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Japanese islands and hyphenation

Dear Experts, Japanophiles,

According to the following advice of one of our Administrators,

• The best place to discuss this is probably Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Japan, which is well-watched by Wikipedia's Japanophiles (including myself). How about starting a new thread there?

I would like to open a discussion on the hyphenation used in transcription of Japanese words. Currently, we have a bit of a mess resulting from the lack of clear rules in Wikipedia, and caused by the use of the wrong sources. Our problem began with the transcribed names of the Japanese islands: Inujima or Inu-shima and Inu Island in English. As you know hundreds of islands are transcribed properly (eg. Awaji Island) and in accordance with broadly accepted international standards WITH HYPHEN because -shima is treated in English as a NOUN-SUFFIX. Exactly as in the case of -san = mountain; -shi = city; -jinja = shrine; -kō = lake etc. However, some editors try to write these two words together, in the form of Inushima, Awajishima. I will be very grateful for your opinions, --Seibun (talk) 11:18, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

It all really depends on how the name is translated into English. WP:MOS-JA already says in the case of "-jinja", you should translate it as "Shrine". If that isn't clear, go with the way the locality names it (rather than some ancient dictionary or atlas) which in this case is "Inujima". I'm honestly not aware of any case where "-jima" or "-shima" is used other than the many cases I'm finding where you instigated a move.—Ryulong (琉竜) 13:33, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Additionally, you were told in July by Nihonjoe that the English Wikipedia's Japanese manual of style specifically suggests not to use hyphens in any translated names, so there's no reason you should be confused about this now other than it being your personal preference in the way romanization should be dealt with in an academic manner.—Ryulong (琉竜) 13:41, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but I can't find the part in WP:MOS-JA that says we shouldn't use hyphens in translated names. Does anyone know which part (or parts) of the guideline mentions this? It would be a good idea for us all to get on the same page about what the guideline actually says before we start talking about changing it. (Also, for reference, I'm the administrator that Seibun is referring to at the start of this thread.) — Mr. Stradivarius ^{(have a chat)} 14:02, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

I believe the entry

Suffixes such as "City", "Town", "Village", and "Island" are generally superfluous in English and should be avoided.

might be the one that covers things here. Also, in the case of "Inujima", there are clear uses by the current government that "Inujima" is the preferred form, which is covered by the "Determining common usage" section.—Ryulong (琉竜) 14:10, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

The ALA-LC Romanization Tables: Japanese digs into the hyphen issue and gives numerous modified Hepburn guidelines/examples. The Library of Congress prefers no hyphen before a generic geographic feature (middle of p. 84). Prburley (talk) 19:22, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

My answer soon --Seibun (talk) 09:51, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

"Mera sings Bach"

Anyone any idea why Yoshikazu Mera of "Mera sings Bach" etc. was moved to spelling "Mela"? In ictu oculi (talk) 16:25, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Because c. 2010 when I moved the page he went by "Mela" instead of "Mera.—Ryulong (琉竜) 16:36, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, news to me :) His 1998 recital disc, and every other BIS disc before and after has "Mera". All printed/published sources have "Mera" as per Billboard - 24 Jan 1998 - Page 42 Vol. 110, n° 4 "Plus, countertenor Yoshikazu Mera is a sensation in Japan, where his recital disc of Japanese art songs has sold 50,000 copies in four months, according to label reports. BIS has seen a 40% sales increase since 1992, even though the label ..." Anyway, no worries, could you move it back please. Thanks. In ictu oculi (talk) 17:06, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Oh you have done, well done, thanks. In ictu oculi (talk) 17:09, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

WP:MOS-JA states to defer to the subject's preferred English spelling if it is known before going to press variations.—Ryulong (琉竜) 18:07, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

As above. In ictu oculi (talk) 03:17, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

In 2010, he wrote his name as "Mela".—Ryulong (琉竜) 07:08, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

About customs of battle during the time of the Genpei War?

In article of Chinese wikipedia zh:壇之浦之戰 (Battle of Dan-no-Ura)it was written"Yoshitsune ordered his forces to attack the helmsmen and sailors of the Taira clan, thus immobilizing their fleets, though this tactic was considered contrary to some unwritten customs of battle at that time". Initially I thought it was only an unsourced original research, but tseveral days before I found views like "Yoshitsune's unusual tactics in Ichi-no-tani and Dan-no-ura were contrary to the customs of battle"(not declaring it as unwritten) in a literary critics book, and the Japanese wikipedia article seemed to suggest that this view emerged just recently. So I would like to ask: is thie view sourced in any historic references?--Inspector (talk) 14:11, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Kanji-hyōji problem

I was just reading Jōyō kanji#History, and I noticed that the kanji 叱 (list of newly-included kanji, 4th row, 4th from the right) is in brackets and is preceded by an empty box. I checked the source, and the box was there too. I looked up the official revised Jōyō kanji chart from the Japanese government and searched for this character.[1]. Page 19 says that this character's two variant forms are essentially the same character. I copied the one that wasn't displaying (I think the cross-stroke on the right-hand side that looks like 七 is written left-right as opposed to right-left) and tried pasting it into the Wikipedia page. It came up as a �diamond-question mark.

This might just be a problem with my computer/browser, but is anyone else having this problem? If so, any idea how we can address it?

elvenscout742 (talk) 02:13, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

The character 叱 is CJK Unified Ideographs, while the character 𠮟 is CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B which may not be supported by some operating systems or browsers. See this explanation.―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 03:57, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Wikivoyage

Not much to look at yet, but...[2]. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 07:07, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

NPOV and duplicate article?

Can someone look over Kirishitan please. Seems to be duplicate and WP:FORK? In ictu oculi (talk) 23:15, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

The tags have been removed (fine), but no input on the subject. I still think this is OR/FORK from History of Roman Catholicism in Japan, there were no non-RC Japanese Christians at this period. Have listed on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Catholicism as well, though a bit unlikely anyone there who knows anything about Japan isn't on this project first. In ictu oculi (talk) 20:12, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Article assessment help

Does this WikiProject (or Wikipedia in general) have any community-based objective review system?

I have been working on translating the article waka (poetry) from the Japanese, but I have learned over the last few months that Japanese Wiki's standards are quite different from ours, and citations in the original are minimal-to-nonexistent. I can deal with that by just checking each statement against English sources (and I will, someday :P ). But as for other areas of improvement, I am looking for advice.

I noticed that if I have a problem with something in an article, or another editor's edits, it's very easy to get community input via RFC -- is there any corresponding request for articles that just need general improvement? I have seen other articles get nominated for GA and FA and get shot down almost immediately, but with pretty good advice as to how to improve them, but given that I know this is a waste of other editors' time it seems inappropriate...

elvenscout742 (talk) 06:57, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Sounds like you're looking for Wikipedia:Peer review. I hear that a lot of featured article writers take an article to GA, then use a peer review as a stepping stone to FA status. You can use peer review at any stage of development, though, as long as the article in question is relatively fleshed out. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{(have a chat)} 10:04, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

No don't send it for peer review until the obvious problems are all fixed, otherwise you will just annoy people. About half or more of the article sent to peer review only get a cursory glance. I sent Kaneto Shindo there but got nothing except an image request. JoshuSasori (talk) 04:02, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Infobox East Asian name

{{Infobox East Asian name}} has been nominated for deletion -- 70.24.245.16 (talk) 04:17, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Discussion got moved to here: Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2012 December 10#Template:Infobox East Asian name. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 08:12, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

What is this organization "Myowa-kai"

I was exploring the feasibility of an article on Buddhism and violence when I read about this Japanese "pan-Buddhist organization known as the Myowa-kai" which in 1937 issued a statement in support of the Japanese war effort, which said "we ... now have no choice to to exercise the benevolent forcefulness of 'killing one in order that many may live.' [issatsu tashō]"[3] I tried to do a web search for this organization, but got very little information, except that apparently two Sōtō Zen leaders, Hayashiya Tomojirō and Shimakage Chikai, were associated with this statement.[4] Maybe Myowa-kai is an obscure nickname or abbreviation for some well-known organization like Risshō Kōsei Kai (what Google threw out) or just a front organization for the government? Could somebody who knows the Japanese language or the history of the period clarify? Shrigley (talk) 23:58, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

I have no idea, and this probably has nothing to do with it, but the far-right religious group "kenshoukai" (顕正会) was previously known as "myoushinkou" (妙信講). This started in the 1940s as a pro-war Buddhist group. JoshuSasori (talk) 03:57, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Hilariously badly-written article History of sushi

The article History of sushi is so badly written that it is laugh-out-loud funny. Here is the lead:

Sushi is a Japanese dish considered a delicacy. It started out as a fast food in Japan because of its simplicity. A round sandwich of sorts, it is most often made with rice, sashimi, and circled with nori. The ingredients have caused controversy due to the fact that they are often raw.

It's almost a perfect parody of wikipedia inanities and ought to be preserved somehow. JoshuSasori (talk) 03:25, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

The lead was added in March 2011 (this edit) by an SPA that only edited this article. What's odd is that no one ever tried to change it. But since the article was subject to edit wars at that time (some editors were trying to argue that sushi is a Chinese invention), I would not be surprised that some odd changes were overlooked. Michitaro (talk) 04:00, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Assassination of Tomomitsu Taminato

This Second Sino-Japanese War related article needs attention from editors familiar with the topic: it needs to be revamped with reference to better and neutral sources. I have raised my concerns on the article talk page. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 17:25, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

manual of style for Japan-related articles suggested alteration - lose the macrons on people's names

I'd like to suggest an alteration to the manual of style for Japan-related articles. My suggestion is that the manual of style be altered to say that the modern-day (post-Meiji) names of Japanese individuals should be written without macrons. I have NO IDEA where the idea of putting macrons on Japanese people's names has come from, but I am not aware of a single person who uses macrons on personal names in romanized form in Japan. I mean I do not think there is even a single human being who uses these things. It's not a debate or an issue so much as "Wikipedia versus everyone else". Can we please be a bit more realistic about the best way to write names, and lose the macrons, unless there is some evidence the person actually does use them? And if anyone here can find even one person who uses macrons, does anyone have a good recipe for cooking hats, because I'll be eating mine. JoshuSasori (talk) 05:09, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Are you saying that what you want is for peoples' names that have within them: 〜おう〜／〜ほう〜／〜ろう〜／〜のう〜／〜しょう〜／…, for 5 examples in hiragana (for eg. 啓次郎　将積), to be written in romanized characters as: ...ou.../...hou.../...rou.../...nou.../...shou.../ etc., instead of written as: ...ō.../...hō.../...rō.../...nō.../...shō.../ etc.? Are you saying from personal knowledge of Japanese people with their own names, or what?

Please contextualise your complaint(?) French, German, Chinese and many many more languages can't be written in romanized characters without various accents, umlaughts, macrons and many more. The keyboard is very easy to use for these, correctly operated. Of course all the millions of people using computer keyboards everyday in these many languages are typing these 'special' characters on the keyboards everyday, as the basic sounds of each of the languages. —— --macropneuma 06:20, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

No. Regarding modern-day people's names only, the macron on the name should be removed completely, not replaced with a "u". Thus Yasujirō Ozu -> Yasujiro Ozu, and so on, and certainly not Yasujirou, as a default way of naming people. Regarding your second paragraph, you are wrong. Japanese keyboards don't contain any facility to type macrons, and the pre-Unicode common forms of computer-encoding for Japanese don't contain macroned letters. JoshuSasori (talk) 07:02, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Japanese keyboards? Seems angry? ——--macropneuma 07:27, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

How are you writing macrons here? ——--macropneuma 07:58, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Beneath your edit window you should be able to select from a variety of symbols not normally available on keyboards (including characters with diacritics). Others, like me, are set up with a compose key that allows you to combine two characters into one, so I type <COMPOSE>, "-", "o", and it outputs "ō".

I can confirm what Joshu says—macrons are rarely used by the Japanese. They're pretty much limited to foreign textbooks of Japanese. Dropping any indication of vowel length is something I find hard to stomach, but you'll find few supporters (unfortunately) of the "ou" style of transliteration outside of Japan. CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 08:34, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Either copy and paste or use the Wikipedia editing box thing labelled "Special characters". JoshuSasori (talk) 08:30, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

On the serious subject, it is a choice between ou and ō, because that destroys the language when the vowel length is obscured. Many Japanese friends have long vowel sounds in their names. These Japanese friends of mine write either with: macrons or ou style. Okay rarely, but not okay never. I already knew that rarity, of course. Who is silly enough to close off the options of anything just because it is rare rather than pop. On the other hand JoshuSasori has an point, exaggerated, about macron's wrong use in some titles here in WP. On the not serious subject of keyboards' writing of macrons, you're both doing the too hard way, which before i knew better i did too, and this seems the real frustration causing anger to show out: On Mac globally: Option-A then the vowel couldn't be easier, if you know how to operate your Mac computer and set it up, properly, for both Japanese language characters and for English (romanized characters) transliterations; that means finding an extended English keyboard setting, eg. US Extended. I suspect you're both on windows, so if i find the easier windows way, then i'll let you know together with a hat recipe. ——--macropneuma 08:49, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I'm on Linux. If the macron is the only diacritic you're going to use, then your solution is fine. If you're going to use other diacritics, though (like if you're going to type French as well), then having a compose key gives you more options. The only place I personally use macrons is when editing Wikipedia (in real life I either use actual Japanese, or the "ou" style), so having to type one more key on rare occasions isn't a problem for me. CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 09:02, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes indeed! to many more options using the compose key, you have. Ahaaa! on Linux! Indeed macrons are more for published written form (more formal and proper), like this WP encyclopaedia is supposed to be. However my Japanese friends write their transliterated names with macrons in handwriting, and some write ou, but it is in fact easier, quicker, handwriting to just make the stroke above than another letter u. ——--macropneuma 09:08, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

my Japanese friends write their transliterated names with macrons in handwriting, and some write ou, but it is in fact easier, quicker, handwriting to just make the stroke above than another letter u - your Japanese imaginary friends, I think. JoshuSasori (talk) 09:14, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Many Japanese friends have long vowel sounds in their names. These Japanese friends of mine write either with: macrons or ou style. - hmm. JoshuSasori (talk) 09:12, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Every Japanese I know either writes using the "ou" style or just plain "o" (barf). I honestly don't know a single one who uses a macron. This is within Japan. Abroad, it quite likely could be that they've gotten in the habit of using macrons for the benefit of foreigners who expect them. CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 09:17, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

You're calling me a liar and writing direct hate speech at me now JoshuSasori. Don't be so silly. For one of several examples my friend writes: Keijirō (on his name card in front of me now). I already gave this as one kanji example, above. –And try walking in the shoes of the men who have the name 男坂さん (おさかさん, osaka san, Mr. Osaka), not i suppose the impossible: 大阪さん (おおさかさん, oosaka/ousaka/ōsaka san, Mr. Ōsaka) –i suppose impossible for a real name. Try walking in their shoes in business trips abroad and getting introduced all the time as Mr Osaka with the pronunciation of the city name, if pronounced correctly, as seems uncommon, by non–Japanese. ——--macropneuma 09:28, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Indeed! Cūrly Tūrkēy <smile> (simultaneously serious and a humouring). ——--macropneuma 09:37, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

The better, compassionate, more factual and less conjectural, explanation for lack of 'em. (I've met him too; believe it or not; haha! None of us are perfect, and i want to say he is not either, having met and chatted with him about his background in Japan. But he has a 'damn–site better' (less worse) reasoning, for people who can't be bothered with computers, than your sillyness JoshuSasori, however imperfect he is too, like us all—'To be sure! To be sure, Mr. Ō'flarrety!') ——--macropneuma 10:16, 15 December 2012 (UTC) ——--macropneuma 10:36, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

It's going to be difficult to have a sane discussion I can see. JoshuSasori (talk) 10:46, 15 December 2012 (UTC)