Talk:Empress Gemmei
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[edit] Biography assessment rating comment
WikiProject Biography Assessment Drives
Detailed enough for a B, but still written too much like a timeline, and less like an article.
Want to help write or improve biographies? Check out WikiProject Biography Tips for writing better articles. -- Yamara 05:40, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Transliteration
- Wadō 2, in the 5th month (709): "Kin sin fouk" ("Kin sin foŭ szu") arrived as the ambassador from "Sin ra"; and he brought an offer of tribute. He visited Fujiwara-no "Foufira" to prepare the way for further visits.[1]
- Can you figure out how to convert these 1834 transliterations into personal names and a place name with a more conventional spelling?
- Ooperhoofd 15:59, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Plausible subjects for further discussion
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- This exchange has been moved from "User talk:Ooperhoofd" so that others might more readily offer constructive comment.
JEFU: While I applaud your efforts at improving the articles on the Japanese emperors, I would strongly caution against using a reference that is nearly 200 years old and written by a westerner who spent all of 5 years visting Japan. For example, you just added a chronology to the article on Empress Gemmei and much of it is simply incorrect. The two primary sources for the chronology that you added are the Kojiki and the Nihon-shoki, and any information that you get from Titsingh's book that disagrees with what is written in those sources is almost certainly the result of error or miscommunication. Another problem with the edits you have made is that you are apparently using the Romanization of Japanese names as they are presented in Titsingh's book, which doesn't appear to be any of the standard Romanization systems in use today. For example, the man who was appointed sadaijin in 708 was "Isonokami no Maro", not "Ysi-no Foyé-no marō", which is virtually meaningless in any standard Romanization system. There are many other examples, like "Foó to ki" ("Fung thou ki"), which is actually Fudoki, etc.
The bottom line is, while the book is undoubtedly a fascinating piece of history in and of itself, it is a completely unreliable source of Japanese history for any period other than the time in which the author actually lived and witnessed things first hand.-Jefu 01:27, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
OOPERHOOFD: Jefu-san .... Yes, of course you're correct in so many ways; and I have no choice but to begin by assuming the obvious -- that your reference sources are better than mine. However, I'd like to suggest that we begin with one small point where we can agree on facts that are not disputable -- in 712 and 713 ... in Wadō 5 and in Wadō 6.
I can't figure out how to toggle back and forth between Empress Gemmei and here, so just let me stop now with these few sentences as an introduction to a longer conversation I haven't really planned out as well as you might like.
At a minimum, you clearly see that I am acknowledging the reasonable concerns you raise.
I hope this seems an agreeable way to begin discussing a disagreeement, eh? Ooperhoofd 01:58, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
JEFU: Sure. But why don't we start at the beginning of your chronology? It was not silver that was discovered. I have never heard anyone claim that it was silver, and if you consider the historical context, a "discovery" of silver simply makes no sense. If Titsingh claims it was silver, this is not the result of a rumor persisting for centuries. It is simply a mistake. I don't have my copies of the Kojiki or Nihon-shoki handy at the moment, but I will try to clean up your chronology over the weekend.-Jefu 02:07, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
OOPERHOOFD: Jefu-san .... Look, I can make it easy on that point. I'll simply remove anything about silver. That's easy. My solution to our problem is not a good one, but at least it removes any possibility that I'm being annoying. Okay. I will remove all references to silver now -- immediately.
A pissing contest about silver isn't worth your time or mine; but you can give me valuable feeback on how to profitably mine this demonstrably questionable online source. That would be worth your time and thought ... because it plausibly stands to bear fruit in terms of other books which have yet to be digitized. A dispute about silver in Musashi is of fleeting significance, at best. Moreover, I don't really care. Do you? Of course not.
On the other hand, I think I have good reasons for wanting to persist in this Titsingh project, and if you're willing, you can play a constructive role in helping me to better focus my time and effort so that everyone plausibly benefits and no one else needs to be needlessly annoyed. ....Ooperhoofd 02:34, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
JEFU: It isn't a pissing contest about silver, it is a question of whether or not you want to be accurate in the information you add to Wikipedia. There are innacuracies in nearly all of the substantive edits you are making. If your point is that it just doesn't matter, then why add it in the first place? In any event, whether it was silver or copper is of perhaps more significance than you might suspect.
I'm not sure what your goals are here. If you want to add information about Japanese emperors and historical chronologies of their reigns, you would do much better to get a good English translation of the Kojiki or Nihon-shoki and work from that. As I stated before, a 200 year old book written by a fleeting visitor to Japan regarding events that happened over 1,000 years prior to his arrival is simply not a helpful source of information. If, on the other hand, the writer writes about events that transpired while he was in Japan, that might be a more useful source (although given the apparent language problems, even that should perhaps be questioned). Again, I'm sure the book is fascinating, but you need to be a little more objective in evaluating its usefulness as a source of information for what you are doing.-Jefu 02:50, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
OOPERHOOFD: Jefu-san .... I'd like to suggest that we begin again with plausibly trivial points where we can agree on facts which are not disputable -- in 712 and 713:
At a minimum, you clearly see that I am acknowledging the reasonable concerns you raise; but the fact remains that this small bit of data is worth identifying as important during the reign of Empress Gemmei and this is also worth duplicating as an important "event" during the Wadō era.
I've discovered a number of things as I translated a book in French for an English Wikipedia entry. Unlike many other contributors to Wikipedia, my source is clearly indicated. If anything, I am making it a point to be overly concerned about identifying the specific source for everything I post online.
Without looking any further into this, can you not see that I'm actually doing what the Wikipedia construct proposes that anyone might do, or what anyone should do in this open venue?
I'm not yet offering an argument which responds to your central point, of course; but can we agree that, at least in terms of what I'm posted about Empress Gemmei's accomplishments in Wadō 5-6, my small contribution -- and that of long-dead Isaac Titsingh -- has been worthy, worthwhile, appropriate, useful, welcome ...?
A start. Perhaps a good re-start?
Taking a different tack, perhaps you will find it useful to read the article which has just been posted about Jinnō Shōtōki. It was written by someone in Japan -- obviously; but I did contribute the last paragraph.
Alternately, perhaps this entire approach is unwelcome. Perhaps it is simply pointless. If so, I'm sorry you feel the way you do. But without more, I don't understand, and I can't respond with any degree of reliability to what I don't understand. ....Ooperhoofd 03:32, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
JEFU: I will check the Nihon-shoki and some other sources later and get back to you regarding those two particular entries. But I still think you are missing my point. I am 99% certain that every single one of these entries can be traced directly back to entries in the Nihon-shoki (I should correct something I said above. The Kojiki ends with the reign of Empress Suiko, so events that occurred during Empress Gemmei's reign would appear in the Nihon Shoki only. There is overlap between the two sources with respect to Empress Suiko and all those who preceded her, however.) Therefore, if there is a better (and more widely used) source for this kind of information, why would you instead depend on information from this book, with all its inherent limitations?
By the way, you refer to this book in the comment you just added to your user page (which most readers of English Wikipedia, including myself, cannot understand, by the way) as a primary source. That is what I think you are misunderstanding here. Even the original seventeenth century book is not a primary source, and that has then been translated at least twice over a four hundred year period before making it into Wikipedia.-Jefu 06:38, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
- Okay. First, another correction. The Nihon-shoki ends with Empress Jitō's reign, so while my points above don't change, the original source is not the Nihon-shoki. It is likely the Shoku Nihongi. Unfortunately, I do not have a Japanese copy of the Shoku Nihongi, but I consulted several Japanese sources that are based on it and they record that Dewa was indeed created on the 23rd day 9th month of 712 and Tango, Mimasaka and Hyūga were created on the 3rd month of the 4th month of 713, so those entries are fine.
OOPERHOOFD: I don't see the utility in continuing this exchange. From my perspective, the investment of time and thought brings too meager a result. And frankly, I'm now a little annoyed. Among other things, I'm put off by the pointlessly bullying tone. Perhaps in other circumstances, there would be plausible reasons to pursue some of the points which are raised. But for now, I'm just not interested.
As a constructive gesture, I've moved the entirety of this text to the Empress Gemmei Discussion page. If you feel inclined to expand your comments there, perhaps your perspective will be welcomed and affirmed by others of like mind. Ooperhoofd 16:10, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
JEFU: I see that you have cleaned up the timeline in Empress Gemmei considerably. Thank you. I haven't double-checked all of the entries yet against my sources, but it looks much better now. And I'm sorry to hear that you have taken constructive criticism as bullying. Just understand that I've said nothing about about you personally or the work you have done (except thanking you for your efforts at the outset of the exchange). My beef was merely with your choice of sources. Jefu 08:18, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Renaming
Renaming an article is a major change that should be discussed first, per Wikipedia policy. There are seven emperors/empresses in total that would have to be changed in accordance with your suggestion. The reason they are spelled as they are currently is that traditional Hepburn is far more likely to result in the proper pronunciation by the vast majority of Wikipedia users. There is no "en" sound in Gemmei, and spelling it Genmei misleadingly suggests that there is to anyone who has not studied Japanese. It is also the Romanization that is used by perhaps the most authoritative reference on Japanese history, The Cambridge History of Japan. Having said all that, I'm not terribly animated about how it is spelled, as long as the change is done consistently. But you first need to take your case to the Wiki community and convince them. By the way, if you Google the more popular double m emperors (Jimmu, Temmu), you will find that mm is far more common than nm. -Jefu 01:20, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
