Talk:France–Japan relations (19th century)

Cite check
The primary editor on this article, is currently under ArbCom restrictions from the ruling at Requests for arbitration/Franco-Mongol alliance. As part of the restrictions, he is banned from working in the topic area of medieval or ancient history. There is currently information in this article which skates the edge of this restriction, though there is disagreement as to whether or not the restriction has actually been violated.

Accordingly, I recommend a "wait and see" approach. I have tagged the article as having potentially questionable sources, but recommend that we give PHG some time to flesh the article out a bit more before we discuss any further action, such as sending the article to AfD.

PHG, I encourage you to be scrupulous about sourcing the claims that you make in this article, so that no further action is required.

Best, Elonka 01:10, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I think this needs to be said: one single reference to the late 16th century does not count as skating the edge of his restrictions. It is clearly not ancient/medieval. As to the merits or accuracy of this article otherwise I have no comment. Srnec (talk) 02:33, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Srnec, I think if you dig a bit deeper, you'll see that this topic is much much closer to the subject of the Franco-Mongol alliance than it might otherwise appear. I would also point to  the list of other articles that are still in the process of being cleaned up, which also have very close connections to this topic (for example, the duplicated articles of Christianity in Asia and Roman  Catholicism in Asia).  I could point to many other points of connection between this latest creation of PHG, and the problematic edits that led to the ArbCom case, primarily via the topic area of Nestorian Christianity. However, PHG is not currently restricted from editing articles that deal with Asian Christianity, nor is he restricted from editing articles related to intercultural interactions.  And I hope that that will not become necessary. --Elonka 04:19, 24 March 2008 (UTC)


 * This is quite funny Elonka. It takes quite a good dose of fact-bending to write that 13th century Middle-East and 19th century Japan are close topics :) Regards PHG (talk) 06:08, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree with Srnec's opinion. Of course, every history can trace back to its old history. However, the article is clearly neither about "Mongol" nor "medieval history". Japan was intact from Mongol empire's invasions and the article describes the relationship between France and Japan in 19th century. I think Elonaka is overreacting to every edit of PHG. PHG is not prohibited to editing all history related article. I appreciate his contributions and especially photos from Musee Guimet. I saw your speedy tag on this article whose rationale seems to me very unreasonable. Anyway, I think this article can be merged into France-Japan relations because the two articles have not fully developed yet and having two articles on the same subject is a redundancy. --Appletrees (talk) 04:19, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I would support a merge. --Elonka 04:24, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Ouch - this is already a fair length article. While France-Japan relations definitely would benefit from being set in prose instead of a timeline, merging would more than double the size of the article, long past where we'd normally split.  I think the solution is more attention on the parent article.  Shell    babelfish 04:36, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, the intro and contents regarding the 19th century are overlapped much. --Appletrees (talk) 04:42, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree with Appletrees. Most of the main article is a timeline and images, much of which was copy/pasted here and is still duplicated in the main article.  The history of France-Japan relations is primarily in the 19th and 20th centuries, as before that there wasn't much to talk about.  If the main article does grow too large, it can easily be split again, but right now things seem topheavy, where there's all this detail in the 19th century article, and practically nothing in the main article.  So I'd rather see the main article expanded first. --Elonka 05:24, 25 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Just to share with you all some of my plans here, I have quite a bunch of important information on 19th century relations between France and Japan, so the current 19th century article will further grow to about 2 to 3 times its current size I think. I will also create a 20th century article (lots of interraction in the aeronautical and artistic fields in particular, and of course modern post-war relations). I will also create a 16th-17th century article (please everybody be reminded this is post-Medieval lets I am again harassed :-)). So, I would suggest it is quite premature to consider merging stuff. In parallel, I plan to boost the main France-Japan relations article summary-style, with summaries and timelines, which can then branch into the articles about the various centuries, each between 30k to 60k large. I guess this will take about 2 to 3 months before this is completed, so please everybody give me time to complete and perfect this architecture. Regards to all. PHG (talk) 07:45, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Please stop with the accusations of harassment. You are under ArbCom sanctions, and for good reason. Reviewing your contributions to prevent further damage to Wikipedia, is not harassment. --Elonka 08:08, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Reviewing my contributions is totally fine, Elonka, be my guest. What is not fine is to make false statements ("He [PHG] started a new subpage that is related to medieval history: User:PHG/France-Japan relations (19th century) (though the title says 19th century, there is clearly a section on medieval history within the article)"), to argue for a block and to even argue that I should be "permanently blocked" . This is some pretty nice behaviour don't you think? :-) PHG (talk) 09:10, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
 * *waves a white flag* Is there any way we can go back to talking about the article? Shell    babelfish 09:38, 25 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Can I give anyone a tea? Elonka, PHG did smile after saying harassment, so hopefully it was a joke.  PHG, please remember that humor sometimes comes across really poorly in print.  This has been a rather tense situation for weeks now (months even?), so maybe we should all try being so ridiculously civil that we ooze sugar and chocolate for a while?  Or maybe if we all tried to focus only on the content itself and let the discussion of other editors fall by the wayside for a bit?  It would be nice to see everyone learn to co-habitate on Wikipedia, even when they need to completely disagree with each other. :)  Shell    babelfish 08:29, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Could someone remove the tags from this article if there are no specific issues on the sources? PHG (talk) 10:40, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
 * The citations still need to be checked. You said you needed a few months to work on it.  Are you done? --Elonka 12:39, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I think you are allowed to put tags in an article if you have specific issues. If you don't, the tags should be removed. You can check citations anytime you wish, but I don't think the tags should remain in until someone finally checks them. The article will continue to expand, but that will stretch over quite a period of time. I don't think the Arbcom restrictions allow you to tag at will articles I create. Think about it; you are just doing everything you can to damage my contributions, even when outside Arbcom restrictions: you first claimed falsely that this article dealt with Medieval History, then you argued for it to be deleted purely and simply, and now you are just prolonging this approach by endlessly trying to have tags left on it without proper cause. PHG (talk) 12:48, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
 * As near as I can tell, the vast majority of this article comes from the works of "Christian Polak". However, the publications are non-standard, evidently some kind of "Chamber of Commerce" work.  They don't appear to have an ISBN, and I have as yet been unable to locate any libraries which carry them. Worldcat does have Christian Polak listed, but not the works that are currently being used for references in this article. If some other editor has access to these publications, and can verify both that they are reliable, and that the information in the Wikipedia article accurately reflects what is in the publications, I would have no trouble with removing the tags. But until then, I would like to see the tags remain on the article. PHG, may I ask where you yourself acquired these publications? --Elonka 13:54, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I bought the 2001 book in Japan, and the 2005 book in a library in Paris. They are published by Hachette-Fujingaho, the Japanese subsidiary of the highly respected French publishing house Hachette. The books are easy to purchase, on Abebooks for example, or . They are very nice books indeed. PHG (talk) 17:07, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
 * And per Wikipedia rules and AGF (which has been re-affirmed by Arbcom), I think you should remove the tags unless you have specific issues. PHG (talk) 21:11, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
 * For details about Christian Polak, please see his article. I believe his credentials on the subject of Franco-Japanese relations are quite significant. PHG (talk) 07:35, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I checked the Christian Polak article, but despite the fact that you say he has significant credentials, you haven't actually added any solid third-party sources that confirm this. There's the Terry Bennett quote, but I checked that quote in context in Terry Bennett's book, and I'm not impressed. Didn't we already have this discussion about multiple other authors that you create articles on,  such as Laurent Dailliez and David Morgan (historian) and Jean-Paul Roux and Alain Demurger?  It's not enough to quote what the author says about himself, or just give a list of works, you actually have to find sources that talk about the author and his credibility.  I'm sorry if I sound a bit exasperated here, but why do we have to keep going over this? You get challenged about a source, then you create an article about the author as though it proves the author's notability and credibility, then I tag the article as needing actual third-party sources. I feel like I need a macro. How many times do we need to repeat this cycle? --Elonka 13:54, 31 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Dear Elonka, these articles were deemed "Keeps" by the community, i.e. proper articles to have on Wikipedia, so I don't see at all why you have to express any "exasperation". Best regards. PHG (talk) 18:15, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Francois Caron
PHG, my attention was drawn to the Francois Caron claim in the "Context" section of this article, especially the part about how he was the first person of French origin to set foot in Japan, since that's a WP:REDFLAG claim. There doesn't appear to be a source for this statement? I checked the Caron article, but couldn't find a source there either. Then I checked deeper, and found that the Caron article didn't have any sources at all. Then I looked deeper, and found that you were the one that created the Caron article in the first place, in 2005! I checked the "What links here" on the Caron article to see what other Wikipedia articles say, but of the ones I checked, they're either referring to a different man of the same name, or if they're talking about the 1600s individual, when I look in article history it appears that you were usually the one that added most of the Caron mentions around Wikipedia, and again, without any sources. I've tried doing Google searches on Caron, but there's not much out there. I did find this, which says that there's little known about him, and that he's Dutch, not French. Most other sources just lead back to the Wikipedia article. He does appear to have been a real person, who was associated with the Dutch East India Company and generated a primary source report from that era, but I'm thinking more and more about coatracks, and original research, and have to wonder, how deep does this rabbit hole go? Can you actually provide a source for this "first in Japan" claim? --Elonka 12:10, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Three years is a long time ago, and I don't have all my books from that period. Google Books will give you however several quotes about his French origins (or him being French), and about being the first person of French origin in Japan, : Cheers PHG (talk) 14:45, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Caron, French origins, and travel to Japan
 * "Si on peut dire de lui qu'il était français, il est probablement le seul français qui ait visité le Japon sous l'ancien régime." Diderot ; le XVIIIe siecle en europe et au Japon, Colloque franco-japonais ... - Page 222 by Hisayasu Nakagawa - 1988
 * "En 1635 ce fut le tour de François Caron, sur lequel nous voudrions nous arrêter un moment, ... comme le premier Français venu au Japon et à Edo." Histoire de Tokyo - Page 67 by Noël Nouët - Tokyo (Japan) - 1961 - 261 pages
 * "A titre de premier représentant de notre langue au Japon, cet homme méritait ici une petite place" (Bulletin de la Maison franco-japonaise by Maison franco-japonaise (Tokyo, Japan) - Japan - 1927 Page 127)

Additional source
This book, French Policy Towards the Bakufu and Meiji Japan 1854-9, Richard Sims, 1998,  chunks of which are easily available on Google books, would seem to be an important mainstream source for this article. I will add it as further reading section but suggest it should be an important source for the article too. --Slp1 (talk) 19:31, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Indeed, having now read the very approving review of the book F. G. Notehelfer in the Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Winter, 2000), pp. 234-236 (I can send copies to whoever would like), I would think a fairly essential source. Here is a little quote that also gives some other likely important sources. "As the author notes in his excellent study, no single book to date has explored the French-Japanese interaction from the treaties that opened Japan in the 1850s to the turn of the century. Indeed, one has to go back to Meron Medzini's French Policy in Japan During the Closing Years of the Tokugawa Regime (Harvard East Asian Monographs, 1971) and Mark Erickson's doctoral dissertation, "The Tokugawa Bakufu and Leon Roches" (Hawaii, 1978), to find any mention of French-Japanese relations in the emergence of Modern Japan."--Slp1 (talk) 19:54, 6 April 2008 (UTC)