# Talk:The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Japan

I am in the process of altering the citations in order to give more credit to the authors of the individual essays and dissertations where I got my information, because as it stands, all the credit is being given to the editors of Taking the Gospel to the Japanese. Skyes(BYU) (talk) 16:52, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Hello Skyes(BYU), I noticed the article on the GA nominations page. Please note that for an article to pass as GA, it needs to contain some measure of sources that are independent of the subject. Although scholarly publications from within the LDS movement can be considered reliable—provided they have some level of editorial oversight—you also need a number of sources that discuss the subject of the article from an outsider's perspective. Independent sources, that is.--Farang Rak Tham  (Talk) 07:45, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for taking a look at the article. I completely understand your concern. I found a few independent sources that I will begin to include. Thanks for the tip! Skyes(BYU) (talk) 16:00, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
Great. Skyes(BYU), please note that an author such as the Britsch guy in the Further Reading section can be a useful source, especially the first two sources mentioned that have been published by other publishers than LDS publishers. The main point is under which publisher the source is published. The more sources published by publishers independent of LDS, the better, even if the authors embrace LDS faith.--Farang Rak Tham  (Talk) 20:40, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
Farang Rak Tham, I took your advice and used the sources you suggested. I think it has improved the quality of the article. However, the BYU Studies sources are still valuable to me because they are lengthy essays on very specific topics related to the LDS Church in Japan and they include a lot of detail that most other sources gloss over. BYU is LDS affiliated, but BYU Studies is also peer reviewed, which makes me feel more comfortable using it as a source alongside my recent changes. Thoughts? Skyes(BYU) (talk) 16:12, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
Opinions on this are divided, but in practice, as for example per consensus at Talk:Jesus Christ, professional peer-review is most essential, not what denomination the scholar is part of. However, it is important to use those scholarly publications that have been most influential and mainstream, to prevent the article for ending up marked as WP:FRINGE. If you do use publications from LDS—sorry to ask, but is Mormon politically correct terminology? I am not American—you should give preference to publications published by outside publishers. But LDS sources, or even primary sources for that matter, are never prohibited in an article, even for GA. You should take care to try to support controversial subject matter, or other subject matter that is subject to opinion or conjecture, by the most independent and reliable sources you can find. In brief, sources should not only be reliable, but also intellectually independent of one another, though there is some allowance for sources that are close to the subject.--Farang Rak Tham  (Talk) 21:40, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
Okay, I am happy to review the article for GA, but after I am finished with either one of my current reviews.--Farang Rak Tham  (Talk) 17:55, 16 April 2018 (UTC)


### Sources you might use for developing the article further
#### Optional for GA, but needed for FA
Mormonism in Japan in the 90s[6]
Plausible religious reasons are given why the Japanese are slow to accept Mormonism, in this BYU study. The arguments seem better researched than the ones you deleted from the Cultural Obstacles section earlier[7]
... by the turn of the century a rising belief in millennialism convinced church leaders they needed to warn the Japanese of the second coming of Christ, especially because of the possibility Japanese people were part of "the believing blood of Israel."[8] or [9]
... Neilson analyzes several specific reasons for the church’s failure to make Japanese converts during this first mission: lack of language training; lack of previous missionary experience (even Grant never previously served as a missionary before he established the Japan mission in 1901); homogeneity of the missionaries’ personal backgrounds (most were born in Utah and into Mormon families and suffered from “group think”) (same source)
Historically, Japan has had a very small percentage of Christians compared to other countries—a little less than 1 percent. The nation has somehow resisted both conversion to and continuing affiliation with Christian religions ...[10] or [11]
From September 1978 to the spring of 1982 the number of baptisms in Japan skyrocketed. Before this period, the monthly baptism total of the twelve missions in the Japan-Korea area had been between 200 and 300, but the figure increased steadily; and after August 1979, it exceeded 1,000 and then 1,500. ... The apparent reason for this phenomenon was President Spencer W. Kimball's emphasis on missionary work ... etc., etc.[12] or [13]


#### Optional, may not be relevant
There is a history of membership graph in here[14] or [15]
In 1875, Charles Le Gendre, a Western adviser to the Japanese government, advised to immigrate the Mormon communities from the US to Japan, to the then sparsely populated region of Hokkaido.[16] or [17] This happened after the Iwakura Mission visited the Utah Territory in 1872, which included visits by the delegation with Brigham Young, and other prominent leaders in the Mormon church.[18][19][20][21]
Mormon women participate more in the labor force than other Japanese women.[22]

I have noticed that some editors seem to have a problem with the idea that the Japanese weren't familiar with Western religiosity. Cited after the statement is a peer reviewed source. If any editor has a serious problem with the statement, I kindly request that they open a respectful discussion on the talk page about the topic in question instead of participating in an edit war without any real reasoning besides "bigoted". Lots of time, careful research, and thorough review have been invested in this article and I am more than happy to discuss contributions from editors who are concerned with the academic accuracy of the article. Thank you. Skyes(BYU) (talk) 22:32, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Why was the information on senkyoshigo removed from this article? Its been a major aspect of missionary life in Japan, for 50+ years. -- 155.95.90.240 (talk)

Explanations for what you are inquiring about are largely located in the detailed good article review located on this  talk page.
I removed the information for a couple of reasons: 
1) There wasn't enough written about it to deserve its own section, yet at the same time didn't really fit or belong in any other section.
2) It is already mentioned on the page Missionary (LDS Church), which is more relevant placement in my opinion. This page is about the LDS church in Japan, which includes membership information and the history of taking the gospel to the country and how it affected the members. I tried to make sure that there was some kind of direct tie to the members in Japan in everything I wrote. In my opinion, Japanese missionary lingo has no direct tie to the article subject.
3) When it was in the article it was merely mentioned, with no examples of words or any added content--the only example given was the word "trunky" which is a general missionary slang word meaning, "ready to go home", and is not at all specific to the Japanese mission, so it didn't belong on the page. 
If you feel passionately about senkyoshigo, please feel free to add it to the page with enough examples and content in a relevant section to make it a worthwhile addition to the article. 
As far as sources go, I spent weeks working on this article and exhausted practically every source I could find. Feel free to add any if you find them. I always appreciate citation additions. 
With regards to the Iwakura Mission, I debated about whether to remove it for awhile. Ultimately, after doing more research about it, it would be considered original research to claim that the Iwakura mission directly affected missionary work in Japan. It seemed to have more of an influence on Utah culture rather than missionary work in Japan. If you can find a source that specifically claims that the Iwakura mission directly influenced the missionary work in Japan, we can revert the edit I made to remove it. Everything in the page must have a clear, lasting relevance to the topic. Thank you for your inquiries, let me know if you have any more questions or concerns. Skyes(BYU) (talk) 18:40, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

I made the decision to remove the Alma O. Taylor section from the article. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a good article and has been through a thorough (and time consuming) review process. Alma O. Taylor has not and was just tacked onto the end of this article without any attempt to integrate it or bring it up to GA standards. I personally, don't have the time to bring it up to GA standards, because I have many other projects I am working on, so in order to maintain my good article status, I am removing it. I do not mean to disrespect those who worked on Alma O. Taylor; I do think he is important and notable. I just kindly request that anyone who wants it back on the page do a couple things before adding it back in:

1) Please improve formatting--one or two sentence paragraphs do not fit in with my prose organization well.
2) Please add citations after the sentences that they source, not just three footnotes at the end of the section.
3) Please double check research and correctness. I attempted to integrate this into the article myself, but became frustrated after finding inaccuracies and just decided to remove it.
4) Please check prose, word choice, and flow.
5) Please integrate into translation of the Book of Mormon section, because it's too brief to belong in its own section.
Thank you so much and I apologize if I offended any of the writers; I understand that merging was your compromise to avoid deletion. I would be more than happy to have this page back in my article when it reaches GA standards. I put weeks of hard work into getting this to GA. Thank you. Best, Skyes(BYU) (talk) 17:38, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

@Skyes(BYU): Since the Alma Taylor material does not have its own section, you might want to unlink Alma Taylor in the lead, following MOS:OVERLINK, as it is now a redirect back to the page the link is on but with no appropriate section target. Bakazaka (talk) 21:56, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
Done, thanks for the reminder! Skyes(BYU) (talk) 22:00, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

The Plan of Salvation japanese.jpg
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 13:08, 29 July 2019 (UTC)