Talk:Empress Jingū

Grounds for caution
In the Korean Samguk Sagi, there is very little mention of Goguryeo or Baekje. This is because the author, Kim Bu-sik wrote the record as that of the successor state to Silla, a traditional rival of both Goguryeo and Baekje. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that some bias has taken place in the Samguk Sagi with regards to the two other nations, and this is an example of bias in historical documents, and it is not the only bias.

The veracity of the Book of Song is disputed because of its missing sections and the tone with which it is written, as well as its treatment of surrounding nations and ethnic groups. In addition, at the time when the record was written, the Liu Song dynasty was on friendly terms with Baekje only; when it established ties with Yamato Japan, the nations listed (except for Baekje) are diplomatically unknown entities.

Egami notes in 1964 that it may look very strange that the names of six or seven states listed in the self-claimed titles included Chin-han and Ma-han which had preceded, respectively, the states of Silla and Paekche. Perhaps the King of Wa had included the names of six or seven south Korean states in his title merely to boast of the extent of his rule. But Wa Kings could not have included the names of nonexistent states. One may then conclude that the remnants of Chin-han or Ma-han existed as other members of the Kaya Federation by the time ''Wa Kings sent their embassies to China in the fifth century'', because according to the Samguk Sagi, Silla established the first contact with the Southern Chinese Dynasties in A. D. 521 by sending an envoy to the Court of Liang along with the Paekche envoy.

In Nihongi book 1, page 263, in the 16th year of Ojin's reign, King Ahwa (same as King Asin) died. King Ahwa reigned in Baekje from AD 392-405 (i.e. he was in his 14th year when he died), so this means Ojin's reign begins in AD 390 (two years before King Ahwa of Baekje, although because of Nihongi's time system Ojin's reign is listed as starting in AD 270, exactly 120 years, or two 60-year cycles, before it actually began). In that record, Emperor Ojin sends Baekje Prince Työnchi (Cheonji) back to Baekje, saying to effect: "return to your country and continue the royal line." Then Ojin granted the prince the territory of the Eastern Han. This record indicates that Ojin formally renounced all claims to Baekje territory. This record also shows that Yamato Japan and Baekje were very close.

Aston says about Nihongi: "Even so late as the beginning of the 5th century the chronology can be shown to be wrong in several cases by no less an interval than 120 years.... The first date in the Nihongi which is corroborated by external evidence is A.D. 461, but the chronology is a little vague for some time longer. Perhaps if we take A.D. 500 as the time when the correctness of the Nihongi dates begins to be trustworthy, we shall not be very far wrong."

In addition, Tsuda Sokichi wrote that when writing of matters related to Paekche, Silla and Kara, they (referring to the authors of the Japanese histories, in this case Nihongi and Kojiki) applied the writing method of uplifting the current authority in the fashion of Chinese and Confucian ideologies. Tsuda states that those were the authors’ ideologies, and had nothing to do with realities. It is possible that they were written in this way because of the tensions between Silla and Yamato at the time they were written.

All of this shows that historical texts and what they say must be considered carefully and what they say, especially in the print versions (as they were all written by one or a limited number of individuals) cannot all be taken as literal truth.


 * 1) "Book of Song." Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Song
 * 2) "Five Kings of Wa." Baekche of Korea and the Origins of Yamato Wa of Japan. http://gias.snu.ac.kr/wthong/publication/paekche/eng/hi5-5.pdf p.255
 * 3) "Five Kings of Wa." Baekche of Korea and the Origins of Yamato Wa of Japan. http://gias.snu.ac.kr/wthong/publication/paekche/eng/hi5-5.pdf p.256
 * 4) Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697, translated from the original Chinese and Japanese. W.G. Aston. http://books.google.com/books?id=1IJrNAKBpycC&dq=aston+nihongi&pg=PP1&ots=MHQwccyV_A&sig=R1mo5I2d7VSgLrkEcrJNxdkEejQ&hl=en&prev=http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Aston+nihongi&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with-thumbnail#PPR16,M1 p.xvii-xviii
 * 5) "History Texts." ML (Machine-Learning) Shopping. http://www.ml-shopping.com/wiki/Yamato_period.html
 * 6) "History Texts." ML (Machine-Learning) Shopping. http://www.ml-shopping.com/wiki/Yamato_period.html

Ecthelion83 (talk) 00:01, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

POV Pushing
http://www.guoxue.com/shibu/24shi/suisu/sui_081.htm http://www.chinakyl.com/rbbook/big5/25/suishu/suis81.html -- that translation was definitely wrong and POV forking. Japanese wikipedia user depict as "Japan was Great than Korea". but, it was a definitely wrong. Check full text http://www.guoxue.com/shibu/24shi/suisu/sui_081.htm ,
 * Chinese History Record Book of Sui, Vol. 81, Liezhuan 46 : 隋書 東夷伝 第81巻列伝46 : 新羅、百濟皆以倭為大國，多珍物，並敬仰之，恆通使往來 "Silla and Baekje both take Wa to be a great country, with many rare and precious things; also [Silla and Baekje] respect and look up to them, and regularly send embassies there."


 * "安帝时，又遣使朝贡，谓之倭奴国. "
 * On Emperor An of Han period, They sent envoy to han China, and tribute to Han China, Japan called as "Slave state" [by China].


 * "无文字，唯刻木结绳. 敬佛法，于百济求得佛经，始有文字. "
 * Japanese learned characters and buddhism from baekje, this is the origin of characters in Japan


 * "有如意宝珠，其色青，大如鸡卵，夜则有光，云鱼眼精也. 新罗、百济皆以倭为大国，多珍物，并敬仰之，恆通使往来. 故大业三年，其王多利思北孤遣使朝贡. "
 * 有如意宝珠(Japan have treasure things)，其色青(color is blue)，大如鸡卵(size as egg)，夜则有光(bright at night)，云鱼眼精也. (it called as 鱼眼精) 新罗、百济皆以倭为大国，多珍物，并敬仰之，恆通使往来 (Silla and Baekje both take Wa to be a big country of treasure source, with many rare and precious things in Japan; also [Silla and Baekje] highly esteemed it(many rare and precious things), and regularly send their person there." 故大业三年，其王多利思北孤遣使朝贡. (On 大业三年 period, Japan's King tributed to China)


 * 敬仰(jìng yǎng) highly esteemed http://us.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=worddictbasic&wdqb=%E6%95%AC%E4%BB%B0&wdrst=0&wdeac=1

'Japan land' have some treasure things, so, Silla and Baekje want their treasure things. [Silla and Baekje] highly esteemed treasure things. This is not mean, Japan is stronger or great country than Korea. Previous edit was definitely wrong translation.Cherry Blossom OK (talk) 22:07, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Requested move 1

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the proposal was move. Cúchullain t/ c 13:28, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Empress Jingū → Empress Jingu – Per the most common name. See Google Book search below.
 * "Empress Jingu" -"Empress Jingū‎" 5540
 * "Empress Jingū‎" -"Empress Jingu" 83
 * ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 09:21, 29 May 2012 (UTC)


 * No objection - I know some people love the macrons, but I'm not a big fan. Boneyard90 (talk) 10:45, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Support, per WP:DIACRITICS: "follow the general usage in reliable sources that are written in the English language."
 * 1) The title should be the most recognizable form of the name, and it should tell the reader how the subject is normally referred to in published English. The subject's bio is marketed to children in macron-free form as Jingu: The Hidden Princess.
 * 2) As the macron is not part of the Latin-1 character set, it may not render correctly in all contexts. See Amazon, where ō renders as a question mark. Kauffner (talk) 04:02, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV
I've removed an old neutrality tag from this page that appears to have no active discussion per the instructions at Template:POV:
 * This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. Remove this template whenever:
 * There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved
 * It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given
 * In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.

Since there's no evidence of ongoing discussion, I'm removing the tag for now. If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 02:49, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Requested move 2

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: move. Ample information has been provided in support of the macron, and the participation in the previous move request was very low. --  tariq abjotu  07:07, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Empress Jingu → Empress Jingū‎ – MOS says we should use the form most commonly used in academic works, but the above careless RM to the current title barely passed 2-0 based on blind Google searches and one of the (now-banned) participants' obvious dislike of diacritics in general. Of the results that supposedly use the non-macron spelling, most of them seem to actually use a macron. Others tried to give the macron spelling because Wikipedia did, but failed. One gave a circumflex. Of the first 10 hits, only three used the "Jingu" spelling, and of those one is clearly not an academic work (published by "iUniverse.com"), one is a popular book by Stephen Turnbull that incorrectly refers to her as "Empress Jingu-kogo" and describes her as a "samurai woman", and one clearly doesn't give her any extensive coverage. Wikipedia should be based on the best-quality academic sources, not on blind misinterpretations of Google hits. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 11:06, 26 August 2013 (UTC)
 * 2nd page: 4 clearly use a macron; of the other 6, one is clearly possibly just a misprint as it spells similar names with macrons right beside her name an 18th-century variant pronunciation used by Chikamatsu and preserved by the translator, as other names are spelled with macrons on the same page, one spells other words, but not names, with macrons, which implies an internal style preference that is different from ours; one is potentially misquoting an earlier work, Philippi's translation of the Kojiki, which I do not have access to, but which Shirane, a better-regarded source in this area, gives as using macrons; one doesn't have a preview, but we can't trust Google that it doesn't use a macron; two more give her name with no macron and don't seem to have significant issues. Do I need to keep doing this? Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 11:59, 26 August 2013 (UTC)
 * 3rd page: eight give a macron, one gives a circumflex and one gives the current Wikipedia spelling. Admittedly, a few of these seem to be doubled from the previous two pages, but it seems the deeper we go the worse this gets. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 12:08, 26 August 2013 (UTC)
 * The anon's careless !vote below (perhaps the result of travelling around hundreds of RMs and WikiProjects without doing any research on the subjects at hand) has forced my hand. 4th page: 6 use macrons, 4 give the current spelling (one is from the 19th century and again appears to use macrons for everything else indicating that this is just the same obscure variant pronunciation, one mistakenly calls her "Empress Jingu Kogo" possibly following Turnbull). 5th page: 4 give the macron, 5 give the current spelling, and 1 is a fictional (and historically inaccurate) novel about a character who appears to be named after the subject but living in a different century. So, even disregarding all analysis of the value of these sources, of the top 50 hits that supposedly use the "Jingu" spelling and not the "Jingū" spelling we have: 28 give "Jingū" and not "Jingu"; 18 give "Jingu" and not "Jingū"; 2 give "Jingû" instead; 1 doesn't have a preview; 1 is about a different (fictional) character. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 10:47, 27 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Oppose per 2012 result and characterization of this as a "misprint" is Original Research. If other names use macrons and this does not, then this is more an indication that it doesn't use a macron for some particular reason. -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 04:54, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
 * WP:CONSENSUSCANCHANGE If the 2012 RM took place today, Kauffner would not have been able to express his personal anti-diacritic opinion and I would have opposed the move for the same reasons I've already outlined here. It would have ended with "no consensus" at best. All the 2012 RM proves is that (1) GBooks hit-counts are completely useless for establishing diacritic use and (2) Kauffner doesn't like diacritics (something we already know).
 * "Misprint" was not OR, because I didn't include it in the article. I did however find out that "Jingu" is actually an obscure variant pronunciation of "Jingū". It's actually more likely that the early-modern playwright in question used this pronunciation in his play, and the translator preserved it. But it's still a work of fiction, and in about 100 pages includes one brief reference to this empress. Why should an obscure Japanese variant pronunciation being used once in an obscure 18th-century play make you reject the majority of coverage in reliable English-language sources?
 * This new info actually makes me think another argument for the move should be that the current title is actually not so much a variant romanization, but an obscure Japanese variant pronunciation, and so WP:COMMONNAME and WP:UE are in favour of the proposed move.
 * Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 10:47, 27 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Neutral Tempest in a teapot, anyone? Nothings getting lost here the way it is now nor would be the way it is proposed. It is only a diacritic. Maybe the right way is with, maybe without, but the effect is mostly academic. Dovid (talk) 14:11, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
 * In most diacritical RMs I would agree with you, but in this case the current title Jingu is actually a very rare variant pronunciation of the proposed title Jingū, so for specificity's sake we should be using the more common one. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 16:13, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Not a good article for titling. You can make that clear in the article text. What you propose, alone, relies on readers to recognize the difference based on article title. I don't think that's enough. And once you make it clear in the article, making it not-quite-clear in the title is redundant. Dovid (talk) 17:36, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I already did. The problem is that while I can locate a bunch of RSs that explicitly mark the pronunciation as じんぐこうごう ("Jingu"), it would be OR to speculate on the reason for this. FTR, since all the sources I can find are Shinto shrines and prefectural shrine bureaus, I'd speculate that as a Shinto goddess she is sometimes known as "Jingu", but secular mythologists, historians and literary scholars almost always call her "Jingū". But I haven't been able to find a source that specifically states this, so all I can say is she is "sometimes known as Jingu". This doesn't seem strong enough to make up for using the less common spelling as the article title. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 11:41, 29 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Neutral, bordering on support It looks like the previous RM was based on a flawed google search. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:43, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
 * leaning towards support - In searching google in page after page I see both uses of the spelling. National Geographic had Jingu, the British museum had Jingū, a couple antique stores had both spellings. Encyclopedia Britannica has Jingū. However I don't know enough about Japanese culture and press (or recent books) to know how they also prefer it... so I'm coming at this without all the facts. I do know that if I were creating this page today from scratch from what I quickly researched, and not seeing what anyone else had written here, I would title this article at Empress Jingū and have the lead sentence say "also known as Empress Jingu and Jingū Kōgō". Fyunck(click) (talk) 01:08, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Support per sources presented. Agathoclea (talk) 08:14, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

User:Toddy1 appears to be calling the above close into question. He says the move was proposed by me, opposed by 4 other users, and only supported by 1. He must therefore think User:Tariqabjotu's close was completely inappropriate. Honestly I can't tell where he would get such an idea, but he also seems to believe Enkyo2 was involved in this RM, and that I was talking about "revenge". Anyway, it's possible that he might come here in the near future and RM this page again. This is just for the record. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 14:40, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Chikamatsu's Twins at the Sumida River and Empress Jingū
I couldn't help myself. I went to my local library after work today and checked both the 3-volume (around 1,000 pages) Chikamatsu Monzaemon-shū in Shogakukan's Nihon Koten Bungaku Zenshū and the 2-volume (a little less) Chikamatsu Jōruri-shū in Iwanami Shoten's Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei. To the best of my knowledge these two series are the best-regarded printed Japanese editions of most works of classical Japanese literature, and tend to be used by western translators as their source texts. However, the former 3-volume edition did not include the play in question at all. The latter did include it, and surpisingly enough it indicated (on page 40) that the name was pronounced "Jingū" instead of "Jingu". So basically I'm stumped. Right now I'm convinced that either the translator was working from a different version of the text (there must be more than one, even for a relatively obscure work like this that was completely omitted from the Nihon Koten Bungaku Zenshū), or he deliberately spelled her name the way it is officially pronounced according to several Shinto shrines and prefectural shrine bureaus. However, that's not all Shinto shrines, and it's being used in one translation of an obscure Chikamatsu play where she's barely mentioned, but both names still exist and so we need to distinguish them, and choose which is to be the main article title. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 11:02, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
 * So as you pointed out in your preface, there are multiple sourced spellings in English and Japanese sourcing. I can live with either but would still lean towards Jingū. One sticky wicket though is per the last rfc and my understanding of it, we should not have both spellings in the prose of the article. If we rename it "Empress Jingū" we aren't supposed to have it spelled "Empress Jingu" anywhere in the article. Fyunck(click) (talk) 18:08, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Thing is, the article actually wasn't updated when the page was moved, because at that time it was assumed that they are just variant romanizations of the same name, and the title was at the most basic form (i.e., the one people can type on their keyboards). But the problem now is that it seems these are also the same romanization system's way of spelling two different variant names (most Shinto deities have a large number of different names). Honestly, if no one can find an actual reason why she is sometimes called "Jingu", or a source that specifically discusses both pronunciations, I don't really mind the reference to "Jingu" I added to the opening sentence being removed. But this is getting frustrating. Trawling through an 18th-century jōruri play in the original Japanese to find a very specific passage, and then being disappointed by its failure to answer the question as to why the translation spells her name the way it does, was a weird experience (to be polite). Now I'm just hoping someone eventually finds the answer. BTW, this is a separate section because it has no real relation to the above RM; we should definitely not be using an obscure variant pronunciation as the main title of the article. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 12:51, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Problems with this article
This article is in many ways a mess. It has become a series of arguments in favor of and against the historicity of Jingu's invasion of Korea. This in turn has been reduced to whether or not you support Korean or Japanese nationalism. As such this article is not written from a neutral point of view, it is written from tendentious and biased points of view.

The section "Controversy" misses the main point. The crux of the controversy is not whether or not Jingu was real or whether she invaded Korea. The crux of the controversy is that Jingu's alleged conquest of Korea was used as justificiation for the Japanese colonization of Korea in the early 20th century. Therefore, the story of Jingu has become politicized. The historical accuracy of the story takes second place to arguments over the justification or lack thereof of the Japanese annexation of 1910.

We need a separate section in this article that presents the historical context of the debate over Jingu, explicitly mentions the twentieth century conflict between Korea and Japan and situates the controversy over Jingu squarely within that context. Otherwise readers of this article cannot understand the reasonings behind the way this article has been developed over the years.

Specific problems with the article include: 1. ″No firm dates can be assigned to this historical figure's life or reign. Jingū is regarded by historians as a "legendary" figure because there is insufficient material available for further verification and study.″ Here we are told in sentence 1 that Jingu is a historical figure, and in sentence 2 that Jingu is a legendary figure. The second sentence must be removed or modified. Some historians believe Jingu was historical, some legendary, so at the very least the word "some" must be added, but even then the sentence requires references. It is best removed as biased, unsupported, and tendentious. "Insufficient material for verification and study" is a clearly false description of the actual situation, there is an abundance of material and research on Jingu is ongoing.

2. The section entitled "Legendary Narrative" does not provide any such thing.

3. "Some believe that Empress Jingū's conquest is only based on the Gwanggaeto Stele", no references, tendentious and argumentative language.

4. "The Chinese Book of Song of the Liu Song Dynasty, written by the Chinese historian Shen Yue (441–513), notes the Japanese presence in the Korean peninsula. However, the Liu Song dynasty, as a southern Chinese dynasty of ancient times, had little contact with northeast Asia and most historians in Japan, Korea, and elsewhere believe that this dynasty most likely treated Baekje, Silla, and Yamato Japan as one and the same. It is unlikely that this error was committed with regards to the Sui Dynasty and Goguryeo because they were major powers at the time."

No references. No references for relations between Liu Song and northeast. Statement that Liu Song couldn't tell the differene between Korea and Japan is unreasonable and needs to be removed. "It is unlikely that this error was committed with regards to the Sui Dynasty and Goguryeo because they were major powers at the time" assumes the truth of the prior statement that the book of Song must be mistaken. No Chinese court would fail to understand the difference between Baekje, Silla, and Japan, much less a court based in the mercantile center of Jiankang. This is an example of what I am talking about, there is no good reason to doubt the book of Song here, except if your point of view is dedicated to rejecting any notion of Japanese presence in Korea.

5. "most historians in Japan, Korea, and elsewhere believe that this dynasty most likely treated Baekje, Silla, and Yamato Japan as one and the same" Completely false statement that must be removed

6. "She led an army in an invasion of Korea and returned to Japan victorious after three years. However, there is no evidence of her rule in any part of Korea" Here the article references the Cambridge encyclopedia, but in my opinion this is misleading. Further research shows following: ISBN listed, 0521223520, leads to 1993 edition of Cambridge History of Japan, not 1998. Article was by Okazaki Takashi, not John Whitney Hall. What Takashi actually says is that the Nihon Shoki and Kojiki portray a Japanese colony in Japan, but Korean sources don't substantiate this. However Japanese presence in Korea at that time "whether a colony, a tributary state, or an ally" (actual quote, page 308) is unquestioned.

It would also be nice to have the actual "legendary narrative" as promised by the header, if anyone can actually summarize what the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki say about her, that would be very helpful.

The article should begin with the summary of Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, continue with a list-form, completely neutral presentation of evidence outside the legends, and include a frank discussion of the context of the controversy, before listing arguments within that controversy, clearly identified as arguments rather than facts. Jroo222 (talk) 15:31, 9 January 2016 (UTC)


 * From the page for Chuai, it seems like the Niohn account doesn't explicitly identify Korea as the destination of the conquest, that's just conjectures. What if it was actually in the opposite direction?--JaredMithrandir (talk) 16:29, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

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