Wikipedia talk:Japan-related topics notice board/Jan-Mar

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Japanese loan words in English & pluralization

Good day Japanese Wikipedian's. On the tsunami page, they have pluralized the word tsunami as 'tsunamis'. Now according to Wiki's own rules about pluralization of Japanese loan words in English, Japanese words do not carry a 's'. See reference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_plural. Many tsunami contributors think tsunami is the most appropriate. What does this group think?

Probably to anybody who knows Japanese, tsunamis looks dumb (as does "tsunami wave" since the "nami" part of tsunami means "wave"). But unfortunately that doesn't necessarily mean it's incorrect now that it has been coopted and bastardized into English. I can buy the argument that tsunamis is a correct English word even though it grates on my ears. Mdchachi|Talk 22:41, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Japanese writing in English use the word "tsunamis", including the Japan Meteorological Agency (the government agency that does tsunami forecasting) and the Japan Times newspaper.
Also, the USGS and Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and ITIC all use "tsunamis".
See discussion and links at Talk:Tsunami#Plural_of_tsunami_is_tsunami.3F -- Curps 09:53, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Japanese Governor of Taiwan

Dear All,

I am trying to see if anyone can help us to link the following Taiwab governors to existing pages, and perhaps find out the english name of them for us on the article of Japanese Governors of Taiwan?

第一任　樺山 資紀　 海軍大將。子爵　1895.5.21 1896.6 第二任 桂 太郎 陸軍中將。子爵 1896.6.2 1896.10 第三任 乃木 希典 陸軍中將。男爵 1896.10.14 1898.1 第四任 兒玉 源太郎 陸軍中將。男爵 任內赴遼東半島，投入日俄戰爭 1898.2.26-1906.4 第五任 佐久間左馬太 陸軍大將。子爵 1906.4.15 1915.5 第六任 安東貞夫 陸軍大將。男爵 1915.51 – 1916.6 第七任 明石元二郎 陸軍中將 1916.6 – 1917.11 第八任 田 健治郎 寺內內閣閣員男爵 1919.10.31 – 1923.9 第九任 內田嘉吉 貴族院議員 1923.9.6 – 1924.9 第十任 伊澤多喜男 貴族院議員 1924.9.1 – 1926.7 第十一任 上山滿之進 文人 1926.7.16 – 1928.6 第十二任 川村竹治 貴族院議員 1928.6.16 – 1929.7 第十三任 石塚英藏 貴族院議員 1929.7.30 – 1931.1 第十四任 太田政弘 關東廳長官 1931.1.16 – 1932.3 第十五任 南 弘 貴族院議員 1932.3.2 – 1932.5 第十五任 中山 健藏 文部省次官 1932.5.27 – 1936.9 第十五任 小林 躋造 海軍大將 1936.6 – 1940.11 第十五任 長谷川清 海軍大將 1940.12.16 – 1944.12 第十五任 安藤利吉 陸軍大將 1944.45-2.30 – 1945.10

Many thanks!! :) Mababa 05:58, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It has been done!!! Really fast!!! Thank you so much!! Really appreciated!! :) Mababa 04:02, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Cities/towns merging

Is there anyone keeping track of all the cities and towns which are merging to form new cities often with a new city name? The prefecture's list of cities/districts/towns will have to be corrected. Is somebody going to do this?

I can do it for one prefecture (Shiga), but what do we do with the old city and town links/pages? Do a redirect to the new city page? Or rename the old city page? Or delete it since the city/town no longer exists politically?

I'm holding off on adding content because of all these mergers last month and this month in Shiga. I'm waiting until new Wiki pages are created for these new cities. Photojpn.org

I have just started articles Merger and dissolution of municipalities of Japan and List of dissolved municipalities of Japan. Although they are no more than the starting points, they should make a good place to collect this kind of information for both readers and us contributors. As for old municipalities, in principle, we should not delete or redirect them as we have articles about old provinces. But, of course, the tense should be changed into past, and the article should note about merger or dissolution at the first paragraph. See Akitsu, Hiroshima for example. -- Taku 04:50, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

OK, so if there are no objections, I will correct the old municipalities and create new ones for the new cities for Shiga. For Akitsu, Hiroshima, it says "the town was dissolved after it was merged into a city of Higashihiroshima" it should read "merged into the city of" (in case you're using a template for all such articles). Photojpn.org 06:09, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Oops, you are right. Please don't hesitate to correct any errors. -- Taku 06:18, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

There's Takashima, Shiga, a town which merged with neighboring towns to form a city in Jan. 1 called Takashima-shi. What should I do with this? Should I edit the original Takashima, Shiga town and make it a city after explaining what happened? Or should I make a new page for Takashima-shi? What do I call the new page? Photojpn.org 20:50, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'd say edit the original article. I posted a suggestion re mergers at talk:List of dissolved municipalities of Japan. Should the discussion be moved here? -- Rick Block 19:20, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Whew! It's a lot of work. I edited Iga, Mie and promoted it to a city (as Phil suggested), keeping the old text and changing the tense (as Taku suggested). And edited all the towns, villages and districts that dissolved to form the new city, changing the tense to past, and mentioning the merger. And modified or removed the category (city, town or village of Mie Prefecture) from each article. And edited the prefecture article, moving Iga from town to city, and removing all the old cities, towns, villages, and districts. I'm looking forward to the day when the final two cities on Honshu, サクラ and さくら, merge to form the city of 桜. Until then, we'll have a lot to do! Fg2 11:26, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)
And, I almost forgot. The disambiguation page for Ueno, which was part of the merger. Now, I'll go back to the articles, check What Links Here, and see if there are any more to change.
And, I just discovered, the template for Mie, which lists cities and districts. And, an asteroid named after Iga Ueno.

So, here's a list:

  • Each city, town, village, district:
    • Change to past tense
    • Mention merger
    • Change or remove category
    • If towns/villages merge into cities, update (reduce) district's population and size
    • If towns/villages merge into existing city, update (increase) the city's population and size
    • Update External Link section, point to merged municipality's website
  • Prefecture article
    • Update lists of cities, districts, towns, villages and municipality/district counts in table
  • Prefecture template
    • Update lists of cities, districts
  • Disambiguation articles (find by What Links Here)
  • Miscellaneous other articles (find by What Links Here)
  • Prefectures of Japan
    • Update municipality/district counts in table
  • List of dissolved municipalities of Japan
    • Update
Additions to table in italics. -- Rick Block 03:46, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure removing the categories is needed (I haven't been doing this). For example Ueno now is in no category. It was at one time a city in Mie. Do we think most people will understand the category to mean "cities currently in Mie" or "cities that have ever been in Mie"? As long as the article text makes it clear that the city no longer exists, I don't see a particular issue with leaving it in the category (even for people who understand the category to mean "cities currently in Mie"). Perhaps we should rename these articles in some fashion (adding "(merged)" or something?) so that when looking at the category listing it's obvious. Another alternative is to create a category like "former municipalities in ...". I think "former cities", "former towns", etc. would be overkill. -- Rick Block 13:40, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
For your infomation, Japanese Wikipedia keep a good track of those mergers. Both on each prefecture article and on a particular article for recent merger. I think they good be good references. Also their German Wikipedia (de) correspondence are good maintained and provide you with romaji names correctly. And (sorry too late) I support the idea to keep articles of desolved municipalities as themselves, not as redirects, but in the past tense. --Aphaea* 03:44, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Yes, there's no problem in finding the merger info at sites like the official Web sites for the prefecture/city. But it is a lot of work to modify everything (as listed above) even for one prefecture. (Almost finished for Shiga. You can also see my preferred format for the merger list under Geography.) So if the prefecture's merger info is not yet listed in the List of dissolved municipalities of Japan, I guess we can assume it has not been done yet for that prefecture. Looks like we got 36 more to go. I don't think we have to go too far back with the list of mergers. I would place priority on the most recent ones occurring in the past 5 years or so. Photojpn.org 16:57, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wards of Cities

I put a proposal for unifying the titles of articles on wards of cities at

Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles)#Wards of Cities and invite comments there. Fg2 06:35, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)

Tessaiga/Tetsusaiga, re-visited

I have proposed that another consideration for the spelling of this sword from the anime InuYasha should take place. Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles)#Tessaiga/Tetsusaiga, re-visited for more information. Thanks in advance. LG-犬夜叉 09:53, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)

Vote on prefecture article format issues

Please vote on a couple of prefecture article format issues at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Japanese_prefectures#Vote on picture placement and symbol/map placement in infobox. -- Rick Block 02:18, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Japanese administrative divisions

I've made a navigation template: Template:Japan divisions levels, to organize all the articles related to the administrative divisions of Japan. Right now there is no general article on the system of local government in Japan as a whole.

What's missing on this topic from Municipality of Japan? -- Rick Block 14:57, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Not sure why regions are on the list, since they're non-administrative. Also think 23 special wards should be with cities, not wards. Fg2 03:31, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

Also, I'm missing an English translation for 特例市. Anyone has any idea? -- ran (talk) 13:35, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

http://web-japan.org/factsheet/pdf/LOCALGOV.PDF calls these "special cities". -- Rick Block 14:57, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The Council of Local Authorities for International Relations has a helpful brochure written in Japanese and English. Very useful if you want to figure out translations for terms related to local governments in Japan. This publication calls 特例市 "special case cities." By the way, can anyone explain why Wikipedia uses district instead of county for 郡? The explanation at County isn't very detailed and makes me curious. Atsi Otani 00:52, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Good question. I prefer "county." Fg2 03:31, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

Ideal articles for prefectures/cities/wards/towns/villages?

Do we have any articles for the above which we can say is pretty complete (not a stub) and an ideal model for other same-type articles? Tokyo is probably the most complete prefecture, but can we call it an "ideal prefecture article" with regard to its format, layout, images, and content? Is that how we want the other prefecture articles to look like? I ask the same question for the cities/wards/towns/villages. I haven't seen a template for these lower municipalities. The Japanese Wiki has a template (including infobox) for these articles based on the prefecture template. Do we want to imitate the Japanese wiki's templates? Or am I asking this question too soon? Photojpn.org 08:45, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've seen very few articles (even prefecture articles) that aren't stubs. It should be possible to create a list of articles that aren't marked as stubs (with a custom database query). Perhaps if we had such a list we could pick an exemplary article of each type (I'd include district as well). I think it might be premature to add infoboxes for towns/villages (it's starting to seem unlikely that most of these will ever develop past stubs), but I'd favor doing this for cities. On the other hand, with an entirely arbitrary sample of non-Japanese cities (Denver, Colorado, London, England, Dusseldorf, Germany), none of these have infoboxes although Wikipedia:WikiProject Cities has a template for US cities including an infobox (curious). -- Rick Block 19:25, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Not sure Tokyo's the best model for other prefectures, nor that it's in reasonably final form. It's rather long, and perhaps some things should be moved out into separate "main articles" like they are in Japan. For example, Tokyo in movies etc. (I did that for businesses with headquarters in Tokyo.) But in prefectures that get less world media attention, and have fewer headquarters, these topics belong in the prefecture article. The article has also grown organically, and could stand some organizing. Also, like most prefecture articles, it's strong on "the capital city" (in this case the most important special wards) and weak on the rest. Fg2 01:58, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)
Looking at Kyoto Prefecture and Nara Prefecture, I like Nara better. It might make a better model for other prefectural articles. By the way, in the prefecture articles, I've made a point of trying to include photos from outside the prefectural capital. (Of course, pictures of scenes in the capital are also welcome, but they make most sense in the city article.) Fg2 03:41, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

Ainu

Can someone knowledgeable take a look at Ainu? Especially Ainu people#culture. A lot of the material is from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, and I suspect it's several decades out of date. Fg2 08:21, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)