Talk:Gensui (Imperial Japanese Navy)

Proper title for the page?
I'm curious what the rationale for the title for this page (and the equivalent page for the Imperial Japanese Army) is. For all practical purposes, Gensui is the transliteration of the Japanese translation for English terms for "Field Marshal/Marshal" for the army and "Fleet Admiral/Admiral of the Fleet/Grand Admiral" for the navy. It seems to make no sense to use transliteration of a foreign word, which in turn, is translation of an English word, as the title for an English Wikipedia page. A separate page for Gensui might be justified in that it is a historical title used as for the modern military rank--same characters as Chinese Yuanshuai and Korean Wonsu, in fact--much the way Greek title/rank Stratarches is, but I see no reason why the this page should not be titled "Admiral of the Fleet (Imperial Japanese Navy)." For comparison, we have an English wiki page Marshal of Poland for modern Polish marshals, not "Marszalek (Polish Land Forces)": the page for Marszalek goes to the historical usage of the term/title.

Related to this is that an explanation of the etymology behind the alternate title for the page, "Marshal-Admiral," seems desirable. In most English books pertaining to the history of modern Japanese navy, this term is hardly ever used: in fact, I've never come across this in any printed work, at least not one that is more than a decade or so old. Even English accounts written by Japanese authors, or from official Japanese sources, do not use such a translation for the Japanese rank/title. This seems reasonable since the Japanese Navy had close ties to the Royal Navy and probably preferred to use English rank system already familiar to the English readers--when writing in English that is (plus, as seen in the Meiji era Japanese peerage reform, late 19th/early 20th century Japanese had a distinct preference for going "Western," i.e. using titles familiar to Westerners, at that time.). Since the title "Marshal-Admiral" started showing up rather recently, at least as far as I'm aware, I wonder if a relative neologism and, if it is, I am curious where it came from. (Plus, it seems to be a term totally alien to the Western world: the closest "Western" rank I know of is General Admiral, whose page does include at least an account of its historical usage in various countries, although it too could use some historical background with regards how the term came about.) 76.93.91.225 (talk) 17:00, 29 October 2023 (UTC)