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WikiProject Japan (Talk)
Founded: 18 March 2006 (18 years, 7 months and 25 days ago) Articles: 95,258 (185 featured)
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Fukagawa Geisha

Would some others mind taking a look at Fukagawa Geisha and assessing it? Ganbaruby has cleaned up some things, but it probably would help to have more people looking it over. It was created directly in the mainspace by a new editor named Geicraftor; there was a sandbox version User:Geicraftor/sandbox/fukagawa geisha, but that was never submitted to WP:AFC for review. Some concerns about the account were expressed by Ineffablebookkeeper at Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions/Archive 1096#This section on this person's page is a bit too overt and User talk:Geicraftor#Fukagawa geisha prior to the article being created, but no response was received in either case. If the subject is notable, then any COI connection isn't really an issue since that can probably be cleaned up; same goes for any WP:UPE, but in that case the creator will need to comply with WP:PAID or be blocked. Since there's obviously a strong connection between this article and Fiona Graham, perhaps a WP:MERGE or WP:REDIRECT would be preferred to outright deletion if the "house" isn't deemed to be Wikipedia notable in its own right. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:31, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

@Marchjuly: I've started a merge proposal at Talk:Fukagawa Geisha#Merge proposal and I'd appreciate any comments you all might have. ◢  Ganbaruby!  (Say hi!) 01:49, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

I agree that the best option would be to merge the "Geisha Mother" section of Wikipedia into the Fiona Graham article, but the rest of the article should stay as the house has received press coverage in several notable news outlets around the world. The reason for writing the Geisha Mother section was because the Fiona Graham editors were acting as gatekeepers to a unflatteringly biased article. Geicraftor (talk) 08:56, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Taichi Mukai

There is a discussion at Talk:Mukai Taichi#Requested move 1 March 2021 over renaming the article. Input is appreciated. Thanks. lullabying (talk) 18:51, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

Haruka Kudō

There is a discussion taking place at Talk:Haruka Kudō (singer)#Requested move 3 March 2021 over renaming the article. Your input is appreciated. lullabying (talk) 19:43, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

"Sayuki" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Sayuki. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 March 8#Sayuki until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. -- Marchjuly (talk) 07:08, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Two new lake articles

For anyone who may want to watch or edit them, I just made these two articles: Lake Kutcharo and Lake Utonai. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 20:45, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

"長賜輪"/"Ever Given"

Recently "長賜輪" was removed from en:Ever Given, as it was missing an RS, and was questioned as if it was an official name. The Chinese Wikipedia uses zh:長賜輪 (zhǎng cì lún) as its pagename. Does anyone know if this is an official name, either in Chinese of the ship operator, or in Japanese of the shipowner? Japanese Wikipedia uses ja:エヴァーギヴン (evuāgivun) -- 67.70.27.246 (talk) 00:46, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Help at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Christopher McCombs

Hi all. The sources for this article are largely in Japanese. It would be helpful to have any bilingual editors available to comment here. It's challenging to evaluate for editors who only read English.4meter4 (talk) 03:10, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Miyamoto Musashi's adopted sons

Hello, I've come across this figure Takemura Yoemon whom is refered to as one of Miyamoto Musashi's adopted sons (along with Mikinosuke and Iori) in several English language sources (as well as Musashi's own English language Wikipedia article, which also states he was married to Musashi's sister), but the figure's own article only refers to him as a senior student and there is no paternal or in-law relationship mentioned in the Japanese article on Musashi (as far as I can tell). I also found this page which I think may be relevant.

This page also claims that his eldest son had a younger biological brother whom Musashi likely adopted as well. I believe this Japanese Wikipedia article is about this man. I can't find any reliable English language sources on this person sadly.★Trekker (talk) 12:23, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

@Treker: By sheer coincidence, I just recently finished listening to the unabridged translation of Yoshikawa Eiji's famous (and LONG) novel; I don't recall any Takemura Yoemon being mentioned in it, but certainly a lot of information floating around about everyone related to Miyamoto Musashi is suspect because of (a) actual Edo-period legends likely originally propagated Musashi himself, his disciples, and his enemies, but later also by the descendants thereof who didn't know any better, and (b) pure fiction (different from legends) that has been confused for either early-modern legend or historical fact because of the large number of people both in Japan and overseas who are familiar with the story invented by Yoshikawa but not with the fact that it was invented by Yoshikawa (or even with the fact that there was a writer in the 20th century named Yoshikawa Eiji). Perhaps two of the three people most commonly associated with Musashi, Hon'iden Matahachi and Otsū, appear to be completely fictional, but it's likely that only a small proportion of people who associate them with him are aware of this.

As for the specific issue you raise, the Yoemon article's cited source (already cited in the earliest version) does indeed say that, so at least it's not a complete Wikipedia hoax like a lot of pre-modern Japan martial arts articles written around the same time (...ahem), but yes... he seems to be an obscure figure: the Nipponica article on Niten-ichiryū lists a 竹村与右衛門頼角 (Takemura Yoemon Yorisumi) as one of his disciples, as does this article, which repeatedly calls 竹村与右衛門 (Takemura Yoemon) Musashi's disciple without seeming to imply a familial relationship. However, Ishikawa Kiyoyuki, a professor (apparently of history) at Aichi Prefectural University seems to have no problem putting his name on a document that describes Yoemon as Musashi's 義子 (adoptive child). A lot of other pages I came across seem less reliable than the above, but those ones ironically are more carefully, saying "he is said to have been" Musashi's adoptive child.

So... yeah, the article is definitely suboptimal and needs better sources, but at least one not-terrible source written (or at least overseen) by a history professor in a Japanese university does explicitly call him an adopted son, so it would seem not to be just something ignorant westerners believe.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:28, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Thank you a ton @Hijiri88:, I appreciate your reply immensely.★Trekker (talk) 10:42, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Proposition to change how we approach the Japanese names in the openings of the articles.

Hello everyone. I wanted to propose a change how we approach the Japanese names in the openings of the articles. For all languages, we write something like "(German: German name)", example: "Szczecin (German: Stettin)", ect, but with Japanese, it's always just "([something in Kanji], [romanization])" without even mentioning it is in Japanese and most of the times without inclusion of hiragana (or katakana).

So, I wanted to propose a change, similar to how we treat names from Chinese language that we usually write as "(simplified Chinese: [name], traditional Chinese: [name], pinyin: [name])", example: "Mao Zedong (simplified Chinese: 毛泽东; traditional Chinese: 毛澤東; pinyin: Máo Zédōng)

So my proposition is to write Japanese names in like:

English name (Japanese kanji: [name], Japanese hiragana: [name], romanization: [name], pronunciation: [IPA])

([[Kanji|Japanese kanji]]: , [[Hiragana|Japanese hiragana]]: , [[Romanization of Japanese|romanization]]: '' '', pronunciation: )

For example:

Hokkaido (Japanese kanji: 北海道, Japanese hiragana: ほっかいどう, romanization: Hokkaidō, pronouciation: [hokːaꜜidoː])

Instead of previously used:

Hokkaido  (北海道, Hokkaidō)

Thank you for your attention, TheEditMate (talk) 12:28, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

I'd say brevity is important; many/most articles about things Japanese mention the Japanese connection, so readers may be able to make the mental leap and conclude that the script and transliteration relates to Japanese; as yet I haven't encountered any expressions of aporia on the talk pages I watch suggesting readers are at a loss as to what the naming they are presented with is all about; and in general, if it ain't broke, don't fix it; but perhaps that's just me, Maculosae tegmine lyncis (talk) 15:27, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

I don't think the hiragana or katakana is relevant, it's not the name and you won't see it used anywhere. We should only list the actual name and the English name where appropriate, not back translate it to the kana. The comparison with Chinese I believe is erroneous, as they're actually used forms whereas the kana isn't used outside of young children. We're not a dictionary or translation service. Canterbury Tail talk 18:51, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Well-intentioned proposal, but this is too much information. The lead sentence of an article is important real-estate, and brevity and utility should be the key considerations. Hiragana is not helpful at all as a pronunciation guide for an English speaker, as it would be for a Japanese speaker. Hepburn romanization often does the job of indicating pronunciation well-enough, with some exceptions (like Karaage, where an IPA version is a helpful addition). We do currently have the |lead = yes parameter inside of Template:Nihongo, which produces a display like this:

Hokkaido (Japanese: 北海道, Hepburn: Hokkaidō)

— Goszei (talk) 18:52, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

I don't see a need to include kana (which will almost always be included in the Japanese article). This seems to be a solution in search of a problem. As others have mentioned, comparing to Chinese is not valid as everything you mentioned that's included in the Chinese articles is used by everyday people, whereas the kana isn't generally used for the words in Japanese. It ain't broke, so there's no reason to fix it. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 19:05, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

I do not think the suggestion is a good one. For a start, this bit is misleading: 'For all languages, we write something like "(German: German name)", example: "Szczecin (German: Stettin)",...' -- This is a different sort of issue entirely, where a place has a German name but is not within the (current) boundaries of Germany. Also, I think the really big improvement needed in WP is to get rid of this idiotic business where the first sentence of each article begins with a topic noun phrase, followed by an indefinitely expandable sequence of bits of information, mostly good in there own way, yet serving to make the article not immediately readable. Putting information like this in some kind of infobox seems the obvious way to achieve this, yet raises an irrational degree of hatred in some editors, for reasons totally beyond me. Imaginatorium (talk) 19:46, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Also I think this conversation should happen at MOS:JAPAN and not here in the Wikiproject. Canterbury Tail talk 21:05, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

• "Japanese hiragana" is not a standard way of writing Japanese names or any other Japanese words except for certain exceptional words where the kanji are problematic for whatever reason and in documents for very young children or those intended for consumption by Japan's foreign residents but written/produced by people without the budget to pay for proper translation. Brevity is of course an important consideration, but we should be open to making exceptions in cases where the circumstances merit them; including a Japanese phonetic orthography that, among our target readership (which does not include Japanese children who can read hiragana but not English), is only useful for those who are learning Japanese but have not yet mastered the two kana scripts and therefore need the practice, is not such a circumstance. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:28, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Genealogy of the Kings of Chūzan#Requested move 25 March 2021

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Genealogy of the Kings of Chūzan#Requested move 25 March 2021 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. ~ Aseleste (t, e | c, l) 10:39, 3 April 2021 (UTC)