Talk:Forty-seven rōnin

message: A Google search revealed the following counts:
* 47 Ronin - 4,540
* 47 Samurai - 615
* Fortyseven Ronin - 11
* Forty-seven Ronin - 925
* Forty seven Ronin - 967
* Fortyseven Samurai - 0
* Forty-seven Samurai - 535
* Forty seven Samurai - 535
so I'm moving it to "47 Ronin". I would have preferred "Forty-seven Ronin", but that's life, I guess. Noel 16:50, 29 Aug 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Page name

message: Since it's been so long (with apologies to Noel, who said he's hard at work on a rewrite): 
: I would definitely ask for a short temporary hold on this for the first phase of the rewrite. The article as it stands contains a number of factual errors (long story - see below), and these really need to be fixed before it's ready. I'll see if I can do this in the next couple of days. Noel (talk) 03:43, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  Needless to say, I never got around to this - see comments below. Noel (talk) 19:38, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

text: Done -- llywrch 22:46, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Rewrite

message: It turns out the current version (as of 17/Nov/2004) of the pages contains a number of errors, all traceable to my reliance on Mitford as a source. (In my defense, I will note that B. W. Robinson - the noted scholar of Japanese decorative arts - said that "Mitford .. remains the best source for a strict historical account of the episode". So I think I can be somewhat excused for going wrong! Alas, it's not true - Mitford contains a number of errors.)
After being alerted to this with the posting of the Prof. Henry Smith site link by User:Fg2 (thanks!) I contacted Prof. Smith, and I've been working with him to gather more data. He has provided a lot of really useful information (reprints of various articles, etc), as well as (via email) some commentary which he has graciously allowed me to post here on Wikipedia.
i would like to say both WP:OR and WP:IGNORE here..88.88.102.248 (talk) 09:56, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Errors

message: Rather than "Homer" how about "Japan's OK Corral" as a metaphor.
It's a bit *weird* to call it the "Homer" of Japan for several reasons
(quite apart from the clumsy grammatical structure of that statement):
* Homer's is a work of mythic legend and poetry; whereas the story of the 47 Ronin is a known historical fact.
* The story of the 47 Ronin is said to embody the spirit of Japan, the Japanese attitude, or way of thinking; in what sense does Homer (a) represent the "spirit" of modern Greece or (b) represent a consistent national attitude of any sort? Homer is no more representative of Greek attitudes, than is Arthurian legend of English attitudes! The comparison is completely specious.
* There are ancient Japanese folk tales (such as Heike monogatari) that are far more sensibly compared to Homer.
-- User:62.252.128.13 19:43, 15 Apr 2004
: Well, no, actually. For one thing, although it is based on historical events, the story of the 47 Ronin as it was made known later to e.g. Mitford had been changed a lot in the re-telling - and those changes are indicative. (Something similar happened with Homer, of course.) Second, Homer doesn't of course play that role for modern Greece; it is historical Greece that people are thinking of when they say that. As to whether the Ronin are really central to attitudes of the late-Edo period chonin and samurai, that's a long discussion, and one I want to read up on (e.g. in Eiko Ikegami's book "Taming of the Samurai") before I go round on it. But I do think there is a case that as Homer represented an ideal for the Greeks of the 5th/4th century, the Ronin represented an ideal for the Japanese of the late Edo period - which is precisely why the Chushingura was the most popular kabuki play of the era. (It isn't any longer, of course - just as Homer isn't for the Greeks any more.) Noel (talk) 15:49, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: The Ronin and Homer

message: Makiko Arima writes (http://www.columbia.edu/~hds2/chushinguranew/retelling/Mitford.htm): "Whoever told A. B. Mitford the story of the forty-seven rōnin clearly told a different version from the one told to Alcock. ... He conveys a legendary aspect of the Akō incident, not a historical account, but merely repeating what he had heard in the oral tradition." And in the section "Story vs. History" concludes "His attention to detail reflects his attempt to retell the story as was told to him, and as close to the actual course of events--as he understood it--as possible, which results in a fairly accurate account of the Akō incident, embellished by famous legends as the story of Kamei and Murakami Kiken." Fg2 10:34, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Mitford

message: Main problem: No References. Without any references, an article cannot reach GA or FA status. External links and further reading aren't references. If the references are stated, the article should surely be restored to GA status.
: Similarly, the article fails B-class criteria for WP:MILHIST. I think this is a great article, one of the longest, most detailed and well-written of the Japan-related articles on the 'pedia. And there's a great list of "Additional Reading", which could be easily renamed "References". But without inline citations, I'm afraid, moving beyond Start-status (for MILHIST) or B-class will be difficult. LordAmeth 23:22, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I wouldn't move it up in quality on anybody's list until it's completely rewritten without any reliance on Mitford. See the email discussion with Prof. Henry Smith, which he has graciously allowed me to post here. Noel (talk) 19:54, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

text: This is not really true; the ronin lived on for quite some time in captivity, and provided their recounting of the events of the attack in great detail, which have been retained in the records. See the email discussion with Prof. Henry Smith, which covers this exact point. Noel (talk) 19:54, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Just adding link to Columbia University, Weatherhead East Asian Institute -- bio/blurb for Prof. Henry D. Smith II --Ooperhoofd 14:53, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Delisting from GA

message: The Intro to this article needs dates.  Marquess (talk) 02:02, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Marquess, a wording like "at the beginning of the 18th century" or such at the very beginning would be fine. Also, when start reading the article from top, due the use of such words as "story", "legend", "tale" it does not become directly clear that these incidents really happened (despite a lot of legends and fiction around it). Maybe I will have some time to update the article, in the meantime I leave it on the talk page. --Cyfal (talk) 08:11, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I've placed the events in the proper century and stated that the tale is true. Further suggestions are welcome, and of course anyone may edit the article to improve it. Fg2 (talk) 10:18, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Hey, you're quick! It's perfect, what you did, I think. --Cyfal (talk) 23:21, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Intro 

message: there appears to be no sources for this criticism, perhaps it should be removed if they can not be found. 67.176.160.47 (talk) 06:31, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: It would be difficult to reference it, it is justified however. Apart from that, what about the family members of those killed on both sides? One wrong was "avenged" with another wrong, because the 47 created widows and took the fathers away from their children. Maybe that should be put into the criticism as well. Gryffindor (talk) 16:46, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism 

message: I've just tried to read the article from the top to the bottom, and in my opinion it is highly disjointed and consists of a series of disconnected factoids which are strung together into an article without any proper organization. Can someone please do a rewrite so that it becomes possible for a reader to learn the basic information without stumbling over disjointed bits and pieces. JoshuSasori (talk) 07:51, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disorganized and disjointed factoids 

message: I have just completed a copy edit as part of the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Guild_of_Copy_Editors March 2013 copy editing drive.  Since the title of the article has settled at "Forty-seven Ronin" for now, I changed almost all references within the article from "forty-seven ronin" and "47 ronin" to the capitalization used in the article's title. 
If there is future consensus about changing the title of the article, consider changing the many instances of "Forty-seven Ronin" in the text to match the new title. Jonesey95 (talk) 05:27, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Why would you do that? The above RM was closed as no consensus, not consensus to change all instances to the faulty orthography of the title. It'll take forever to undo what you did manually, and my being 7 months late means reverting you is also out of the question. I might as well open another RM to see if anyone opposes my original proposition other than two largely inactive edits who never edit in this area. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 15:08, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[WP:GOCE]] Copy Edit, article text matches title 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Forty-seven Ronin. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20070930014735/http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/geschichte-japans/nengo_calc.htm to http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/geschichte-japans/nengo_calc.htm
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20100503121807/http://web.me.com:80/meyer.eva/www.yukikurete.de/nengo_calc.htm to http://web.me.com/meyer.eva/www.yukikurete.de/nengo_calc.htm
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.
Cheers. —cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 00:28, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I've started rewriting the bulk of the article based on the Japanese article (:ja:赤穂事件) at User:Achurch/47 ronin draft. I'm not a historical scholar by any means, but based on what I do know of Japanese history, the events as described in the Japanese article seem much more likely to be accurate than those in the current English article; of note, it seems that a lot of the references are to recent (2012-2014) work.
My intent is to replace the beginning of the existing article up through the "Criticism" section with a translation of the Japanese article through the "sequence of events" section (section 3, with 29 subsections). I don't know if/when I'll have the energy to get through all of that, but comments and edits are welcome.
Achurch (talk) 20:43, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Draft rewrite in progress 

message: :
Eh?  At the moment, the whole list of names is in italics.  What happened? —Tamfang (talk) 06:27, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  alternative names 

message: The article says the "wife of Onodera Junai" committed suicide too. Was she the only one? If there were others, this should be added. And do we know her first name? Clarityfiend (talk) 08:40, 21 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wives 

message: In this  and  edit.  and  tags were added with a source of http://parlaylabs.com/tale-of-ronin.html.
Looking at that source, it looks like a strong case for reverse copyvio. Its dated 2019-07-18, much after this wikipedia page. The source seems to be a game/movie review site. It does not make much sense itself seeming to take paragraphs from various sources, starting the plot halfway through. There various links scatter throughout the site to rather dubious sites. --Salix alba (talk): 21:10, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reverse copyvio 

message: The use of Genroku era does not appear to be a mistake. This is a quote from one of the citations provided in the lead:
 Yue🌙 02:11, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  ''Genroku'' era 

message: These diffs have completely butchered the story: everything between Asano's death and the revenge attack two years later is now missing, with the bizarre claim "unreferenced" even though it (mostly) was.  I'm on mobile so I'm not in a position to fix this up though. Jpatokal (talk) 09:25, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Missing huge chunk of the story