Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Japan/Archive/April 2007

message: I've created a category for roads in Japan at "Category:Roads in Japan".  Please add expressways and any other roads you find to this category. -- Exitmoose 02:09, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There is also  which is a subcat of . - Neier 05:21, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Following up, that cat was renamed in accordance to the in/of country naming conventions.  It is now . Neier 10:14, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Roads in Japan Category

message: There is a dispute over whether or not a "Translating Kansai ben into English" section should be included on the Kansai ben article.  Because of its nature, Kansai ben is often translated as a Southern American English accent, as in the series Magical☆Shopping Arcade Abenobashi.  There is a reference, in the translator's notes for that series.
The Pros think that this is a relevant and notable part of Kansai ben, and one where English speakers are likely to encounter it.
The Cons think that it isn't relevant to Kansai ben itself, and that if it is a necessary article then is should be seperate, a "Translating Kansai ben into English" article.  
I am personally in the Pro camp, and think that any seperate article would get hit with a merge tag pretty soon.  But I would like to get some other peoples opinions.  The discussion is here.MightyAtom 02:38, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, no one ever suggested an article about translating Kansai-ben into English, and it wasn't until just today that anyone suggested broadening the scope of the section to translation in general (I suggested it there, and I see you are mentioning it here). One editor was very strongly in favor of writing a section all about anime (as shown in the section header), and that was what was disputed. We argued that it was more well suited for addition in an existing article on translation, like one on dubbing or subtitling. I still believe that a section that's only about anime is inappropriate for the Kansai-ben article. Dekimasuよ! 02:55, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Kansai ben article dispute. Opinions requested

message: Empire of Japan (culture, religion and education) has been tagged "This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards" since November 2005. "The oldest cleanup requests are the highest priority, to prevent embarrassing problems from going unfixed for an indefinite length of time" . It looks to me like information in this article should be moved to other articles and this article deleted, however there was already previous debate about this, the details of which I don't understand. Anybody care to take a look at this? Thanks. -- Writtenonsand 06:09, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I looked at the previous debate, and it seems as if almost everyone was in favor of deletion, while the one person who disagreed changed his mind.  Why it was the discussion was marked as "keep", I have no idea.  In any case, obviously not many people are reading or editing the article. It should be merged and deleted with the three articles cited in the previous discussion. -- Exitmoose 06:32, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Empire of Japan (culture, religion and education)]] needs your help 

message: I've been working on the Branded to Kill article a bit and took a stab at incorporating some information from Japanese language sources. Problem being I wouldn't exactly consider myself literate. Anyway, I wonder if someone wouldn't mind looking over the Soundtrack prose to see if I'm even close. Also, I'd like to add the special features from the Japanese DVDs. As near as I can tell the first edition contains 1. Something about the original release, 2. Seijun Suzuki interview, 3. Joe Shishido interview, 4. Annu Mari photo gallery, 5. Another Shishido interview? 6. Trailers for Pistol Opera, the Taisho Trilogy and Fighting Elegy, link here. At this point I'm not sure if the 2nd edition has any special features, link here. Any help would be appreciated. If not, that's okay too. Doctor Sunshine talk 03:48, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  How's my reading? Call 1-800... 

message: I would like to invite you all to participate in a discussion at this thread regarding bilateral relations between two countries. All articles related to foreign relations between countries are now under the scope of WikiProject Foreign relations, a newly created project. We hope that the discussion will result in a more clean and organized way of explaining such relationships. Thank you. Ed ¿Cómo estás? 18:06, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Bilateral relations discussion

message: At :Commons:Category:Kubota Garden, I've added some rather nice pictures of a Japanese garden in Seattle, Washington. However, I know very little about any formalities of Japanese gardens, and right now the captions just say that it is part of this (20 acre) garden. If anyone can help identify particular formal elements, please enhance my captions. - Jmabel | Talk 04:48, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gardens 

message: Types of pottery are apparently appended with "yaki" in the Japanese. However, most English speakers use "ware" with the name, for example, "Satsuma ware" rather than "Satsuma-yaki." Most of the pages regarding such wares (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Japanese_pottery) use the "-yaki" suffix.
To reflect English usage, a number of the pages regarding wares need to be moved. I think this is pretty obvious, but if there are any objections please let me know. Liashi 20:42, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds good. Just be careful with any that you think might use yaki as a more integral part of the name. I realize that's a somewhat subjective thing. Still, we don't call ukiyo-e "Floating World -e" or "Ukiyo pictures" - it's more commonly known even in English as ukiyo-e, and any partial translation would sound weird. I don't really know of any particular examples in which this would come up for pottery in particular, but it's something to keep in mind. LordAmeth 00:27, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Ware" vs. "Yaki" 

message: As there are already categories for :Category:Former countries in Chinese history and :Category:Former countries in Korean history, I created one for Japan (:Category:Former countries in Japanese history). This was intended primarily to help encapsulate the various provinces or proto-kingdoms or whatever we want to call them which show up in ancient Chinese chronicles prior to the centralization and pseudo-unification of the Yamato, Nara, and Heian periods, e.g. Nakoku, Tsushima Province ... I suppose, if we translate 国 as "province" and not as "country", that makes them part of the Yamato state and thus renders this category unnecessary... Sorry for not fully thinking this through before I did it.
Nevertheless, assuming we do categorize these various things (and other things like the Republic of Ezo and the short-lived 12th century Kingdom of Hiraizumi which I have yet to flesh out an article for) under "Former countries in Japanese history", the question arises of how to deal with certain other subjects, such as Japan's 20th century colonies. Is Empire of Japan a "former country in Japanese history"? Do Korea under Japanese rule or Occupied Japan fall into this category? 
Thoughts and suggestions would be most appreciated. Thanks. LordAmeth 20:43, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm. I think Occupied Japan and Empire of Japan probably fall under the scope of the category, since the form of government was different, but I don't think there's really a correct answer here. I'm thinking that Nanboku-chō should be added into the category as well. Dekimasuよ! 00:18, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for your reply and suggestions. I've added Northern Court to the category, as I think it fits the definition of a country or at least a government better than Nanboku, being a time period, does. As for Occupied Japan and Empire of Japan, I'm going to leave them out for now, as they were not separate from the core of the Japanese polity. I think you're absolutely right to say that there probably isn't a correct answer for this - if we consider the Yamato state to be a state, and the Tokugawa state(s) to likewise be a nation, are these "former countries in Japanese history" or just former incarnations of the same Japan? The whole thing is only complicated further by the ambiguous meaning of 国, and threads of scholarship over the last several decades which talk about the semi-independent nature of the Tokugawa domains (han). ... Anyway, thanks again. Whatever happens with this, I'm glad to have a category, and I'm not too worried about which side of the fence we may end up on with these issues. LordAmeth 10:58, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Former countries 

message: The article Iwatsu Electric is just a stub, and some other articles listed in  are either stubs or missing. If you are interested in electronics manufacturing companies, you may want to expand some of these articles. In the case of missing articles, administrators may wish to review any previously deleted articles which may serve as a starting point for a new article. --Eastmain 02:22, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: User:One2one created several such stubs for the template and at least one has already had a speedy-deletion tag added, stating that it has no claim of notability (I think a billion dollars in sales is a claim of notability, so I removed it). All the red links in the template were created and deleted. So I second User:Eastmain's plea to beef these up. Fg2 06:58, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Apparently the ones that were actually deleted were speedied for being empty, which seems valid (but creation would be good). Dekimasuよ! 09:02, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I am oblidged to reluctantly advertise myself here for being a good advertisement writer with this example: Iwatsu Electric. Could anyone kindly advise me how it can be improved please? Would immitating the style as seen in Redback Networks or Vecima networks help? Thank you in advance. --OhMyDeer 03:22, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Iwatsu Electric]] and other Japanese electronics companies 

message: Sorry to pull Chiba right off the list like that. I did have a reason for it beyond simply that I've been working on the links. I usually consider myself the only one doing disambiguation on the Japan-related articles (I've probably done 2000 links to the page "Japanese" by now), and I do the straightforward links first, leaving behind the ones that have serious problems to ponder at the end. These are things like Republic of Eastern Turkestan and Axis Powers Links (linked to Japanese), Koshiró Oikawa (linked to Japanese Navy), or in a very different vein, Japanese pens and stationery. Or Opposition at home to the Japanese government (WWII), with its cleanup tag from October 2005. I lose my list of articles in serious need of cleanup/moving/a deletion discussion if another editor fixes those links. I know it's selfish, but for that reason, if you want to do dab link repair, please consider starting with the DPM pages and avoid Chiba for the moment.
My weeding is most evident if you check "what links here" for Japanese. The weeding has caused most articles that remain linked to have very serious flaws. Unfortunately, fixing them is not something I can keep up with, and there is a backup of about 70 pages like that. Rather than just fix the links to Japanese, please, please jump in and fix a few of the articles themselves. Dekimasuよ! 10:19, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  New disambiguation section 

message: Hey everyone. Just thought I'd inform you there is a new Japanese Baseball task force at the Baseball-WikiProject.--Borgardetalk 11:50, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. I added our project banner there, too, as we fully support that task force. Thanks for creating it. ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 22:07, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the support, we're still trying to kick it off. I have a bit of knowledge of Japanese baseball, but not as much as I'd like as I don't live there and the information really isn't that readily available on the net. If anyone has anything, please post it resources :) --Borgardetalk 12:10, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Japanese Baseball 

message: Peer review of Japanese invasions of Korea (1592-1598) ended with no comments.
Peer review of Nick Baker (prisoner in Japan) has been underway for two weeks with no comments. 
Fg2 05:03, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Peer review update 

message: There is currently no precedent to have or maintain a complete list of the active maiko/geiko in a particular district, not even the Kamishichiken page in Japanese. They only go as far as to list some of the more common geisha lines of descent, like Ume-, Katsu-, Nao- Ichi-, etc. Since the information is hard enough to verify, let alone update constantly, would you recommend leaving the page as it is, or changing it to reflect such limits (as per Wikipedia:Verifiability:Sources in languages other than English)? Claw789 22:46, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maiko/Geiko List 

message: I've copied some of this info from the article in Wikipedia: Japan and I'd like to have someone check the translation for me.  Also, I need some references from Japanese music magazines, etc. to help out.  All the online references to Visual kei history and background seem too commercial to satisfy the Wikipedia editors. Pkeets 17:29, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Key Party Records]] 

message: I've created a new section on the main project page called Top importance articles → FA. The goal of this section is to help us organize to get our Top importance articles up to featured status. There are quite a few that are pretty close (B-Class or higher), so I think with some good cooperation we can reach and exceed the goal listed on the main page for 40 Featured Articles by the end of the year. I think it will also help balance out the list as the majority of current FA in the list are military articles (not that there's anything wrong with that, but a balance is good). So, please dive in and add your name next to any article which interest you. 
On a side note, I'm really amazed and happy with how this project has organized and come together to improve Japan-related articles on the wiki. I think we have all made a positive impact since the project was organized a little over one year ago. I look forward to working with all of you for many years to come as we continue to make a possitive impact here. Thanks for all of your hard work! ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:46, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions about this? ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 21:52, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Having tried to get the Collaboration of the Week going over the past couple of years, and seeing how it hasn't worked, I've concluded that group cooperation doesn't get articles featured, or even improved. Instead, in looking at WP:FAC, I see that featured articles often come from a single author, or maybe two people with a common interest. The successful articles don't always go through Peer Review, but PR can be helpful. Likewise GA. Also, while an article is a candidate for Featured Article status, the author has to be very active in editing the article to answer objections. There are exceptions to the one-article, one-author pattern, of course, but I'd say if someone wants to get an article featured, the best thing to do is read FAC a lot, look at the nits they pick and edit the article to avoid them, get reliable sources for every statement that could be challenged, and be prepared to devote a lot of time to the article during featured-article candidacy. Fg2 20:57, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  In the spirit of getting more FA completed 

message: I think this portal is very close to featured standard. Can you guys comment on what should be improved? Like.. Include a nomination section for Selected article and Selected pictures? AQu01rius (User • Talk) 03:50, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: By the way, can someone direct me to a list of featured Japan-related pictures? AQu01rius (User • Talk) 03:55, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Geez, I hadn't realized before that :Category:Wikipedia featured pictures isn't sub-categorized by country, only by History; Culture and Arts; People; Places etc. That's no good... LordAmeth 09:44, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I just created :Category:Featured Japan-related pictures. Feel free to add appropriate pics to it. ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 23:07, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Portal:Japan]] 

message: I'd like to go ahead with an Anomebot2 run to insert about 400 location tags into Japanese place articles. This would use the computer-generated dataset from which I've posted a sample above, which seems to be reasonably accurate after spot-checking by other editors. Since the earlier discussion, I've modified the bot not to tag any article placed in one of the dissolved municipality or district categories. Would it be OK with the community here if I was to start tagging these articles? -- The Anome 22:00, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds good to me. ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 22:08, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

text: You have my support too. Neier 22:50, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

text: Please do. Amake 02:19, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks! I've done so. -- The Anome 23:34, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed geotagging of articles 

message: After the successful geotagging of around 400 town/city/village articles, I've got another computer-generated dataset, this time for districts ("-gun"). This uses some slightly more awkward heuristics than before, because the GNS data does not have prefecture or sub-prefecture relationships encoded, so I've worked on the principle of this being the only "X-gun" of this name in the GNS, and the only "X District" listed in any of Wikipedia's articles. If anyone would like to spot-check a few entries of the small sample below, and if it looks plausible, I'd like to set the bot off again: this run will only tag about 140 articles, but every little helps.  
* Japan, Tomamae_District, Hokkaido 　Okay
* Japan, Sayo_District, Hyogo  Okay
* Japan, Kume_District, Okayama  Okay
* Japan, Mihara_District, Hyogo  No longer a district
* Japan, Oda_District, Okayama  Okay
* Japan, Taka_District, Hyogo  OK
* Japan, Sakai_District, Fukui  OK
* Japan, Kitaadachi_District, Saitama  Not ok (probably in the old district, but, now, the marker is in Saitama-shi)
* Japan, Nomi_District, Ishikawa  Close (in the pre-merged district; but, close enough to the current district to assume a resolution error)
* Japan, Ika_District, Shiga  NEW
* Japan, Haga_District, Tochigi  NEW
* Japan, Suwa_District, Nagano  NEW
* Japan, Ninohe_District, Iwate  Off by a bit (it is in Ninohe-shi, which is not a part of Ninohe-gun; but, I think it is more of a matter of resolution than getting the correct Ninohe, because the marker is not so far outside the district, and it is not close to the city office)
* Japan, Akaiwa_District, Okayama  NEW
* Japan, Fugeshi_District, Ishikawa  NEW
* Japan, Hoi_District, Aichi  NEW
* Japan, Minaminaka_District, Miyazaki  NEW
* Japan, Uda_District, Nara  NEW
-- The Anome 23:34, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Checked the first five. They are all within the boundries of the districts except for Mihara District which no longer exists. The tricky thing about districts is that they have no identifiable center (except for a proper geographical one of course), and often times they consists of only one town, so their borders are literally exactly the same as the one town they encompass. BilabialBoxing 05:10, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I randomly checked two in the north half, and the results aren't as good as for the cities. Neier 07:00, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

text: Thanks for the feedback! I'll have to revisit this later, when I have better data. -- The Anome 09:49, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed geotagging of district articles 

message: I'm almost done transliterating Place names with unusual readings from the Japanese Wiki. I created it as a subpage of WPJ because I wasn't sure how good it would be as a regular article. I've concentrated on getting the examples translated and left the top of the Japanese page mostly untranslated. If anyone wishes to help with translating the top part of the Japanese page, I would be extremely grateful. I'll finish up the last section on the page within the next few days. Please let me know what you think of the page. ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:38, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for your hard work on this. I'm not sure just yet what I think about this in terms of its usefulness, and I do fear that if it's brought into article space, it may get slapped with AfD. But it is very interesting. I'll see if I can take a stab at translating some of it. LordAmeth 21:00, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I thought it might be useful when translating locations or addresses that included these locations when those locations didn't have articles themselves. Most of the locations in that article are small areas in a town, ward, or city, so they are much less likely to have an article themselves. And, since they are unusually named, people may have a hard time correctly translating the name. ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 21:06, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I've taken a stab at translating that whole introduction section about why unusual place names emerge. You are more than welcome to play with my formatting, or to add or remove examples (there's a whole list in the Japanese versions of alternate readings for characters which I left out here as not being easily accessible or interesting to the average reader, e.g. that the do of Edo can also be read as be or he in other placenames). I think I did a fairly decent job with the translation (I'm really still pretty intermediate in my skills), but if you, or someone else, wouldn't mind looking it over, I'd appreciate it. Particularly the very first one or two sentences - I have a lot of trouble with multiple negatives strung throughout a single long sentence. Thanks a lot. LordAmeth 22:39, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  New useful tool for unusual place names 

message: Daishi has been prodded, and it's not a great article, but if it can't be turned into a dab, or improved to be an article, it will get turned into a redirect to Daishi (BattleMech), which I think is somewhat inappropriate. 132.205.44.134 22:32, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Daishi