Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Japan

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Spelling

Just wanted to check, whether Yama-no-Kami and Tano Kami are properly (according to wikipedia rules) spelled article titles? bamse (talk)

Midori (violinist)

There's an ongoing debate regarding the use of the spelling of the birth name of Midori (violinist), whether it should be "Midori" or "Mi Dori". The discussion is at Talk:Midori (violinist)#Japanese name. Thanks, Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 07:55, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

Disambiguation links on pages tagged by this wikiproject

Wikipedia has many thousands of wikilinks which point to disambiguation pages. It would be useful to readers if these links directed them to the specific pages of interest, rather than making them search through a list. Members of WikiProject Disambiguation have been working on this and the total number is now below 20,000 for the first time. Some of these links require specialist knowledge of the topics concerned and therefore it would be great if you could help in your area of expertise.

A list of the relevant links on pages which fall within the remit of this wikiproject can be found at http://69.142.160.183/~dispenser/cgi-bin/topic_points.py?banner=WikiProject_Japan

Please take a few minutes to help make these more useful to our readers.— Rod ^talk 16:30, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Koda Kumi good article reassessment

Koda Kumi, an article that you or your project may be interested in, has been nominated for an individual good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. ℯxplicit 06:17, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Japanese transcriptions of fictional character names in non-Japanese media

See this for what specifically brought this to mind. I feel like artificial transcriptions of made up names of Japanese characters in western media don't merit inclusion in the lead and should probably be discussed inline as made up Japanese transcriprions of unrealistic names where such is applicable and can be sourced.

Thoughts?

It's peripherally related, but I'm 90% certain "Yashida" is just a misspelling of how the name "Yoshida" is frequently pronounced in English (both the "o" and "a" simply being pronounced /ə/, or the "o" being that way and the "a" being very close), so I really feel like the Japanese translators should have just written that name as "吉田" to begin with. If they had, it probably wouldn't have stood out as much as it does, and I would have missed the problem facing Wikipedia, so it's a bit of a "Kobayashi-maru". (笑)

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:07, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

If the kanji have been used in an official release somewhere, I see no problem with including them in the article. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 01:32, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Oh, I know, but I mean in the lead like in that article I linked. From where I sit it seems to give the impression that it's a "Japanese topic" and the "real" name is the Japanese one. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 13:02, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Well, for the Japanese character, it is the real one. It seems they've used it since the character was introduced (as far as I can tell), so I don't see a problem. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 22:09, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Assuming we are still talking about Shingen Yashida, I highly doubt they've used it since the character's introduction. Nothing in our articles on either Claremont or Miller imply they read Japanese, or are even familiar with kanji, let alone enough to create a realistic Japanese rendition of their made up Japanese name, and what I have seen of Marvel comics in the 1980s that include "Japanese text" mostly "vaguely oriental-looking" gibberish, which means the kanji were retroactively given to the character by someone. That's why I requested a source on that particular page. But I feel like in general it's just a quasi-interesting piece of trivia, not like most actual Japanese topics where the Japanese spelling of the name is arguably the most important thing about most of them and is integral to the lead. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 22:29, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

I don't know enough about manga to say, but this strikes me as the kind of name that a Japanese manga artist might invent... better than the very common Yoshida. Anway, rather than asking whether it's important enough for the lead, this is just a formula for Japanese names. If it has some currency in Japanese, which it seems to, then wouldn't it be useful for looking up? I don't see why we should make an exception and not include it. – Margin1522 (talk) 02:43, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

But we're not talking about manga. We're talking about American comics and other non-Japanese media that feature Japanese fictional characters whose names were invented in English and were retroactively given kanji representations. I can't imagine why a reader of English Wikipedia would want to know the kanji for looking up such a topic, because there's usually much more material on them in English than in Japanese, and if they really want to know it they can read further down the article. There's also the fact that it's really not "basic information" for such topics and should not be uncited in the lead (which is very different from normal Japanese topics). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:10, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

You may have a point about the language in other Marvel comics. I wouldn't know. But a couple of points. I'm sure we have articles on plenty of oddly named characters from Japanese manga and anime, and if they get kanji why not Shingen? And the other is you never know who might need it. This morning I was trying to help out with the disambiguation request posted above by fixing the links for a pair of daimyō named Ōkubo Tadayoshi from the Karasuyama Domain. They were linked to a disamb page, which listed another pair of daimyō named Ōkubo Tadayoshi. But they were from the Odawara Domain. It took me about 20 minutes to figure out that these were all different people. It would have been clear at a glance if the disamb page had listed the kanji in their names, so I added them, even though normally we don't do that. It might help if someone is as confused as I was and wants to tell them apart.– Margin1522 (talk) 08:27, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

I've also always assumed that Yashida was initially an error (as an aside, in Wolverine #60 (1992), the kanji for Mariko Yashida are given as 吉田真理子). No kanji are given in the original story in which he appears, but 矢志田 is definitely used in the Japanese language versions of The Wolverine and the Wolverine anime. I think I've seen it in the comics as well, but there's no easy way of checking that. Whatever it's origin, it certainly seems to be the canonical writing of the name now. --Cckerberos (talk) 14:47, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, but is it worth mentioning in the lead? The reason we do this for legit Japanese topics is because the actual Japanese names of those topics are basic information not requiring sources and are aguably the most important information for a sizeable portion of our readership, who aren't using Wikipedia as their primary source of information but as a starting point, the Japanese name usually being more searchable than a romanization. Neither of these applies to articles on characters in non-Japanese media. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 20:52, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

The kanji are considered canon now. I'm not seeing anyone else calling for their removal. The character is Japanese, this is their Japanese name...I think it's time to find another battle to fight, Hijiri. There's no valid reason to remove the kanji from the lead. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 21:14, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

Well, I don't see it as a battle, and I don't much care about the issue itself beyond the WP:V problem it presents of obscure, non-basic information appearing in the lead but not the body without a citation.

But yeah, you're right. These pop culture (and particularly fictional character bio) articles are not worth this much of my (or anyone else's) time. Apologies for the hassle.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 22:03, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

How hair-splitting should an IPA pronunciation guide be?

There are a couple of editors tag-teaming at editing ukiyo-e to turn the straightforward pronunciation guide [u.ki.jo.e] to the hairsplittingly pedantic and less accessible [ɯ.kʲi.jo.e], citing the guideline WP:PRON. The article is not a linguistics treatise and the pronunciation guide is meant ot do no more than prevent people from accidentally pronouncing ukiyo-e as [ju.ki.jo.e]—the reader shouldn't be forced to click through to find out how to pronounce [ɯ] and [kʲi] just to be able to read the word. It appears there are IPA-pedants going around systematically making such changes to a large number of articles, making them less accessible to readers. What can we do? Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 05:58, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

The correct pronunciation is [ɯ.ki.jo.e]. It is certainly not [ɯ.kʲi.jo.e] as き and きょ are not pronounced the same. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 07:14, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Did you mean きよ and きょ? Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 11:37, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

No. I was using the examples at Help:IPA/Japanese, and pointing out how they are wrong. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 17:32, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Nihonjoe: Not according to Help:IPA/Japanese, which is the weapon this pair is using to justify this (and which has a footnote that explains the Japanese u is neither [u] nor [ɯ]). One of them also claims the "correct" pronunciation is [ʔɯ̟ᵝʔ͡kʲijo̞e̞], with a couple of glottal stops thrown in ("`ukkyiyoe"?). Neither seems to care what representation most benefits the reader in the context. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 08:14, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Irrelevant discussion

@Curly Turkey: You're continually refusing to raise the issue on Help talk:IPA/Japanese which you should've done in the first place. The level of your stubbornness is astonishing, and the fact that you continually dismiss me as a troll or a disruption is beyond pathetic. Keep thinking that you're capable of an adult conversation as you said on User talk:Nardog, that's only your problem. Mr KEBAB (talk) 09:56, 12 December 2017 (UTC) Note: I'm ignoring Mr KEBAB, as he's been trolling me, making WP:POINT-y edits to a hidden comment, issuing constant personal remarks at me (as here), while refusing to engage in discussion (as here). Let's try to keep on topic in this discussion at the vey least. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 10:20, 12 December 2017 (UTC) @Curly Turkey: You've been ignoring me all along, so that's not a change. At this point I'm writing a report to the admins, I don't give a damn if they ban me too. You're an abusive hypocrite that needs to be taught a lesson. Mr KEBAB (talk) 10:25, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Just to set the record straight, [ʔɯ̟ᵝʔ͡kʲijo̞e̞] was an example to illustrate that [ɯ.kʲi.jo.e] is already an abstraction based on phonological analysis rather than an impressionistic transcription, which the former is. I never claimed it was "correct" in any capacity. Nardog (talk) 11:08, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

I can see that now. Sorry to have misrepresented you. I've stricken that now. We're still left with the basic issue of accessibility that needs to be dealt with. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 11:35, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

• Comment We should of course remember that the IPA being used is generally based on modern standard Japanese (Tokyo dialect). Giving overly specific IPA renditions like this is not only unhelpful to readers who almost certainly couldn't make head or tail of several of the more obscure symbols, but it is not even "correct" except in a very narrow and often anachronistic sense. We had a brief discussion about this on Talk:Kazuo Ishiguro a couple months back, but prescribing to our readers the specifically Tokyo pronunciation of the name of the British-raised son of two émigrés from Kyushu was really silly. Ukiyo-e is a little more of a grey area, since the standard Japanese pronunciation is the one most widely used in contemporary Japan, but it's really not the one that will be most helpful to our readers: only well-learned linguists (who would probably mostly agree that prescribing the Tokyo dialect pronunciation is not helpful) and Japanese-speakers (who don't need an IPA pronunciation key to begin with) could read it. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 13:12, 12 December 2017 (UTC)