BTW as an aside the battle of Austerlitz is an example of where the simultaneous use of the two calenders had a big impact on history. The Austrians (and the French) were using Gregorian and the Russians Julian so France won the battle as the Russians did not turn up on the expected day!). As by that time the British were using the Gregorian the date of Austerlitz is always recorded in Engish accounts using the Gregorian system. However with dates before 3 September 1752 can be in either and some confusion exists. There is also the problem in Engish of the start of the year, see peypes Diary FAQ "Why do some years appear like 1659/60 instead of just 1660?" the new start of the year was adopted on 1 January 1753. What tends to be the solution for those who bother to worry about it is is that the 1st January will be specified in as the start of year being January 1st, but the day will be mapped as if there was not 12 days diffrence. So an event which took place on 12th of January 1659 old calander, will be mapped to 12th of Jaunuary 1660 in modern texts. This is so that events like the Battle of Agincourt can be thought of as taking place on St Crispins day rather than 12 days later! Philip Baird Shearer 11:52, 20 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Philip, the problem with automated date conversion support is that our hard-working developers will probably get to it in 2008 or so! Also, nobody (AFAICT) is proposing that we use year dates of the form "Go-Mizunoo 5" - I think everyone agrees that years need to be in BC/AD form, for ease of understanding and comparison.
As to days of the year, in practical terms, for events before 1939, I don't think comparison of days in the year to see if event X in the West happened before or after event Y in Japan is ever an issue, really (with the possible exception of the Russo-Japanese War of ought-whatever - and there you have to deal with the fact that Russia was still on the Julian calendar at the time :-), so I don't think that's a strong reason there. I think Jefu has a very good point that anyone studying Japanese history to any degree at all will soon come up against days in the form "X month, Yth day" - that is absolutely true. I personally don't have a strong feeling either way, as to which of the two day dating systems we should use. Noel (talk) 12:54, 20 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Philip, I've never suggested that we shouldn't have Western dates. I just don't think we should have Western dates exclusively. And since Japanese dates are used exclusively in the literature (at least in my experience), I think the Japanese date should be the primary date given. We could then either footnote the Western date or put it in a parenthetical. Part of the reason I started this discussion was just to agree on a format for dates that could then be added to the project page. We got sidetracked briefly on wether to use First Month or January, but I think we're back on track now. -Jefu 13:00, August 20, 2005 (UTC)
Anyway, my suggestion is that for dates that are in parentheticals, we put the Western converted date in a footnote. For dates that are in the text we can put the date in parentheses (although the first instance of a Japanese date should be footnoted to explain to the reader that Japan uses a different calendar and provide appropriate links.) -Jefu 13:00, August 20, 2005 (UTC)
And by the way, Japan adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1873 so it is only dates prior to that that are an issue. And other than a few isolated events (Perry's arrival in Uraga is another that comes to mind), I don't think the comparison issue is anything to be concerned about either. -Jefu 13:00, August 20, 2005 (UTC)
Ah, let me make sure I understand your proposal - your reference to "Western dates" and "Japanese dates" made me wonder. As you saying we should put dates in as "1st month, 3rd day, Go-Mizunoo 5" (and then the Western equivalent), or "1st month, 3rd day, 1615" (and then the Western day-of-the-year)?
Also, I see a lot of Japanese articles already seem to use "January", etc when they really mean "First month" - see, for example, Tokugawa Ieyasu.
Finally, in reference our previous conversation about whether "January" has a meaning of "first month" to Westerners - it turns out that before about 1600 or so (it varies from country to country), in the West, the year didn't start on January 1 in most countries! (I had forgotten about this!) Some used March 1, others used other dates! See Julian calendar#Beginning of the year and New Year#Historical dates for the new year for more. Noel (talk) 13:33, 20 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I think it is very important to use the Western years. Japanese history is divided into too many eras for such dates to make any sense to anyone but the most hardcore historian (even in Japanese, dates are almost always accompanied by Western years to give people some sort of bearing, and Japanese schoolchildren learn important events using Western years.) However, I think we should come up with a format to get in all 3 pieces of information. Since the year is already in the Western date, what if we used a format like this: "First Month, Third Day, Fifth year of Kaei (January 23, 1852)" -Jefu 04:15, August 21, 2005 (UTC)
It seems to me that the main issue here is not so much Japanese vs. English-speaking-world culture, but that the articles in question are part of Wikipedia, which is a huge encyclopedia covering many subjects, all of which are linked together. Because of this, I think it would be a very good idea to use a uniform calendar as the primary one for all articles, viz. the Julian calendar before October, 1582 and the Gregorian calendar afterwards. We can certainly give the dates according to other calendards as a parenthetical addition. Further, Wikipedia is considered to be a work in progress, so there's no reason for dismay in cases where the dates are not yet converted to Julian/Gregorian, especially when this is difficult to do. However, it would probably also be a good idea for us to make it very clear when we are using some other calendar, so as to avoid confusion. I definitely agree that calling the months of the Japanese calendar January, February, etc. is inadvisable. How about just leaving them untranslated? For instance, "November 31, 1582 (3 Ichigatsu, 5 Kaei)"? - Nat Krause 05:22, 21 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
In the English speaking world the change over date is 2/14 September 1752. Even the UNIX command "cal" uses that date! Start of year is confusing but usually kept as January 1st in most texts for all of history. Certainly most computerised programs run using that assumption. One of the propeller-head sports in the year 2000 (Y2K) testing was to check if a program had a year 0 or not. There is also a leap year problem to consider if one does not use the Gregorian clanadar throughout for example was the year 400 a leap year or not? However for day to day usage starting the year on January 1st and mapping to the Julian/Gregorian either side of Sep 1752 is good enough for most of Eurpean mediaeval events if one is not tying in celestial observations. I am not sure what is done by historians for places other than Europe and for European cultures before the high middle ages though. Philip Baird Shearer 15:58, 21 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I know that for British history the 1752 date is normally the cut-off. But it was always my understanding that continental events between 1582 and 1752 are normally given in the Gregorian calendar. john k 18:28, 21 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

e.g. the Battle of Blenheim is always given as August 13, 1704. Isn't that the Gregorian date? john k 18:29, 21 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I checked and yes you are correct. It seems that the old joke about New Zealand was true about the UK at this time "You are now disembarking in England please put your watch back 11 days". So William of Orange arrived at Brixham in England on November 5, after a setting sail from the Netherlands on November 11[3]! Irish bashing took place under the "Old Style (OS)" calender on July 1 but is rembered as taking place on July 12 "New Style (NS)". Why William is rembered as landing on November 5 OS but fighting a battle on July 12 NS is odd (I guess in the case of the battle of the Boyne that it is to do with protastants not at first recognising popish dates so they continued to celebrate the aniversery on their protastant 1st of July). Dating and time anomalies still cause some problems, for example the attack on Pearl Harbor and the international date line. It looks from the dates using Zulu time, as if the Japanese waited a day to attack in Asia which is not true, it was on the the same day but a different date! Or the end of the War II in Europe which was on the 9th not the 8th under Zulu time and British double summer time. I have to say that before this discussion I had not given the topic of dates before 1752 much thought, but now my head is starting to heart :-( --Philip Baird Shearer 20:08, 21 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, what a mess. Personally, I would like to see Wikipedia standardize all dates to Gregorian after October, 1582 while being completely clear about what we're doing so as to minimize confusion. In the meantime, this does present the opportunity for confusion in Japanese history articles that give dates between 1582 and 1752. I still think what we should do for dates before and after is pretty clear. - Nat Krause 09:19, 22 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I basically agree. Use retrospective Julian and Julian before 1582, Gregorian after. Note old style dates in parentheses where appropriate. john k 16:33, 22 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Which date goes in the parentheses may seem like a minor point, but I guess the biggest problem I have with using Western dates primarily is the fact that the Japanese date is the only date we can ever really be sure of. In other words, there is no argument among historians that certain incidents in Japanese history happened on certain universally agreed upon dates. But the agreed upon date is the date according to the old Japanese calendar. What those dates convert into isn't always clear as you point out in the discussion above, not to mention the fact that anyone studying Japanese history prior to 1873 is going to come across almost exclusively (and perhaps even exclusively) Japanese dates in the literature. I agree we should include Western dates, but they should just be a guide to the reader to give them bearing using the calendar to which they are accustomed, and to give the author the ability to link those incidents into the rest of Wikipedia. In other words, I think the Western date should be given secondarily and should go in parentheses. -Jefu 01:22, August 24, 2005 (UTC)

Sorry for joining the discussion late, but consensus has apparently been reached on a system I completely agree with. I agree with Noel on almost all points, especially that a Japanese date like Month 2, Day 3 must not be given in an apparently Western form like February 3. For a non-Japanese reader, a date like "February 3" would never be viewed as month 2 day 3. Stating that "February 3" is in the Japanese lunisolar calendar is useless. When Jefu added that note to Emperor Konin of Japan, I did not understand what he meant even though I am quite familar with the traditional Chinese calendar, having studied it for many years. However, the Japanese year should be given in a Japanese style like 5 Kaei or as a number of years since Emperor Jimmu Tenno in 660 BC. Of course it must also be stated in a Western year, but it must be the correct Western year. If the Japanese date is in month 12, the Western year is almost certainly in the year after the year given by a table of nengo years. Repeating the western year found in a nengo table only compounds an existing error for the one or two Japanese months at the end of a Japanese year.
I agree with Jefu that the Japanese date should be given first, and with the equivalent Western date in parentheses or as a footnote (but I would not object to the inverse). The exact order for the elements of a Japanese date is not my concern, although it seems obvious that it should be in the standard Japanese order, if there is one (year-month-day?). The order of the Western date is automatically determined by user preferences when both the month-day and year are wikilinked (Preferences in upper right-hand corner if you are logged in). To use an extreme example, the ISO 8601 form [[1852-01-23]].would be displayed as January 23, 1852 if your user preference is month-day-year.
Although I lean toward "intercalary month 2" (for example); "leap month 2" is also acceptable. "Leap 2nd month" (using the ordinal number) is also OK. The Japanese date could be in Japanese like 12月14日, although an English translation to month 12 day 14 would seem to be preferable in the English language Wikipedia. Note that when using cardinal numbers (12, 14), the units of time (month, day) become adjectives which appear before the numbers.
Some other points mentioned above: Almost all historians use the January 1 to December 31 historical year regardless of the first day of the numbered year (like March 25 or December 25). I do not use "New Year's Day" because throughout medieval Western Europe, New Year's Day always meant January 1, even if the numbered year began on March 25, as in England. King Henry VIII exchanged presents with his court on New Year's Day (January 1) while Anunciation Day or Lady Day, when the year number changed, was just a special religious day. Similarly, Samuel Pepys always called January 1 New Year's Day while changing his year number on March 25. Hence most Western European countries adopted January 1 as the first day of their numbered year while they were still using the Julian calendar. See Gregorian calendar#Beginning of the year. Standard historical practice regarding the Julian/Gregorian changeover date agrees with Wikipedia: That dates before October 15, 1582 be Julian dates and dates after October 4, 1582 be Gregorian dates, unless a particular country adopted the Gregorian calendar at a later date. Then the thorny problem of what calendar should be used in the interim appears.
A standard work used to convert Japanese dates before 1873 into a Western date is Japanese Chronological Tables from 601 to 1872 A.D. by Paul Yachita Tsuchihashi. Whether the online converter given by Jefu gives the same dates, I cannot say.
Although I am quite familiar with the traditional Chinese calendar, including its history and calculation, I am not familiar with the Japanese methods of specifying the date. A big difference between the two forms is that the Chinese were quite concerned that their calendar be in harmony with the sun and moon, whereas the Japanese were satisfied as long as it indicated astrological good and bad days, not caring if their date was two days off. So after the Japanese imported a Chinese calendar in 692, it was used for about a millennium until 1684, while several Chinese reforms were made during that period. See The Lunar Calendar in Japan. In my study of the Chinese calendar, I found the works of Kiyosi Yabuuti very helpful.
— Joe Kress 04:39, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

Footnote, template or something

I and others have been thinking of putting in each article about a Japanese person a footnote or a link near the article title to inform readers about the name order. There was also a talk about dates started by Jefu (good work, Jefu) There are many options to do these things, and I would love to know what people prefer. Here are options I am aware of; please add it if you know one. -- Taku 01:53, August 26, 2005 (UTC)

  1. Tokugawa Ieyasu[1] (徳川 家康; January 31, 1543 (December 26, Tenbun 11) – June 1, 1616 (June 1, Genwa 2)) was a Japanese ruler.
    Junichiro Koizumi[1] (小泉 純一郎; born January 8, 1942) is a Prime Minister of Japan.
    [1] is put by {{ref}}. [1] links to a footnote and the footnote talks about name order or date convention, if needed, and links to a longer note. See Template talk:Ref for how to use this footnote method.
  2. Tokugawa Ieyasu[1] (徳川 家康; January 31, 1543 – June 1, 1616) was a Japanese ruler.
    Junichiro Koizumi[1] (小泉 純一郎; born January 8, 1942) is a Prime Minister of Japan.
    Like the above, but dates in the old calendar are put in a footnote.

Put you comments below:

I prefer (2). -- Taku 01:56, August 26, 2005 (UTC)

I agree, #2 looks good ... I still wonder about which date should be given priority (Western vs. Japanese). I think in an ideal world it would be Western (which is the form the vast majority of users expect), but if the Western date is not always known/calculable (which seems to be the case?) then we might have to go with Japanese. Either way, it probably would be a good idea to explain the Western/Japanese calendar date issue in the Explanatory Note footnote you are working on. My only comment is that the Explanatory "Note" looks like it will inevitably be as long as the Japanese Manual of Style itself, which might kind of defeat the purpose (maybe a link to the J-MoS might work instead?). Or, should each main topic (Japanese names, Japanese dates, Japanese place names, etc.) get its own "explanatory note" for simplicity's sake? Just a few thoughts. CES 02:21, 26 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree we don't want to simply duplicate MoS, but we could make a short page which gives a quick summary of each point, and links to the appropriate reference; e.g. the line about names would just say something like "Japanese names were historically given with the family name first", and link to Japanese names, etc, etc. Noel (talk) 20:47, 30 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Footnote3 for another footnote method, which I think is better than the above. Philip Baird Shearer 21:16, 6 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

n or m?

Wiki standardizes on n because this is what new Hepburn sais. The reasoning to standardize on n.H. from the project page:

This is because it gives the best indication of Japanese pronunciation to the intended audience of English speakers.

Doesn't this strike anyone as a bit contradictory? Current policy creates the necessity to explain for every word with an n that is pronounced as m that it is, in fact, pronounced as m. (Note: I can see the benefits of standardizing on a well-known romanization system, it's just that I think this particular bit is less optimal, especially when considering our target audience.) Shinobu 12:50, 5 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I absolutely agree. I think that it should be m. Otherwise non-Japanese speakers/students, etc. will look at a word like Tenmu and pronounce it "ten moo" instead of "temmoo". There is no n sound in the word at all. -Jefu 17:14, September 5, 2005 (UTC)
Hmm.. to mee, nm and mm more or less sound alike, especially when said quickly, e.g. Gunma and Gumma. WhisperToMe 18:30, 5 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I think it should remain as "n." This is how non-native learners learn it, how academic sources romanize, and reflects the actual Japanese spelling. Exploding Boy 17:41, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

None of which has anything to do with the primary goal of romanizing Japanese in this particular context: spelling it in a way such that the non-Japanese speaker/learner can pronounce it properly. The only way "n" makes sense is if the reader understands that the Japanese final n, not followed by a vowel, is not really an n. Nobody without training in the language understands this. That's why, for example, all of the train station names in Japan are romanized with an m, and companies like Asahi Shimbun spell their name the way they do. -Jefu 20:55, September 6, 2005 (UTC)
Regarding the train stations, AFAIK only JR West uses "m" with anything approaching consistency. JR East, JR Shikoku and JR Hokkaido and Tokyo's private operators all seem to use "n". Jpatokal 04:08, 19 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I really don't think that's true. Think of English words like gunmetal. We don't spell them gummetal, and yet speakers of English can figure out how to pronounce them without much difficulty. Besides which, this is an encyclopaedia, and we should err in favour of being academic. Exploding Boy 21:05, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

I pronounce gunmetal with a distinct n before the m, don't you? -Jefu 07:57, September 8, 2005 (UTC)
I agree with Exploding Boy etc. The phonological difference is too small to make this a worthwhile exception - you'd be better off arguing that transcriptions should drop the 'u' when there's no /u/ realised. In articles where pronunciation is particularly relevant, it should be given in IPA, not a loose transription system like Hepburn. --zippedmartin 22:06, 6 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Exploding Boy and zippedmartin. Readers who can't figure out how to pronounce something can check out the Japanese phonology article. And the main focus of reading any article on Japanese culture is most likely not pronounciation, so I agree with Exploding Boy about keeping this encyclopedic. People are likely to come across the 'n' romanization in other scholarly sources, so why not wikipedia? -Parallel or Together? 04:57, 8 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I don't expect people to achieve perfect pronunciation who aren't students of the language. But I guess my point is that only students of the language would realize that tenmu is pronounced tem-moo and not ten-moo. The romanization of any language, for the typical reader, is for the purpose of representing the language in a form that makes it most accessible to them. This is why Hepburn is so much better than Kunrei for the typical reader. In my opinion, spelling the emperor's name Tenmu rather than Temmu makes it less accessible to the average reader. This is precisely why proper names (which need to be understood the most widely, as opposed to ordinary nouns, etc. which are used almost exclusively by specialists) most often use the m romanization rule (Homma, Asahi Shimbun, virtually all train stations in Japan written for travelers, etc.) I agree that romanizing Japanese with an n rather than an m is vastly superior for language textbooks. But I think you guys are a little bit blinded by your superior knowledge and familiarity with the language and are forgetting what it is like to be a typical reader unfamiliar with the language. And I don't buy the academic argument at all. Perhaps the best and most comprehensive (and scholarly) history of Japan in the English language is The Cambridge History of Japan. And that book uses Emperor Temmu rather than Emperor Tenmu. Although it appears to be a rule in that book only for proper names, since it also uses Tenpyō for the era. -Jefu 07:57, September 8, 2005 (UTC)
I must disagree - I think the academic argument is valid. For example, the Library of Congress uses modified Hepburn (see also Library of Congress - Japanese Romanization(pdf)). Also, the manual of style already includes special exceptions for words like Asahi Shimbun and Emperor Temmu where convention or official policy continues to use the old Hepburn system, a policy I agree with. And I do appreciate your argument that the new Hepburn may be confusing for some people who aren't as familiar with either Japanese pronunciation or the various systems of romanization present. I admit that everytime a Japanese person uses Kunrei (as many of them do) I cringe a little. And it isn't as though Hepburn is without its problems (macrons frequently don't display properly and don't distinguish between おお and おう). Nevertheless, in order to be encyclopedic, I think wikipedia should maintain the modified Hepburn system, altering it slightly for the afore-mentioned cases. If romanizing it as n is superior for textbooks, why not for an encyclopedia? (Also, please don't mistake me for having superior knowledge of Japanese - I am still a beginner and studying it creates new ways of angering me daily). -Parallel or Together? 09:35, 8 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Some observations:

  • We don't use Kunrei-shiki.
  • We use Hebon-shiki.
  • The MOS (J-r. a.) states "this is because it gives the best indication of Japanese pronunciation".
  • We cannot reflect the actual Japanese spelling with roman characters. This is because most words are (completely or in part) spelt with kanji.
  • We don't need to reflect the actual Japanese spelling, because usually the real Japanese spelling is shown in the article.

Some thoughts:

  • If we want to stick with modified Hepburn, this is not because we want to give an as close approximation as possible to the Japanese pronunciation, but because of the "academic-ness" of modified Hepburn. The MOS (J-r. a.) should reflect this. (I personally don't think a given paper would be considered any less academic if it would spell "sempai" instead of "senpai", by the way.)
  • If we want to stick as closely as possible to the kana spelling, we would use Kunrei. I personally don't favour this.
  • If we want to stick as closely as possible to the Japanese pronunciation, we would use m. I think slashing u's is a different debate however, and for the moment I'm only concerned with the n or m question.
  • I don't like exceptions. However, they may be justified if organizations or persons have decided that their names should be romanized in a certain way.

My conclusions:

  • Some change to either the MOS (J-r. a.) or our romanization is needed.
  • Given there are good arguments both for m and n, both romanizations would be fine with me (provided the MOS (J-r. a.) doesn't contradict this romanization).

Yours sincerely, Shinobu 15:49, 8 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I concur, in part, with Gerbrant. Keep spelling things with m when organizations or persons have decided that they want it done that way, but for everything else use n. The n seems like the moderate position, and I really don't want to get into the debate of erasing unvoiced us (and is). That would be ridiculous. -Parallel or Together? 03:43, 9 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. We don't write です as "dess," just as we don't spell it filay minion. We're not writing a pronunciation guide. Exploding Boy 03:54, September 9, 2005 (UTC)

If we keep the current romanization style, a rephrasing of the following is needed:

This is because it gives the best indication of Japanese pronunciation to the intended audience of English speakers.

How about:

This is because it is generally accepted by scholars and it gives a fair indication of Japanese pronunciation to the intended audience of English speakers.

That would solve the contradiction, I think.

@I really don't want to get into the debate of erasing unvoiced us (and is).: Same here. Although you're wrong to call it "ridiculous". I prefer to leave them in (if only because sometimes they are not so silent), but trying to write down what you hear has been one of the basic principles behind the Roman script. (A fact that Anglophones might have forgotten, but that's because English spelling sucks.)

Yours sincerely, Shinobu 20:39, 16 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Standardized temple naming

I noticed at Kyoto#Culture that there is absolutely no standardization as to whether temple names are "Foo-ji" or "Fooji". It looks really unprofessional, they way they are mixed up; I think we should pick one, and move the ones that don't fit that scheme to the correct form. (I much prefer "Foo-ji", myself.) I seem to vaguely recall that this was discussed before, but I forget what the outcome was. Can anyone enlighten me? (Oh, BTW, I don't think we should use "Foo Temple", as the "ji" forms are the most common in the West - although one often see "Foo-ji temple"!) Noel (talk) 03:01, 7 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Don't recall whether there was an outcome. The matter encompasses Kinkakuji or -ji or Golden Pavilion or The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Kiyomizudera, Sanzenin, Gokurakubo, Sanjusangendo, as well as all the shrines: Yasukuni Jinja, Meiji Jingu or Shrine (which was once translated on a TV show as "Meiji Jing Shrine" if memory serves), Kasuga Taisha, Tsurugaoka Hachimangu (how many alternatives are there for that? Tsuru-ga-oka, Hachiman-gu, Hachiman Shrine...), Kitano Tenmangu, and I can't think of examples, but there's probably a -sha and a -gu as well. And others that escape me. And after temples and shrines there are palaces and villas and castles that could probably be standardized... Fg2 07:35, September 7, 2005 (UTC)
The discussion is here: click here! ... there was no final decision made, but the concensus seemed to be leaning towards Kinkakuji or Kinkaku-ji rather than adding "Temple" or calling it Kinkaku Temple. We talked mostly about temples though, shrines often had different common usage patterns in English than temples. CES 11:36, 7 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
As the one who started the original discussion, I've come to the opinion that the easiest and most unambiguous form is to just use the Japanese name, no hyphens, no English glosses. This is a little more awkward for shrines then for temples though, and I'd suggest that the English "shrine" be used for anything ending in -jinja and -jingu only. Jpatokal 04:27, 19 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Let me confirm: You're advocating "Tsurugaokahachimangū" and "Fushimiinaritaisha," right? Or do you prefer spaces? And if we space it, there are still the issues of how many spaces, and capitalization. Fg2 05:03, 19 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Place and personal names should of course be offset with a space, and as these are proper names all words are capitalized. So Tsurugaoka Hachimangū and Fushimi Inari Taisha.
I think this comes down mostly to English ideas of what a 'word' is: a single syllable like -ji or -gu doesn't qualify, but multisyllable constructions like -taisha or -jingu do. Jpatokal 06:12, 19 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not a big fan of hyphens, but I think the part of the name that corresponds to "temple" or "shrine" should be set off with hyphens. I'm not wed to that approach but it seems more logical than burying it in with the rest of the name. Especially if we go without spaces. -Jefu 05:33, 19 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. I think Jpatokal's point about "English ideas of what a 'word' is" is a key one (although I'm promptly going to interpret it differently :-). That principle was used above to separate names up into words; I think we should also apply an 'English word' principle here. The "ji" is a separate word in English, so let's give people who don't know Japanese (i.e. the vast majority of our readers) a hint that it's a separate entity (at least, in English), and use a "-". This is not exactly novel in English works; I don't have time to go through my entire collection of books on Japanese gardens/architecture (it's a whole bookcase!) to do a survey, but I notice that, e.g. Itoh's magisterial Gardens of Japan uses the "-ji" form.
I would apply the same principle broadly for endings which are separate words in English, e.g. "-bashi" (bridge), "-jō" (castle), etc. Noel (talk) 12:58, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The hyphen is perfect for a name like Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū, because it operates the way a hyphen operates in English. It separates two words that aren't quite independent of one another, but that haven't quite been fused into a single word with no space between the elements. "Cross-reference" is an example of the former, "crossword" is an example of the latter. And if you were to opt for a translation of that name, you wouldn't translate it into Tsurugaoka Hachimangū Temple. It would be Tsurugaoka Hachiman Temple. The "gū" should be separated somehow, but I think a space is too much. As for whether more clearly delineated words like "jinja" or "jingū" are separated with a space or a hyphen, either would be fine with me, although I would probably lean more toward a space. -Jefu 16:13, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The October 4 article Hasedera Temple underscores the variety of styles we use.

Proposal for titles of articles on temples and shrines

(Jpatokal's suggestion): "Place and personal names should of course be offset with a space, and as these are proper names all words are capitalized."

Insert a hyphen before bo, dera, do, in, ji, ; write the English word "shrine" in place of jinja and jingu but hyphenate and write gu, sha, taisha without "shrine."

Do not write "temple"; do not write English translations of names in article titles (where appropriate, they are welcome within the article, e.g. "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion"). Do not prefix "-san" names (e.g. do not write "Kinryu-zan Sensoji"; simply write "Sensoji"); however, do prefix "-san" names (山号) when — and only when — necessary to distinguish famous temples of the same name and provide a disambiguation page, for example, Kaiko-zan Hase-dera and Bu-zan Kagura-in Hase-dera. (See ja:長谷寺 and this link.)

Here are examples of the proposed style:

Gokuraku-bo; Kiyomizu-dera; Sanjusangen-do; Sanzen-in; Kinkaku-ji; Hikawa Shrine; Meiji Shrine; Kamakura-gu; Inari-sha (other than Inari-taisha); Inari-taisha

Doesn't the proposal above say that the last one should be Inari Shrine? Jpatokal 11:10, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Early in the article, explain in English what the subject is, e.g. "Kinkaku-ji is a Buddhist temple ... ."

Fg2 10:53, 5 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

(Actually, Kinkaku-ji is problematic, since the temple's actual name is Rokuon-ji... ) Fg2 10:53, 5 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good to me, although I could be swayed to eliminate the hyphen (i.e. Hasedera instead of Hase-dera). The thought of a page called "Bu-zan Kagura-in Hase-dera" with three hyphens seems like a bit of hyphen-overload. But this is a complaint on just aesthetic grounds, and there are many examples where having a hyphen makes it easier to read (Inari-taisha vs. Inaritaisha). We'll have to remember to do a few redirects for each page to make sure all of our bases are covered. CES 12:14, 5 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Alternatives include geographic labels, e.g. Hase-dera (Kamakura, Kanagawa), Hase-dera (Sakurai, Nara). Fg2 21:50, 5 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Here's a variation on the theme. Fg2 02:26, 6 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
It all makes sense and is well thought out, but the only gripe I have with it is that you're forcing something that doesn't seem to want to be forced. I don't think there is an elegant way to standardize this, because one method makes the names unrecognizable to many Japanese people, and another method is difficult to understand for people who don't know anything about Japan. Then again, it's not all THAT elegant, what with the exceptions being made for mountains (at least Mount Fuji) and shrines. Freshgavin 05:42, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I like the basic idea a lot and doubt we'll be able to come up with a better compromise, but I'd prefer to do away with the hyphens. Freshgavin, note that this is only for temples/shrines, mountains are not covered (if they appear in the temple's name, they're treated as parts of a proper name). Jpatokal 11:10, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Point taken, but I think that in itself is an issue isn't it? Having a different standard for temples and mountains (or rather ... elevated landmasses - -;;) seems a bit messy to me. Anyways, I will support it (though I still don't agree with using 'shrine' instead of 'jinja'!) because it's certainly better than nothing, and I'm not sure if there is a better way to implement this anyways. Freshgavin 00:51, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

What about macrons? I don't mind leaving macrons out of article titles, but I think their use should be encouraged elsewhere. -Jefu 12:50, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Vote on proposal

So let's put the proposal above to a vote! Sign your name in the appropriate section below. Is one week starting now enough? Jpatokal 11:10, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

One week (and then some has) has passed. Nobody dislikes the proposal and hyphens win over non-hyphens. Time to make it official! Jpatokal 05:26, 21 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Written, let's get cracking (Category:Shinto shrines and Category:Buddhist temples should keep us busy for a while). Let's also use this chance to move everything to correct Unicode names and move the temples in Category:Buddhist temples in Japan.

Support proposal, with hyphens

  1. CES 11:52, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Freshgavin 00:51, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Philip Nilsson 19:36, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Jefu 22:35, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Support proposal, without hyphens

  1. Jpatokal 11:10, 12 October 2005 (UTC).[reply]
  2. LordAmeth 15:19, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose proposal

I had a quick look through the discussions before this, but excuse me if I missed it. According to the current conventions, it says we should write

Taro Cabbage (キャベツ太郎, Kyabetsu Taro).

Today there was a disagreement on the page Akihito. One user wrote the name in the form

Taro Cabbage ([[Japanese language|Japanese]]キャベツたろ, ''Kyabetsu Taro'').

and another user removed the [[Japanese language|Japanese]], then someone else put it back.

I have also seen abbreviations like "Ja" or "Jp" used in the link. It would be nice to have some standard way to do this; first, should the link be there? Second, if so, should it say "Japanese" or "Ja" or "Jp" or what? Rather than arbitrarily doing it how each person thinks is best, then someone else just changes it again, it would be nice to have a clear statement on the style page about whether or not to link etc. --DannyWilde 08:57, 5 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen links with lowercase "ja" or "jp" or both, and if we're going to have something, I'd prefer "Japanese." It doesn't seem particularly harmful, and for readers whose computers don't have CJK fonts, it serves as a useful explanation of the boxes that I presume appear on their screens (as they do when I click on an article that has IPA symbols). I'm not sure "Ja" or "Jp" or "Jpn." is as clear as "Japanese." Another alternative would be "Akihito (in Japanese, 明仁) ..." (with the link to the language name). The last might be clearest. Fg2 10:17, 5 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

We've had many, many disagreements about this. In essence, as far as I'm aware, at the end of the last round it was agreed that having a link to Japanese language or Japanese name or the relevant Japanese article in the form "[[Japanese]]," "[[JP]]," "[[jp]]," "[[Jp]]," "[[Ja]]," "[[ja]]" or similar was not the way to go, which is why I removed the link that led to this question in the first place.

Additionally, it's my view that having names written in non-Hepburn followed by brackets containing link, Japanese and Hepburn, such as this:

Junichiro Koizumi ([[Jp]] 小泉　純一郎　''koizumi jun'ichirō'')

...is clumsy, takes up too much space, and besides being confusing, serves no useful purpose. I also find it particularly irksome when people choose to place names in italics and lowercase, since this just reduces them to sounds.

Links to the relevant Japanese article should be placed where they normally go. Links to "Japanese name" aren't especially relevant in most articles, and neither are links to "Japanese language." The possibility of placing a note or template on Japan-related articles stating that names are given in the Japanese order has also been discussed.

Exploding Boy 18:21, 5 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Fg2's point hasn't been answered, though. As it's pretty standard practice to follow the English version of the name with "Fooish:" for other languages (e.g., Feng Youlan, Al-Kindī, Wee Kim Wee, etc.), is there a reason that it should avoided with regard to Japanese? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 22:30, 5 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, but I don't know what you mean. What is Fooish? Exploding Boy 21:56, 5 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A variable, standing for a language. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 22:33, 5 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • My opinion is that these things already take up a lot of space in between the name and the key part of the sentence, and the language should therefore not be mentioned when it is obvious from the first sentence. If it already says "...is a Japanese sumo wrestler" then it's not necessary. If it says "... is a Hawaiian-born sumo wrestler" then yes. Kappa 22:57, 5 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

To address Exploding Boy's ponts:

  1. I used to think that the Japanese link was silly and unnecessary too and removed them when I saw them. But Fg2 makes a good point, that people without CJK fonts may not know what is there without that link. I'm now ambivalent. I'm not going to go back and replace the ones I've removed, but I won't be deleting them either.
  2. I agree that Hepburn in parentheses for names is silly and unnecessary. -Jefu 23:13, 5 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

My point is that there should be a statement, in the style manual, about what to do about these links. On the Akihito talk page, it was mentioned that it is a Wikipedia convention to add these language links. If so they should be added, in the same way, for example, that the title word should be in bold - it's a convention. However, there was no reference given to where it says that one must add the links. Adding or removing the language links on the basis of personal preference is bound to lead to conflicts. I suggest we try to establish what the Wikipedia-wide convention is, write that up in the manual of style, and stick to it. I'm sure there are lots of good arguments for and against having the language links, but I expect we can all agree that there is no good argument for having language links on some pages in one format, other pages in other formats, and none at all on other pages. That is just messy. --DannyWilde 23:50, 5 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

To my knowledge, it is not convention that we should add language links, and the last consensus was not to do it. I totally agree: it should be one way or the other. Exploding Boy 01:57, 6 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree too. My point was just that I don't really care one way or the other about the language link. I've gone from being against it to being ambivalent. If agreement is reached I will certainly follow the convention in the future. By the way, my preference for the rest of what goes in the parentheses is ([Kanji] [italicized hepburn]), with only a space rather than a comma separating the kanji and the romaji. And as mentioned above, the romaji after the kanji is unnecessary for things like names that are already written in romaji to begin with. -Jefu 02:19, 6 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If we're talking about preferences, I'm personally against italicising people's names. Italics are properly used to render foreign words, not names. Exploding Boy 02:27, 6 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Exploding Boy and Jefu in finding the use of the Hepburn and the italicising of names unnecessary. I still think, though, that Fg2 is right about the inclusion of "Japanese". --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:58, 6 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

To Exploding Boy's point, we agree that names shouldn't be in parentheses anyway, so the italicization problem is moot. -Jefu 12:21, 6 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

But above you say your preference is for ([kanji] italicised Hepburn). Exploding Boy 17:06, 6 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep reading. I then say: "And as mentioned above, the romaji after the kanji is unnecessary for things like names that are already written in romaji to begin with." -Jefu 22:38, 6 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree with you on that. A good example is Tokyo (東京都; Tōkyō-to). Even ignoring the 都 issue, without the romaji people might think that in Japanese 東京 is pronounced Tokyo, with short syllables, or even "Towkaiow". Romaji explanation serves a useful purpose here. Of course in some articles some people take care to use a correct romanization to begin with (*Tōkyō-to (東京都)) but this is perhaps not as sensible an idea for many Japanese borrowings and names in current use. I say this because even though I promote correct pronounciation of Japanese (and other) terms in daily usage, most people would feel lost if they were to be redirected from Tokyo to Tōkyō-to. As for the link, I always felt it a bit redundant when it is clear from context that it is Japanese: "<name> (Japanese: <Jap.name> <romaji>) is a Japanese scholar…". Shinobu 08:58, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I tend to agree with Shinobu ... italics do provide useful information, in particular vowel length. They're also helpful in cases where the Japanese name is not perfectly identical to the English "translation" (e.g. Beat Takeshi = Biito Takeshi) or in cases like Tokyo where the added 都 in places might confuse the reader. Or, when SN-GN and GN-SN have been flipped (in the case of many modern people). My question would be what to do when the article name and the romaji are redundant ... Miyabe Miyuki (宮部みゆき Miyabe Miyuki) seems a little redundant. You know me though, if we agreed on a convention that works I'd favor using it in 100% of the cases.

Unless a person/object's nationality is ambiguous, I don't think a link to Japanese name is necessary. I for one like the common (KANJI Name Name) format, I think it provides the most information in the smallest amount of space. And I think italics are a good idea, as this clues the reader that what is in italics is not English, even if they don't understand what Kanji is, and even though it's not exactly common convention as Exploding Boy points out. I do agree that having names in lower case is silly ... are there examples out there of people doing that? CES 12:19, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I've put in lowercase. My reasoning is that the main text (outside the parentheses) gives the English; the explanation (inside) gives the Japanese. Since the native Japanese form of writing does not have uppercase or lowercase letters, the transcription need not, either. The indicator of a proper name is in the main text, not in the parentheses. The kanji and/or kana show the name, and the letters indicate the pronunciation. Note that dictionaries in English do not use uppercase initial letters when giving the pronunciation of proper names (see, for example, the Merriam-Webster entry for "Tokugawa").
But, if people don't want to use this system, I'm willing to give it up. Fg2 12:43, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
If the italics were there strictly for the purpose of pronunciation (like IPA) I'd agree, but Hepburn seems to be more of a system of transliteration than a true guide to pronunciation (unlike IPA et al., knowledge of Hepburn still requires knowledge of Japanese in order to pronounce the words). English readers are more familiar with names being capitalized, and I believe the convention when writing Japanese in romaji is to capitalize names (even though there's no capitalization in Japanese) ... I for one would be in favor of capitalizing the names in italics. CES 13:25, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with CES. -Jefu 14:26, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, in some circumstances the (Kanji name) format might be necessary, as wasw pointed out with the example of Tokyo, above. But too often it's just redundant repetition, and it's not needed. Exploding Boy 15:18, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Time for my two cents. (1) I do not think we should wikilink to "Japanese language" or to "Japanese names". As someone else already said, that's really not useful. (2) I, personally, never put a language qualifier (e.g. Jp, Ja, or "in Japanese:") before the kanji unless the subject is something not exclusively (or not originally) Japanese. For example, the articles on the Mukden Incident and the Nanking Massacre are not exclusively Japanese subjects and have different names in English, Japanese, and Chinese. (3) I like the idea of italics rather than quotations, as it indicates the pronunciation of a foreign word and separates it out from the main text better; but I think this is only useful when it doesn't duplicate the "English" spelling or pronunciation of the word. I put diacritics and such in the "English" name before the parentheses - e.g. Kyōto (京都) rather than Kyoto (京都, Kyōto). Capitalization within the parentheses should, I think, follow normal capitalization rules - proper names are capitalized, regular words like geisha, otaku, and azuki are not.
I like doing things the way I've been doing them, but as with many style discussions I've commented on, I think the most important thing is consistency. Whatever is agreed to here should be established and enforced across the board. LordAmeth 15:51, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for explaining this much better than I have! What LordAmeth said. Exploding Boy 16:23, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

We could solve this problem with a template, css styles and classes. It could provide some sensible defaults, while still making adjustments possible. It could also provide a ? with a tooltip, and possibly a link to a pseudo-article describing customization, pronounciation etc. I remember seeing something similar on a media link. Shinobu 11:19, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

That's a very good idea. Do you know how to set it up? By the way, there is a "Japanese word" template on Manga, but it's not a very good one. --DannyWilde 11:59, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm r&d'ing it now. Since this topic is starting to become a bit on the long side, comments will go in the new Template topic. Shinobu 05:53, 9 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with using Miyabe as an example is... her books are published in ENGLISH! http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/4770029934/qid=1131406460/sr=8-2/ref=pd_bbs_2/103-9218618-3425418?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 - Therefore her naming order shall be reversed. I know that there really isn't an agreement right now on naming order specifics, but still... - On the other hand, a historical figure would be a great use of a "redundant italic" remark. In a case of someone like Miyamoto Musashi, I don't think italics are necessary. WhisperToMe 23:35, 7 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template

Further discussion about comma's go to the "Comma" section.
Further discussion about the help icon go to Template talk:Nihongo, as goes other talk about the template.

A good name would be Template:Nihongo.

It would need three parameters, like this: 

{{nihongo|English|Kanji|Romaji}}

Since the last parameter can be absent, we would need to find a way to branch properly. This can be done using some clever tricks, but I'm still looking into it. 

{{nihongo|Tokyo|東京都|Tōkyō-to}}

Would yield "Tokyo (東京都, Tōkyō-to ?)". 

{{nihongo|Manga|漫画|}}

Would yield "Manga (漫画 ?)". However, the cursive romaji would still need to be there for those who have saved in their preferences (user css) that they want so see it anyway.

Note to self: don't forget to unbold the right part of the template, in case it's used in the article lead. Shinobu 06:11, 9 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've set up an experimental thingy. See Template talk:Nihongo. Further comments can be posted there. If we get this template to obey our wishes, we need to add it to this MoS so that people know it's there. Shinobu 07:26, 9 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The template is finished, and looks okay. It's easy to use, does what it's supposed to do and it can be completely customized by the reader as well. When it gets inserted in real pages we will see if it's an improvement over the current situation. After these test runs we can add it to this Manual of Style. Shinobu 15:16, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I have already begun adding it (retroactively) to my own articles. You are welcome to take a look at the articles and see how you think it looks. A list of my articles is available on my user page; I have thus far 'converted' the first 100 or so articles. Personally, I'm not a big fan of the question mark, as I think it makes the whole thing look cluttered. But thanks for the template. Now there'll be a slightly more standard form for introducing article names & their original Japanese spellings. LordAmeth 20:17, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The template is great, a very good idea, but I agree with the above opinion. I don't like the question mark either. A small Japanese flag might be good, but some Japanese people dislike this symbol, so how about a tiny icon with the word "Nihongo" in kanji or something? It should be possible to make a favicon-sized "nihongo" since the kanjis are very simple. --DannyWilde 01:26, 22 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I think the template is great, but one question it hasn't solved is how to write people's names. Are we writing Junichiro Koizumi (小泉純一郎 (Koizumi Jun'ichirō)) or Koizumi Jun'ichirō (error: {{nihongo}}: Japanese or romaji text required (help)) ? Exploding Boy 20:24, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Whoa, and what went wrong with the way I typed that? Exploding Boy

Perhaps Junichiro Koizumi (小泉純一郎, Koizumi Jun'ichirō) was what you intended? 

{{nihongo|Junichiro Koizumi|小泉純一郎|Koizumi Jun'ichirō}}

Wikipedia's template syntax is not that forgiving. Not much I can do 'bout that.

Note that if you don't want to see romaji (or want anything else customized) you can make that happen using your personal css; follow the help link to learn how. I think you can also search for classes using JavaScript, allowing for even more customization possibilities. Shinobu 21:33, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Comma

One minor point ... I've noticed at least three formats of displaying (KANJI romaji) in Wikipedia:

  • (KANJI romaji)
  • (KANJI, romaji) - with a comma
  • (KANJI; romaji) - with a semicolon

Do we have a policy/concensus on which to use? A very minor style issue, but I thought I'd bring it up. Personally I think it's a little strange to see English language punctuation after kanji, so I prefer and use the first style. CES 12:00, 21 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously a pretty minor thing, as you say. But my preference is for a comma; it separates things out a bit. The semi-colon does look odd to me, so my secondary vote would be for nothing. LordAmeth 12:49, 21 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say definitely no comma, much less a semicolon. It's not a case of things in a list being separated, it's two ways of saying the same thing. Jpatokal 14:53, 21 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If you're saying the same thing in two ways, you usually put in a comma. Example: "Mister Koizumi, the PM of Japan, (…)". I didn't use the "kanji comma" because as I see it this is a snippet of Japanese in an otherwise western text. If you want to you can hide it using your personal css; you might want to do this if you agree it's a good default but you just don't like it. Anyway, if consensus exists for another default, I'll implement that. Shinobu 16:21, 21 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'd prefer to have the comma. If it's generally agreed to use this template, it might be worth making a wiki-editing robot to update all the pages linked from the "List of Japan related pages". I already have a robot for editing Mediawiki wiki pages, so I can probably do this if it is thought to be a good idea. I've added the template to some pages already. --DannyWilde 01:26, 22 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure I stated this previously, but, like CES and Jpatoka, I prefer no comma.-Jefu 08:34, 22 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Why? Point is, we're discussing about a default, that will therefore be the way lot's of users will see it displayed. We should base our discussion on good arguments rather than on "I [don't] like it."s. People who just don't like it can always modify their css to include:
.t_nihongo_comma{visibility:hidden;}
or something similar. Perhaps we should also try to broaden this discussion beyond just those who watch this article. Shinobu 11:59, 22 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If you are in favor of including unnecessary punctuation, I think the burden should be on you to explain why it should be included.-Jefu 14:23, 22 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Here goes:
  • The comma is necessary, because normally any explanation and the word/phrase explained are separated by a comma, as I argued above.
  • The comma visually seperates the kanji and the romaji - it looks better.
  • It's (slightly) easier on readers not familiar with Japanese.
I've heard of the saying "less is more", but when it's about a comma, and one that logically should be there, I don't think there's any truth in that. In the end, I just don't see why we should make an exeption just because the things seperated are a Kanji spelling and it's romanization. Shinobu 18:12, 22 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The romaji are not an "explanation", they're a reading. The first three uses listed in Comma (punctuation) are 1) to mark off separate elements in a sentence, 2) to separate independent clauses, and 3) to separate items in lists'. I posit that (KANJI reading) fits none of the above.
Consider the case pondered earlier: if you write "Taro Cabbage (キャベツ太郎, Kyabetsu Taro)", it looks like you can say either キャベツ太郎 or キャベツ太郎. If you write "Taro Cabbage (キャベツ太郎 Kyabetsu Taro), it's clearer that it means キャベツ太郎 is read as Kyabetsu Taro.
Also, as CES notes, it's confusing and visually ugly (to my eye) to have a chunk of Western punctuation immediately after a Japanese kanji. In e.g. 「心,」 the comma looks like an additional stroke — which is why the Japanese use their own comma 「、」 instead of the Latin ",". Jpatokal 18:54, 22 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't agree with the point about the Western punctuation and would oppose using "、" rather than the comma. However, yesterday I had a quick look at some examples in the Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition), and perhaps it's worth noting that they didn't use the comma. The comma might be useful if there is more than one kanji way to write something. For example, okama (お釜, おかま), etc. --DannyWilde 02:33, 23 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Just to clarify, I'm not proposing we use a Japanese comma, I'm proposing we use only a space. And commas are of course okay if you're listing various readings, eg. (日本 Nihon, Nippon). Jpatokal 03:47, 23 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure which of the points about Western punctuation Danny Wilde opposes, but I agree fully with the points Jpatoka has made. And if the Chicago Manual of Style (a widely cited and authoritative reference) doesn't use a comma, that just reinforces the argument in favor of adopting a convention without a comma.-Jefu 10:29, 23 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm prepared to examine the evidence for both sides of the argument. The lack of comma in the Chicago book is a useful data point, whether it agrees with my opinion or not. Incidentally, unfortunately the SWET Japan style guide has no guidance on the matter, surprisingly enough. --DannyWilde 00:39, 24 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, that's what I meant by arguments. I'll change the template. Shinobu 14:49, 23 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Exception for long vowels

I've already started this discussion on the Tokyo and Oume [sic] pages, just wanted to make a note of it here. The city in Tokyo, 青梅 (oume) while commonly (even officially) spelt Ome, should REALLY be spelled Oume in romaji. As it is a combination of the readings o and ume, and thus it is a not a 'long vowel' ō, as would normally be expected. To expand, Oume (for the city) is pronounced differently than ōme/oume or ōme/oome as the /u/ vowel is pronouced. Ōme is pronounced something like /oh-meh/ and oume is pronounced more like /oh-umeh/ but with a shorter /o/ sound.

NOW, of course this is not a pronounciation guide, this is hepburn. Oume is still correct in hepburn because it is the combination of two kunyomi, and thus each character has its own sound. For example 大/ou is only one character and thus there can be no argument about the hepburn spelling of it because it cannot be separated. 青梅/oume is two, and thus they each have their own sounds (though 青/o is not a very common reading) and when put together the pronounciation doesn't change so the hepburn of the two characters shouldn't be changed either to reflect that.

I babbled because I'm afraid of the arguments that some people will put up to defend the incorrect spelling of Oume, but I think I've argued my point.  freshgavin TALK   06:01, 7 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wards in Cities <---> Wards in Prefectures

The MoS has the sentence, "For wards in cities, use the form [[{ward-name}-ku, {prefecture-name}]]; for example, Fushimi-ku, Kyoto." Does anyone recall why we do this? It seems much more sensible to have wards in cities, not prefectures, since a ward is in fact part of a city, not directly administered by a prefecture. Furthermore, the example is ambiguous, since Kyoto is the name of both the city that Fushimi-ku is in, and the prefecture. Was this a mistake? Should we change it to wardname-ku, city-name?

Note that the above sentence does not apply to the special wards of Tokyo; they have the sentence that comes next: "For the 23 special wards in Tokyo, use the form [[{ward-name}, Tokyo]]; for example, Shibuya, Tokyo." I am not proposing changing the convention for special wards of Tokyo.

I am proposing changing the ordinary wards of cities.

Opinions?

Fg2 07:01, 7 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ward, city definitely does make more sense. Especially since I woudln't be surprised if there were a situation where two cities in the same prefecture both had, say, a Kita-ku Nik42 08:35, 7 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Something tells me that's a mistake. Just a quick glance at Yokohama and Nagoya shows that the wards of those cities are in the Ward, City form. It wouldn't hurt to change the example in the MoS to a ward in a city with a different name than a prefecture, to clear up any ambiguity. CES 12:47, 7 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The reason I ask is that someone changed the wards of Kawasaki to ward, prefecture format. I'm all in favor of accord with the MoS, but I think this is an error in the MoS. Fg2 20:54, 7 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I think Ward, Prefecture is nuts and we should change the MoS immediately. I can't think of a single good reason for the Ward, Prefecture format. CES 21:33, 7 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah that would be me, Fg2. I've been looking around for a while (I've started a lot of work on the pages for the rails and stations around Tokyo) and I came across a whole slew of inconsistencies with the MoS and started changing them and adding pages / redirects and such. The Ward, Prefecture thing did sound a bit strange to me but I figured the discussion had been had a billion times before and everyone decided that Ward, Prefecture would work out better if it was consistent with City, Prefecture. I actually backtracked a lot when I gave it a second look and decided that it wasn't worth doing, and I think everything I did is back to normal now (and I'll finish cleaning up some of the Kawasaki and Yokohama wards today or tomorrow). I think the MoS should be changed, and also take a look at my conundrum(sp?) above!  freshgavin TALK   23:39, 7 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Can't fault you for doing what the MoS says! Fg2
I'll put a notice in MoS saying it's under discussion, and we can keep discussing until someone wants to declare it decided. I don't feel comfortable closing the discussion since I started it (and it's going my way, for a change). Fg2 07:59, 8 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
So just to clarify, while I try to eliminate a lot of red links in the process, your way is [[Ward, City]] (where wards exist) and [[City, Prefecture]], [[Town, Prefecture]], [[Ward, Tokyo]], [[City, Tokyo]]?
Also, I just came across something while making Tobu Tojo that I didn't know existed; the '-kun' districts in Saitama (etc.) (I've lived in mostly urban areas so I don't know much about stuffs 'out there'). Right now they seem to be linked as [[District, Prefecture]] and [[Town, Prefecture]] even though the towns (machi) are clearly part of the districts, just as wards are part of cities. I'm not planning on argueing this I'm just wondering if that's relatively acceptable and I'm not gonna get smashed by someone for trying to keep everything consistent : ).  freshgavin TALK   01:14, 9 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I think you've got it right: town, prefecture and village, prefecture and district, prefecture but I'm proposing ward, city. (And let's add that we already have special ward, Tokyo --- no proposal to change that.)
Not sure what you mean by "kun" --- do you mean "gun"? That (郡) should be "district" according to MoS. If that's what you mean, it's "gun" (rather than a rendaku of "kun"). But if you mean something else, we can look into it for you. Fg2 07:29, 9 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I meant gun. Labelling the districts is pretty straight forward, like I said, at [[X District, X Prefecture]], but I was just wondering about cities inside the districts, that are being labelled now as [[X City in Dist., X Prefecture]] and it kind of feels the same as the awkward Nakahara-ku, Kanagawa to me. Fg2 05:07, 10 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think any cities are in gun; when a city is established, it separates from the gun. Towns and villages are in gun. However, I think the gun is really vestigial. A leftover from the Nara period. The government of a gun doesn't do much, as far as I know. So even though towns and villages are in gun, it's not a big deal. In contrast, a ward of a city doesn't do much; the larger unit (the city) does it all. The city has a mayor, city council, public works department, city offices; registers births, deaths and marriages (I guess). (Ordinary) wards do not have these things, except as branch offices of the city; employees do not get hired by, assigned by, or paid by the ward (I believe) but rather by the city and can get transferred from ward to ward. The ward is not a body corporate; the city is. In contrast, a town or village is a body corporate. It has finances, revenues, provides services, has elected government officials, has a "mayor" and a council, may have public works departments; registers citizens etc. I don't think gun do any of these functions, or at least they do them minimally. So the town or village strikes me as more important than the gun, and it doesn't help a whole lot to title the town and village articles according to gun. Membership in a gun is only slightly important, and is mentioned in the article. Wards are likewise only slightly important, and we should name the articles (in my opinion) ward, city, since the city is a real, active, effective unit that contains the wards. At least this is my understanding --- I have not looked up any of it, so please do not take this as Truth. Fg2 05:07, 10 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- -;. Right, I meant town. I won't take your word as truth, but it's good enough for me. 10Q! P.S.: You're signing my old comments you goof : O!  freshgavin TALK   06:28, 10 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Hah! I put in a /nowiki tag that you had omitted. Everything from your nowiki tag down was nowikied, including your signature. When I put in the /nowiki tag, the software must have taken your four tildes as mine. Fg2 06:37, 10 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Macrons in titles

Thirdly, I've been coming across a huge amount of hepburn titles with ō characters etc. in them and I'm about to start getting more serious about changing those to MoS form. Has everyone else given up or what?  freshgavin TALK   23:39, 7 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hold your horses, sonny! There has been a lot of discussion about this, and I thought the consensus was to use macrons for any terms that have not been adopted wholesale by English? Jpatokal 01:28, 8 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah it's OK, I haven't actually done anything yet, I just stopped a few guys from doing massive reverts to full hepburn and stuff because I figured it was an unsettled issue. Just quickly checking that discussion it's clear that there is no consensus yet, but due to the nature of the people voting I'm pretty sure it will eventually be decided to use macrons, unfortunately. I don't really like these kind of long winded puffed up discussions and even though I'd like it to be settled (my way if possible, naturally) it's too big a fish to swallow with all the other editors putting in their 2 cents so it's probably best to bow out : ). Good luck User:Fg2  freshgavin TALK   03:00, 8 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Two issues here: one is Hepburn (including macrons) within articles, and the other is Hepburn (including macrons) in article titles. The former is, I believe, clear in MoS: Within articles, use Hepburn with macrons for anything that is not part of English; do not use macrons for terms that are part of the English language. MoS has several examples; when in doubt, consult reputable reference works and look for consensus. The latter --- use of macrons in article titles --- is under debate without consensus, as best I recall. Fg2 07:36, 9 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
There was much discussion on the issue without any apparent consensus, but after the MediaWiki software was changed to allow macrons in article titles several editors went through and changed most of the article titles to a version with the macron in the title. Since I have seen no major objections to those page moves, that suggests a new status quo for the Wikipedia, and the MOS should probably be modified to reflect that. BlankVerse 12:21, 9 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
My objections came beforehand and don't need repeating. We did not have a consensus before, and we don't have one now. Fg2 12:28, 9 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewing the discussion, it does look to me like the pro-macron camp is significantly larger — I counted 8 in favor, with Fg2 the only vocal anti-macronist and Tokek sitting on the fence.

That said, I think even the pro-macronists also agree that some things (eg. Tokyo) are best left macronless, and at the very least we now have the non-trivial task of deciding which are which. Personally, for consistency I'd be tempted to favor macrons for almost everything, including personal and place names. Jpatokal 16:02, 9 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The rules in the current manual of style are that things which are accepted as English words should not be changed. For example sika deer should not be moved to "shika deer". Similarly, a dozuki saw should not be written "dōzuki" since the non-macroned form is the English name. The exception to this is when the words are used in a specifically Japanese context. I have created several articles with macrons in the title, for example, chōon, yōon. In most cases I made redirects from unmacroned names. I probably came to Wikipedia when macrons were already working for article titles. I don't know what the previous problems were. In the case of stations, the reality is that the names in romaji are probably written without macrons or "shin'ichi" style apostrophes (I couldn't think of a station name with an example of that), so it would be better to use the romanized name that JR uses. In every case, it requires some common sense to judge. I don't think any blanket rule should be given. The current manual of style, which suggests checking in a dictionary or by Google, is very good advice in my opinion. --DannyWilde 22:59, 9 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Subway Station Names

Came across a difficult example while making the table for Tobu Tojo line. Basically, how do you think the station name should be written for stations of underground (地下鉄) lines? For example, 地下鉄成増駅 (chikatetsu narimasu eki) of the 有楽町線 (yuurakucho sen) which pairs up with the regular narimasu station on Tojo line. A few of the other pages (including yuurakucho line) just put Chikatetsu Narimasu Station which I think is totally clunky, but I'm leaving it at that temporarily. I was thinking Narimasu Underground Station? (not all 地下鉄 stations are Metro) but that's a little bit misleading because a lot of normal stations are underground. I say subway, but most British people don't ... so I'm a little bit lost here.  freshgavin TALK   05:38, 8 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Why on earth would you want two separate articles? See eg. Shinjuku Station, which covers all lines in one article, just the way it should be. Jpatokal 11:36, 8 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Jpatokal. And the precedent isn't only among Japanese station articles; it really just makes sense. See Pennsylvania Station, Grand Central Station, etc. LordAmeth 21:11, 8 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Well if you've ever been to some of these stations, (I'm quite sure you have) you would know that Shinjuku Station is one station including transfers to a dozen and a half different lines (and the building exists generally right across the board), but stations like Narimasu and 地下鉄成増 one are not the same station, and can often take 10-15 minutes to walk between. It's basically the same difference as the one between Hachioji Station and Keio Hachioji Station or even Kawasaki Station and Shin-Kawasaki Station. Lastly, take a look at 地下鉄成増駅 and 成増駅 on the Japanese wiki.  freshgavin TALK   01:23, 9 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Well, if you absolutely must, then use "Narimasu Metro Station". "Chikatetsu" is not English. Jpatokal 02:42, 9 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
First of all, your tone is a little harsh considering it wasn't me who created those links using Chikatetsu, so please calm down a little so you don't accidentally insult someone who's a little less balanced than I. Second of all, if you read my problem first of all you would see that I mentioned that not all 地下鉄 are Tokyo Metro stations so what I was really wondering about was how to name the underground stations that aren't on metro lines.  freshgavin TALK   04:56, 9 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
No offense intended — I didn't mean to imply that you were to blame for anything. Anyway, "metro" is a generic word for what Americans call subways and the Wikipedia article on the subject is named as such, so I think it's fine to call a Toei station "X Metro Station" if need be. I wouldn't object violently against "X Subway Station" either (although do see Talk:Tokyo Subway), but "Chikatetsu X Station" just smacks of hypercorrectness. Jpatokal 15:49, 9 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I totally agree. I think a reasonable compromize is [[X Metro Station]] for stations actually on the Tokyo Metro lines, and [[X Subway Station]] for other underground lines, e.g. Osaka Municipal Subway if the station is indeed called 地下鉄Ｘ駅. Note: The first line of Osaka Municipal Subway The Osaka Municipal Subway (大阪市営地下鉄 Ōsaka-shiei-chikatetsu) is the metro network in the city of Osaka, Japan. That would be a mistype wouldn't it? It can't be called a metro network if its not a Metropolis, or ... am I wrong? If I am then forget everything I've said : ).  freshgavin TALK   04:05, 10 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Um, you're wrong. As I just said above, "metro" is a generic word for what Americans call subways, and has nothing to do whether the system runs in a Japanese 都 or not. I'd vehemently oppose calling some underground stations "X Subway Stn" while others are "X Metro Stn". If the company name is to be mentioned, it should go in front: Tobu Nikko Stn, Tokyo Metro Marumaru Stn. Jpatokal 08:14, 10 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I really appreciate your rather blunt response. Because I appreciate it so much I'm going to point out that while subway is a word used by Americans, metro is NOT equal to subway because it is only used for subway systems within metropolitan cities, or in a few cases because the name of the subway line itself contains the word metro whereas subway could refer to any underground railway and in fact in many cases refers much more generally to passageways that have been created underground, not only in America but also in Canada and even England. In fact, subway was originally a British English term that fell out of fashion in the early 1900s, although it is certainly not defunct, as can be seen at Glasgow Subway. Also, I gave no reference to a link between the word metro and the Japanese land division -gun which was covered in a completely different discussion above, and in fact, was labelled under a separate heading. I was referring to Osaka which I'm sure you're familiar with, and as I recently have figured out, no thanks to your help, Osaka is considered a metropolitan city, though not a metropolis, and thus the term metro wouldn't be inappropriate for stations in Osaka either.

As a final note, as I was listening to the English announcements on Yamanote yesterday, and I realized that JR lists the names of underground lines as Yurakucho Subway Line and X Subway Station universally whether they are part of Tokyo Metro or not. This is just JR policy though and probably isn't the case for all lines, and doesn't necessarily mean it's the best system. In the meantime I would suggest that you stop vehemently opposeing things and try instead to reasonably justify for the good of everyone. You may want to take a look at Handling anger assertively if you need help with that.

Name Order Discussion

Someone has made the proposal over at Wikipedia:Japanese Surname Policy/Proposal that all Japanese figures be named by Japanese name order. As Fg2 suggests on that page, please feel free to offer your ideas and comments here, but please read the previous discussion at Wikipedia:Manual of Style for Japan-related articles/Name order. Thanks. LordAmeth 14:04, 10 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

My opinion is that it is fine as is. Most modern Japanese figures are most well-known in the English-speaking world by Western name order (e.g. Junichiro Koizumi, Hideki Matsui, Akira Kurosawa). Personally, I am rather used to thinking of Murakami Haruki, Miyazaki Hayao, Watanabe Ken, and a number of others in Japanese name order, but as some sort of standard needs to be agreed upon, I think the Meiji-split policy we have now is perfectly fine. There are always the option for redirects, and for putting the name in Japanese order at the top of the article, e.g. Junichiro Koizumi (小泉潤一郎, Koizumi Jun'ichirō). The only con, really, is the confusion right around Meiji, for figures such as Saigo Takamori and Sakamoto Ryoma. LordAmeth 14:04, 10 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is, we don't have a Meiji-split policy. The current policy for modern figures is to "use the form of a person's name that is most widely known and used by English speakers ... If a person is not known well, the best thing you can do is to ask other contributors who have been working on the similar field. For example, it seems common to use the Japanese order for those engaged in traditional activities like Go players." I don't think a policy could possibly be more ambiguous.
Personally I prefer SN-GN for all people, primarily because it's a simple and easy to understand solution and secondarily because it makes alphabetizing lists easier. I'm not a huge fan of the Meiji-split for the main reasons that 1.) how to order people who lived during Meiji is unclear 2.) for the uninitiated, the whole "Meiji-split" concept would probably be confusing 3.) looking up a Meiji-era person's birthday every time you include them in an article to determine name order will get tedious (e.g. "wait, when was Soseki born again?") and 4.) the many articles that refer to figures pre- and post-Meiji will have a mix of SN-GN and GN-SN people in the same article, which could get really confusing. But I'd prefer a Meiji-split cutoff policy to no policy, honestly. As it is now, I could see how people unfamiliar with Japanese names would get confused as to whether someone's name order in an article is GN-SN or SN-GN. Meiji-split would at least be a slight improvement.
I think we've pretty much reached a consensus that pre-Meiji people should be SN-GN ... unless people would like to contend this, it would be nice if all further discussion on naming order was on Meiji and post-Meiji people to help narrow the focus. Also, I don't know how everyone else feels, but I'd personally prefer that the conversation is carried out here at the MoS rather than the other page that was created ... after all, discussions like this is exactly what this MoS talk page is for, isn't it? CES 15:24, 10 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

We reached a consensus regarding the name order for historical people and wrote it into the MoS: "For naming the title of an article about a historical figure, use the traditional Japanese order: family name + given name, for example Tokugawa Ieyasu." The problems are that (1) we did not reach a clear consensus for modern names; (2) we did not reach a clear consensus for how to make the distinction between who's modern and who's historical. Those are the two issues where we should concentrate our efforts. Fg2 23:09, 10 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Though not very helpful, there's the valid point that we're never going to be able to standardize this while Japanese people themselves choose the order of their own names by their own discretion. It's popular for singers/actors/talents etc. to write their name in English alongside their Japanese name in photobooks/profiles etc. and I'd say there's about a 70/30 split favouring the western style? Some of these people are quite consistant about the name order in English (easy example, Ayumi Hamasaki) and it will be easy to argue that those people deserve the western treatment. Others are not so consistant, or it may be hard to tell with only a few releases so the only thing making a policy will do is ensure plethori of move-wars. (IMHO)  freshgavin TALK   23:29, 10 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It might be worth checking what the rules used by other publications are here. If you check any English reference, like Chicago Manual of Style, etc., you should find that the rule in English is to follow the person's own preference. Hence newspapers or books will always write "kd lang" for the singer rather than "K.D. Lang", etc. That means that they are obliged to write "Macoto Tezka" (a Japanese film director) because it is the person's own preference. If the persons themselves haven't expressed a preference, then we can use the most common convention, such as "first name/surname". I don't see why Wikipedia should be different from every other English language publication in having to follow and be careful about these kinds of details and use people's own preferred versions of their names. Many Japanese people are inconsistent, and this is unfortunate, but it is not our job to tell people how to write their names. --DannyWilde 23:46, 10 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that most modern (modern = Meiji and after) people are neither famous nor are they nice enough to state a preference for us. The simple fact is both systems (all GN-SN or all SN-GN) have their flaws, and both will result in a good number of articles with odd titles. The question is: which is better--the case-by-case system we have now or going completely GN-SN or SN-GN where exceptions are rare and not the rule. While I think it's important to see how other reference sources (encyclopedias, etc.) deal with this issue, I'd suggest caution when dealing with English style manuals, which have no equivalents to issues such as name order (or romanization, etc.). kd lang vs. k.d. lang isn't as big of a deal as lang k.d., which is what we're talking about here (and ironically, the article is at K.d. lang). But still, let's not make too big of a deal out of it--we're not telling people how to write their names. We're telling people how to write other people's names! But seriously, I think it's important to remember that neither way is perfect ... let's talk about the pros and cons and see which works best here in Wikipedia. CES 01:42, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The "K.d. lang" is a problem with the Wikipedia software. You're incorrect in saying that the English style manuals don't deal with things like romanization - that is exactly what they do deal with. The Chicago Manual of Style goes into Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew romanizations. If we are telling people how to write other people's names, it's very important to get it right, and this can really only be done on a case-by-case basis. The guiding principles should be, in order of priority,

  1. The person's own preference
  2. How the person's name is usually presented in English (if no preference)
  3. A general rule to apply to other cases.

Example; I recently made a page on Misaki Ito. I found that her name was spelt "Itoh" on many internet pages, but on her own web site it is spelt "Ito", so the "Ito" spelling should be used here as it appears to be the original person's (or her agency's) choice. There are not many Japanese people who present their name in the "Family name/Personal name" order, but if they do, then that order should be used. What we can debate about is the third case, what the default rule should be. However, imposing a default rule on people is something which should never be done. --DannyWilde 03:20, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If only Sakamoto Ryoma had a web page! We'd have no problem. I'll say it again: most people are neither famous (i.e. #2 doesn't apply because their name rarely is found in English) nor are they nice enough to state a preference for us (i.e. we don't know #1). And even if they do have a preference I'm not sure it should take precedence over #2 or perhaps even #3. What if this Misaki Ito called herself Micchan on her webpage? Do we name her article "Micchan"? Or, what if Tanizaki Junichiro liked Kunrei-shiki and signed his name Tanizaki Zyunitiro? Does that take precedent over how his name is normally romanized today? And we haven't even gotten to GN-SN/SN-GN.
I'd argue that the guiding principles should be the reverse of what you have: first, start with a given system. Then, if the person's name is overwhelmingly frequently presented in English in a different way, use that way (say, Yoko Ono--although, I believe she's technically a Japanese-American, so GN-SN is appropriate anyway). The more I think about it, I really don't think a person's preference should outweigh their common English usage. If Koizumi signs his name Junitiro, good for him but the English-speaking world still knows him as Junichiro.
Here's another thought ... we always look at the Meiji era as the cutoff point. Afterall, it's when Japan started to really open itself up to the world. But maybe we should be looking at World War II, c. 1945--when the rest of the world started to really open itself up to Japan and mass media began to make frequent reference to Japanese people. Whenever we have these discussions the same three names pop up: Yoko Ono, Murakami Haruki, and Koizumi Junichiro. I don't hear people becoming passionate about the name order of Sakamoto Ryoma or Ito Hirobumi! Let's be honest here ... the debate's not really about Meiji--it's about people who are alive today.
Danny - Please remember that choosing a suggested name order does not force anyone to use that name order in the real world. Deciding name order should be little different than deciding naming systems for temples and shrines, or choosing whether cities should be in the City, Prefecture format or not. All we're doing is choosing a system for categorization here. And we need a firm policy precisely because if we don't, everyone plays by their own very different sets of rules and "case-by-case" ends up being decided by who the most zealous editors are, rather than by consensus. CES 04:50, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The usual convention is as I suggested. Check out newspapers and magazines. If Koizumi says his first name is spelt "Junitiro" then we quite certainly should use that spelling. If he says it is spelt "J'n'tro" then we should use that spelling. Further, most of the Japanese people in Wikipedia probably will have appeared in print before appearing here, since Wikipedia only contains articles on notable people (non-notable exceptions who never appeared in English until Wikipedia include "kyabetsu taro" of course). The example "micchan" isn't relevant since that is a nickname, not a spelling of her name. I'm very strongly against forcing any system of writing Japanese names. The only thing I would support is using romaji to spell out the kana pronunciation of the name: Macoto Tezka (手塚まこと, Tezuka Makoto).

Oftentimes I use Western order at default if the person lives in the modern era. If the person has written books and they are translated, the person almost always gets the Western order as the Western order has been used in the book release. WhisperToMe 23:43, 10 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It's interesting to see the debate on the topic, and there's been a lot of good points brought up. I do agree, it would be hard to reach a consensus on all names - for instance, Yoko Ono, which is spelt even in Japanese using Western name order. As long as the correct name order is mentioned on the entry, as most of the entries do see to have, it seems like a fair compromise - I have also created a template for Japanese names, (see Japanese name, which I borrowed from Chinese name, which I feel would be useful in some entries. Kitty 03:01, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

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