Talk:Shogun

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Good article Shogun has been listed as one of the History good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a reassessment.
July 20, 2007 Good article nominee Listed
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Generally, though not technically, it is used in reference to western military leaders of past and present from, for example, Carl von Clausewitz and Erwin Rommel, to Tommy Franks.

Is that so? We don't have to cover minor usage of an English word shogun. -- Taku 02:29, Oct 19, 2003 (UTC)

I think the word "overcomes" (in "great generalissimo who overcomes the barbarians" ) sounds too passive to be a translation of "征夷"). "Raids" might be more appropriate.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 202.128.229.43 (talk • contribs) 04:09, 15 November 2003.


In the article there is a subsection "Conquest of the Ainu", and it is described that they were conquered by the earliest shogun.

They may have been the Ainu, but the people who lived in today's Tohoku region may not have been necesarrily the Ainu, or more accurately, it is not known who they were. The only person whose name is known is Aterui, which doesn't sound like Japanese. (I don't know if this can make sense in the Ainu language.) There are some place names in Tohoku region which some claim are of Ainu origine, but it's not enough evidence that proves the people conquered by the shogun were the Ainu. Aniway we could modify this paragraph. -222.15.81.187 11:49, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Dates in article

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Eras states, "Normally you should use plain numbers for years in the Anno Domini/Common Era, but when events span the start of the Anno Domini/Common Era, use AD or CE for the date at the end of the range (note that AD precedes the date and CE follows it). For example, 1 BC–AD 1 or 1 BCE–1 CE." For that reason, I removed "c.e." from the header. Fg2 00:15, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] European styles

Were shoguns addressed by a standardized European style? Would European diplomatic missives have been addresse to "Son Altesse le Shogun de Japon," or some such? One would imagine that, at least between Perry's opening of Japan and the end of the Shogunate, this would have been addressed. (My hours in the archives full of formalized usage of styles is driving me mad, I fear.) john k 21:55, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Most European documents of the time referred to the Shogun as "King of Japan" or whatever the equivalent may have been in the English/Dutch/Portuguese/Spanish/German/Russian of the time. The Europeans seemed for the most part quite confused, or oblivious, of the presence or role of the Emperor, or for that matter of the very deliberate efforts on Japan's part to not be called "King" in communications with other Asian nations. LordAmeth (talk) 23:16, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Good article nomination on hold

This article's Good Article promotion has been put on hold. During review, some issues were discovered that can be resolved without a major re-write. This is how the article, as of July 19, 2007, compares against the six good article criteria:

1. Well written?: interesting prose, no big beef.
2. Factually accurate?: this is the crux. Whole sections have no refs, some POV statements are unsourced, and some refs are incomplete (or in the case of #4, have no content).
3. Broad in coverage?: a good explanation and history.
4. Neutral point of view?: seems good.
5. Article stability? no rapid changes being reverted, fine.
6. Images?: all are free domain/GFDL, pass.

Please address these matters soon and then leave a note here showing how they have been resolved. After 48 hours the article should be reviewed again. If these issues are not addressed within 7 days, the article may be failed without further notice. Thank you for your work so far. — David Fuchs (talk) 19:46, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Hm... at some point, somebody moved a large chunk of the references down into the "further reading" section (including the contents of the now-fixed 4th ref you mentioned) -- perhaps that wasn't the best idea, in this light. Live and learn. I've restored a few of them to their previous positions, and will hope to find a few more I can move up again. I'm not sure which unsourced POV statements you're referring to, though? – Luna Santin (talk) 07:04, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
"He became the practical ruler of Japan, and received the title sei-i taishōgun.", the entire Heian period section... normally I wouldn't complain about that except the main article doesn't cite references. David Fuchs (talk) 13:11, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
while I still think that in order to get FAC more statements will have to be sourced, I feel confident it can at least merit a GA. David Fuchs (talk) 14:45, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What does Sho mean?

The intro to the article says that sho means commander or general, yet there is also a page called "sho" about a japanese wind instrument. I think that translation may be wrong?  The Robot Champion  talk to me  01:26, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

There are dozens of kanji with the pronunciation "shō," including a wind instrument and the first character of "shogun." Fg2 (talk) 01:38, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
And to answer your question more directly, yes, the kanji 将 in 将軍 does have the meaning "commander" or "general." Fg2 (talk) 01:52, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
Japanese is one of the hardest languages to learn because of these many syllables all representing different meanings. This is mostly due to the limitations of the language itself, only a handful of options (about 80, modernly). A lot of the words were taken from Chinese where shò and shó are totally different but said by a Japanese speaker (or English speaker in this case) is just sho (in the case of "shogun" it is actually shō, a long o which in Japanese Romaji usually written shou) so that the word "sho" in Japanese can mean a few different things, more precisely, more than a few kanji can have the same "sho" as it's reading or yomikata. - (笙 - shō) (将 - shō) (少 - shō) -- Billy Nair (talk) 01:36, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Actually, it's one of the easiest in my opinion, since there aren't nearly as many different verb conjugations as in most Western languages, there's only two irregular verbs, and no masculine/feminine agreement issues. The kanji do a far better job than spelled-out words in other languages of relating their meaning and etymology upon a quick glance. It is also far easier than any tonal language to pronounce, and doesn't even have the strange accent of French or the accent issues of many other languages. Not only that, but unlike English, the basic grammar forms are quite straightforward and logical, and have very few exceptions. Talk to a Japanese (or just about anyone who doesn't speak English as their first language) and I can practically guarantee that they have tons of trouble with spelling - that doesn't happen in Japanese, as *everything* is pronounced precisely the way the kana spelling indicates. LordAmeth (talk) 14:24, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
I guess in those ways it is a pretty easy language. Maybe more like, easy to learn, hard to master? Yeah it doesn't have tones or weird influxes so the initial get up and go might seem easier, but the number of near native speakers of Japanese vs most other languages is a lot smaller, like Spanish for example. BUT, that wasn't the point of my post, i was just saying that Japanese uses the same "word" (if you can call it that: "shō" or "kyō") for multiple meanings. -- Billy Nair (talk) 19:55, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Oh, yeah, I know what you meant. When writing in romaji or in kana, or for that matter, in speaking, it can be really difficult to distinguish between different words. Didn't mean to jump down your throat... LordAmeth (talk) 00:48, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Nobunaga and Hideyoshi mistook as Shoguns?

I have removed the line "Even though westerners mistook them as shoguns,[citation needed] they were not actually shoguns at all." which has gone uncited since August. Western documents from that period, almost without exception, refer to Hideyoshi, Ieyasu, and the other Tokugawa shoguns (and perhaps Nobunaga as well) as "King of Japan", or possibly as Taiko or Kwampaku in the case of Hideyoshi, but not as Shogun. LordAmeth (talk) 09:25, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Article name

Should the name of this article be "Shōgun"? Torsodog (talk) 02:28, 16 May 2008 (UTC)