Talk:Black Ships

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[edit] Factual questions

I'd like to make links to articles for each of the ships named here, but it looks like we have articles on several ships with those names, and I don't know which ship, if any of them, is the right one in each case.

In what year did Perry first arrive?
- 1853. The first visit was brief and inconclusive; he promised to return a year later. When he came back, he brought some of the most powerful ships in the American navy at the time. --[[User:Eequor|η υωρ]] 12:00, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Are coal-powered ships and steam-powered ships really the same thing? If this is an inaccuracy in translation or some such, we could mention it briefly.
- See steam engine. Coal is typically burned to boil water into steam, which drives an engine by its pressure. --[[User:Eequor|η υωρ]] 12:00, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Is the senryu's author known? If so, we should give the name, and if not, we should say so. Also, does it have a three-line format? I think we should use it if so.
- Actually its most common form is five lines, in a 5-7-5-7-7 format. --[[User:Eequor|η υωρ]] 12:00, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Is it true that the Portugese were allowed to trade with Japan? "Commodore Perry's superior military force enabled him to negotiate a treaty allowing American trade with Japan, ending a 200-year period in which trading with Japan was only allowed to the Portuguese, Dutch, Chinese and a few other small groups."

This conflicts with Dejima#History. Can somebody provide evidence of this?

[edit] The senryu

Here's how the section about the senryu read before I edited it:

The surprise and confusion these ships brought are best described in this Senryu.

Jōkisen ippai nonde yoru-mo nemurezu

(I drank a cup of jō-kisen(costly brand of tea), and now cannot sleep thinking about money I paid)

(Seeing many steam-powered ships(jōki-sen), they (samurai) must be having sleepless night thinking about what to do)

I assume my revision preserves the meaning, but it was kind of difficult to follow, so correct it if I'm wrong. —Triskaideka 19:29, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The revision is incorrect. This senryu is a pun; both of these are literal translations of the Japanese text. --[[User:Eequor|η

υωρ]] 11:28, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The revision does make things much clearer. I don't know the poem, but it is probably wrong to describe it as a senryu, which is the humorous counterpart to the 17 syllable haiku. This poem is probably better labeled as a kyōka (literally "mad verse"), which is the humorous counterpart to the usually 31 syllable waka or tanka, that has been around since the Man'yōshū Imperial poetry anthology (c.759). The only other place [1] that I found this poem discussed on the internet described it as a "tanka" (which a word that only became used in the 20th century), so kyōka should replace senryu in the description. After a more diligent Google search, I found a couple of more references to the poem, always refering to it as a "comic tanka" or kyōka (often using various non-Hepburn transliterations of the word). This webpage in particular would be useful in helping to expanding the wikipedia Black Ship article [2]. gK 05:13, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

For the record, I only revised the explanation of the poem. At that point it looked a little more like a senryu. What's there now is Eequor's revision of the poem itself. I don't know anything about the poem except what I've read here; I was just trying to make the existing interpretation intelligible in English. —Triskaideka 16:05, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)