Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Japan/Districts and municipalities

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[edit] Spelling of Gunma

Is someone noticed that spelling of Gunma Prefecture are not conforming to Wikipedia:Manual of Style for Japan-related articles. How should we do?

  • Keep up with "Gunma" consistently.
    • KIZU
    • "Gunma" recieves 1,740,000 Google hits, while "Gumma" recieves only 354,000. -Nameneko 05:27, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Use "Gumma" in new articles. Rename gradually.
  • Rename all at now.

Template:SampleWikiProject

[edit] Wards

I think the suffixed form "{ward}-ku" is commoner than "{ward}". How about putting ward pages at "{ward}-ku, {city}"? --Nanshu 01:40, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

What about Chiyoda, Shinjyuku and such famous wards in Tokyo? [1] shows {ward}-ku sounds rather a part of address. -- Taku 06:55, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

That's because the 23 special wards are now officially called "cities" in English (see the Tocho's website). So I suppose we don't need the "-ku" for them. -- Sekicho 20:04, Mar 4, 2004 (UTC)

O.K. Then what about other wards? --Nanshu 03:32, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I guess Chuo-ku sounds better than just Chuo. So I agree with {ward}-ku, {city} for ones except 23 special wards. -- Taku 06:22, Mar 6, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Naming of cities

I strongly object to the "city, prefecture" setup, especially for the names of large cities. It's great as a disambiguation measure, but otherwise, it's ridiculous. There has already been a negative reaction to Hiroshima, Hiroshima (see Talk:Hiroshima, Hiroshima). Even though a couple of people have agreed to this, many others have voiced opposition to it. I think there should be a vote. In fact, I'm going to put one below. (see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Japanese districts and municipalites/Archive for other viewpoints on the matter) -- Sekicho 22:41, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)

Regarding *** Quick note: this means you favor Hiroshima, Hiroshima or Osaka, Osaka: Taku, are you smoking crack!? It does not! This vote is being held because Sekicho thinks Hiroshima, Hiroshima is ridiculous! Jpatokal 01:19, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Because those Hiroshima, Hiroshima are for disambiguation in short. Please also notice this is consistent with the US ones. Why do you think Chicago, Illinois is acceptable and Sapporo, Hokkaido is not? -- Taku 02:40, Mar 4, 2004 (UTC)

We can make redirections from [[Sapporo]] to [[Sapporo, Hokkaido]], from [[Morioka]] to [[Morioka, Iwate]], and so on. -- Takanoha 12:38, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Exactly. So nothing wrong with the current naming scheme. I have no idea what this vote is about. -- Taku 15:10, Mar 4, 2004 (UTC)

I have no objection to make exceptions for most famous cities, but the current scheme is to disambiguate Japanese local governments systematically that often shared names. I oppose changing the scheme if someone wants. --Nanshu 03:32, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)~

Since I have got an answer of this question, what exactly is the rationale of giving exceptions for some famous cities? It seems all of US city articles, regardless of being famous or not, are of a form of [[{city-name}, {state}]]. Since there are appreciate redirects, there is no problem that readers cannot find an article for the most common usage. If you think Sapporo, Hokkaido is silly then I think so is Chicago, Illinois. Besides, I hate to have a dispute drawing a line between major (presumably not meant famous) cities and the other. -- Taku 07:30, Mar 5, 2004 (UTC)

Taku: Why do we have to use the American convention for Japanese place names? Nobody calls Osaka "Osaka, Osaka." In Japan, you would never see somebody say 大阪府大阪市. "New York, New York" and "Chicago, Illinois" are seen in the US: we use them on addresses, for instance.

I think that, at the very least, we should put the City designated by government ordinance (Japan) in articles titled "Osaka," "Kyoto," "Hiroshima," etc. There is no reason to include the prefecture name, except as a disambiguation. Japanese Wikipedia simply uses the city name as the title: this looks better and eliminates most redirecting. -- Sekicho 16:24, Mar 7, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, a disambiguation is a reason to put prefectures. There exists Hiroshima Town nearby Sapporo as a matter of fact. This is the same situation seen in the US cities, like Chicago, Illinois. Also, I disagree that it looks ugly because I prefer the consistency, regularity over making special cases. If every city in Japan has the same naming scheme, it helps the readers to see those cities are the same ones seen in other part of Japan. Besides, the consistent naming scheme helps the writers. If there are two schemes, writers need to check if they need to use [[{city}]] or [[{city, prefecture}]]. It is a wasting time and it is the reason we need to create every redirect after all because some writers, undoutedly, write a link city, prefecture without knowning it is an unique name. Naming must be done for the sake of readers and writers and I see no reason to confuse them. We used to have [[{city}]] naming scheme. That was simple and sufficed for a while. But as we are adding more old provinces or towns and villages, some disambiguation is necessary. In wikipedia, it is a norm to pre-emptively disambiguate names. Take Emperor of Japan. No one, I say no one, calls Emperor Go-Daigo of Japan because Go-Daigo is an unique and only name for one emperor in Japan in the past. Or in terms of English grammar, I think History of Japan is less correct than Japanese History. I am not saying we have to adapt American convention but I am saying there is a virtue of this sort of pre-emptive disambiguation used throughout wikipedia. So in short, there is a good reason to put a prefecture suffix and, though depending on perfonal preference, I think Sappro, Hokkaido isn't too bad. By the way, 大阪府大阪市 returns 604,000 hits at google.
"There exists Hiroshima Town nearby Sapporo as a matter of fact" <----- More a point of pedantry than anything else, but unless I'm very much mistaken, there is no Hiroshima Town in Hokkaido. There used to be, but the name was changed some time ago. There is a Kitahiroshima City (sometimes written Kita-hiroshima). I know this because the office in which I am currently sat, falls within the city boundaries of the aforementioned. Saiing

For me Osaka, Osaka is rediculous. I understand though 'Osaka' is ambiguous. I prefer 'Osaka (City)' & 'Osaka (Prefecture)'. 大阪府大阪市 is a formal and literal. Probably a part of contact address and so on. I haven't met anyone who refer coloquailly to Osaka in such mannners. KIZU

Well, the title must be formal not coloquail. Stroke, for instance, is redirected to Cerebrovascular accident since it is more correct, concrete term even though we really don't use that term in a normal conversation. At least I don't know how to pronounce it :) -- Taku 08:08, Mar 9, 2004 (UTC)
Well we must stand for formal convention, I understood. Then at least in Japanese there is no simple name Osaka: Osaka-fu(prefecture) or Osaka-shi(city). Every city in Japan doesn't share its name with another city legally. Towns and villages have no such regulation. So the mentioned ambiguity on Hiroshima occured. 広島市(Hiroshima City) means unique Hiroshima-shi of Hiroshima prefecture, and Hiroshima in Hokkaido is a town or a ward of Sapporo City, IIRC.

Why aren't the suffixes -machi, -shi, -ken and -ku etc used as a disambiguation measure? Sapporo-shi looks fine to me, and Hokkaido-shi would too (as opposed to Hokkaido-ken ) . It's true that no two cities (shi) in Japan have the same name, so no '-shi' would need to be followed by its prefecture. There may have to be additional disambiguation for towns and villages, but that's acceptable, I would say. AndyPope

[edit] Tsuwano?

Are these two articles for the same place? Tsuwano, Shimane Tsuwano-cho gK ¿? 03:12, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The two articles were for the same village. There is now a redirect between the two articles. gK ¿? 20:56, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] templates for cities or cities and districts in a prefecture

I've entered a comment on the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Japanese prefectures page about templates Taku and I have been creating for:

  • the cities in a prefecture (Taku)
  • for the cities and districts in a prefecture (me).

Please chime in on the other talk page if you're interested. Thank you. -- Rick Block 17:24, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Regarding the 'Template' section of this page, I think Nagoya is a better page to use as a model than the currently listed Funabashi. Also, I have added empty syntax documentation to Template:Japanese city (and a filled-in example on the [[Template_talk:Japanese_city|talk page). (I do not understand the different uses of ordinary templates and infoboxes, but for now will work with the existing template.) Finally, I have redone the page for Takarazuka, Hyogo using Template:Japanese city. --D. Meyer 04:05, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merged towns and villages

Should there be a standard for what we do with articles about towns/villages that merge into other municipalities? I've usually been leaving stubs under the original name with information about the merge. Another choice is to turn the town/village article into a redirect to the new municipality (and I would think in this case we'd want to include something about the old town/village in the article targeted by the redirect). Examples both ways include Kawabe, Akita (merged into a city, left as a stub), Senhata, Akita (merged into a newly formed town, left as a stub) and Naguri, Saitama (merged into a city, now a redirect). There seems to be a fair amount of merger activity, a lot of it not properly accounted for in the municipality and prefecture articles (for example municipality counts are often not current in the prefecture articles). Thoughts? -- Rick Block 14:53, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I just did Tome City and Kurihara City in Miyagi, which merged last week, and went with the redirect/comment on the new page format. I'm in favour of it, as it reduces stub creep, which the Japan geography seems to have enough problems with already. William McDuff 01:27, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Cry for help from stub-sorting WikiProject

I'm hoping someone here might be able to relieve the pressure on the biggest of the geography stub categories a little. There are now almost 4000 articles in Category:Japan geography stubs. Any help in reducing this by enlarging some of the articles to non-stub status would be greatly appreciated! Grutness|hello? 01:39, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've been working through the town/village articles (which are most of the 4000) and adding a link to the municipality's official website, although many of the official websites are only in Japanese. Between the official website and the Japanese wikipedia, I think there's enough information to make many (if not most) of these articles non-stubs but it would take someone who can read Japanese to do the work. -- Rick Block 05:29, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I put the word out on the Miyagi-ken ALT list that this might be a way to help their cities after I did my own city, which hopefully will be a good group to ask. Also, by using a translation tool like Google much of the information from the Japanese pages can be gleaned. (I plan on expanding Karakuwa a bit further using this information.)William McDuff 01:31, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dissolved districts

I recently created Category:Dissolved districts in Japan to contain all of the dissolved districts as they become part of cities, etc. There's only one sub-cat so far: Category:Dissolved districts in Kagawa Prefecture, and it's not fully populated yet as a bunch of articles from the Japanese Wikipedia need translating in order to do so. --日本穣 Nihonjoe 23:34, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I suggest we not subcategorize this by district. I don't think there are that many districts that have been dissolved (perhaps a few dozen). Rather than subcats, we could use a sort key like the sort key used for Category:Dissolved municipalities of Japan (i.e. sort key=Prefecture, District), to group the districts from a given prefecture together. In particular, if we're not subcating municipalities by prefecture is seems distinctly odd to subcat districts. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:26, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 15:20, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 20:28, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template

I've created a template for former municipalities: Template:Infobox Former Municipality Japan, as they have one on the Japanese wikipedia. I think it would be helpful to standardize the articles in this way. BilabialBoxing 09:23, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Former Municipalities

I've created a template for former municipalities: Template:Infobox Former Municipality Japan, as they have one on the Japanese wikipedia. I think it would be helpful to standardize the articles in this way. BilabialBoxing 08:54, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 区内の町

I've been gradually working on a number of topics relating to the town where I lived during my time studying abroad - Shakujii-machi in Tokyo's Nerima-ku. But I never quite got around to trying to create an article for the town yet. Basically every other link to a municipality I have ever come across has been blue - do we not create articles for towns within "cities" i.e. wards of Tokyo? The article for Nerima, Tokyo seems to cover the entire ward, listing public schools, etc, with no links to towns or municipalities within the ward. Thanks LordAmeth 18:21, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, to the best of my knowledge, there are no actual municipalities inside wards. The ward itself is irreducible. That would be the tricky part about creating a page for "towns" inside the ward. They're not actually towns! Perhaps the information about the "towns" of Nerima-ku could be included in the article about the ward. I'm sure the article could stand expansion. If enough information about the sub-sections of the ward accumulates, perhaps then they could be split into their own separate articles. BilabialBoxing 04:39, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
BilabialBoxing is correct--there are no towns within a ku; there are only neighborhoods. Add your info to the ward article. Amake 05:33, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
Okay, will do. But, even outside of official governmental organization, these are places which do have a 町 at the end of their names. I guess it's like the Neighborhoods of New York City. Thanks guys. LordAmeth 08:11, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
Confusing as it is, having a -町 suffix doesn't make it a municipality. In fact that's extremely common in neighborhood names. Amake 08:33, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FYI

http://www.gsi.go.jp/KOKUJYOHO/MENCHO/haitibungou.htm http://www.gsi.go.jp/KOKUJYOHO/gappei/gappei_index.htm I hope they are useful. --Oda Mari 15:29, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Gappei page

I've had a try at copy editing this - still needs work though. Saganaki- 08:15, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Gappei merged

I have merged the Gappei taskforce into this one as it is basically just an extension of this taskforce. The content that was on the Gappei page is now on the main page of this taskforce. ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:12, 25 August 2007 (UTC)


[edit] All you bot operators: Change in town office official website urls

While editing stubs on Hokkaido municipalities of late, I've noticed that some Hokkaido towns and cities have changed the url format they use for their official websites. As a result, many wikipedia links for Hokkaido towns and cities are returning errors. This may also apply to other prefectures, I'm not sure.

The problem occurs for towns that have a url in this format:

www.town.[townname].hokkaido.jp

The url format has changed to

www.town.[townname].lg.jp

For example Setana, Hokkaido: Town url used to be www.town.setana.hokkaido.jp is now www.town.setana.lg.jp.

I'm fixing these where I found them but this looks like a perfect job for a bot! Any takers? Cheers Saganaki- 13:17, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

On second thoughts, this doesn't appear as widespread as I thought some towns still sticking to the original format. Saganaki- 13:34, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
Yeah this is definitely not a universal thing; please nobody go around changing URLs without double-checking that the new ones work first. -Amake 07:15, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal re: type of gappei

I see a lot of people filling in gappei information in this style:

A and B merged to form the new town of A.

Clearly this must be a translation from Japanese where the towns have undergone 新設合併 (where the former municipalities are dissolved and a new one is created) as opposed to 編入合併 (where one municipality is dissolved and becomes a part of an existing municipality). See ja:日本の市町村の廃置分合#合体（新設合併）と編入（編入合併） for details.

I think that this distinction is unnecessary in English and only leads to confusion and awkward prose. Even in Japanese the difference is mostly semantic, as the choice to do 新設 or 編入 apparently has mostly to do with whether they want to re-elect municipality officials.

I propose that if a "newly" merged municipality A retains the (English) name of one of the former municipalities, that the English prose describe it as "B merged into A", not "A and B merged to form A". And I say English name because sometimes municipalities will change their name from kanji to hiragana when merging, but again that distinction is irrelevant to the average English reader.

-Amake 00:56, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I've avoided writing "A and B merged to form the new town of A", but I think I usually write "B was incorporated into A." Merge, to me, seems to imply an equal conglomeration, while incorporate seems more appropriate for smaller towns becoming part of bigger ones. Thoughts? BilabialBoxing 02:54, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
I don't necessarily think "merge" has that implication, but "incorporate" also works just fine. I don't have an opinion on the exact wording as long as it's clear. -Amake 05:02, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree that "A and B merged to form A" is awkward. I wonder if the distinction can be preserved in un-awkward English, like "A and B merged together" as opposed to "A merged into B," for example. I say this because I've been trying to decide what to do with Ikaho, Gunma and its neighbors who merged with Shibukawa, Gunma. (Although I don't know for sure which kind of merge it was, my hunch is that it was the 新設 kind.)

It's just that although the name "Shibukawa" was retained (indicating to the English reader that Shibukawa is the one being merged into), and although all the merging took place on one day, the combined population of the other 5 was roughly the same as the old Shibukawa (making the use of "incorporate" seem not quite right to me; also, the combined geographical area of the 5 was about 3 1/2 times that of the old Shibukawa.

For the Ikaho article, I ended up saying "2006: Ikaho joins Kitatachibana village, Komochi village, Onogami village, and Akagi village in merging with Shibukawa city." What do you guys think? RNavigator (talk) 15:05, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Honestly, the wording probably doesn't matter too much in the end, so long as it's relatively clear. But in any case, I would probably write "The villages of Ikaho, Kitatachibana, Komochi, Onogami, and Akagi are incorporated into Shibukawa." Or "merged" if you like, but I think that "into" is really the only way to imply that the name remains Shibukawa without just outright stating it. BilabialBoxing (talk) 04:26, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
I agree with BilabialBoxing. The relative sizes of the populations doesn't matter. What matters is the political clout that allowed Shibukawa to retain its name. Beyond that, it's all minutiae that just isn't necessary. -Amake (talk) 22:40, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Coord/Coords problem in Template:Infobox City Japan

See Template_talk:Infobox_City_Japan#Coord.2FCoords_problem. Arthena(talk) 18:08, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] City and town in same name

In cases that a city and a town shares one name, the naming convention has been, in my understanding, that the article for the city should be named without concern about the town and the article for the town should be named with the note "(town)". For example:

Recently, one editor moved Misato, Saitama and Shimanto, Kōchi to Misato, Saitama (city) and Shimanto, Kōchi (city), respectively. Should we revert these moves in accordance with the convention? --Sushiya (talk) 12:01, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

I say yes, return the city articles to the original names (without "(city)"). -Amake (talk) 03:18, 18 May 2008 (UTC)