Talk:Hiroh Kikai

Image sizes
One problem with many art books is that small paintings and large ones are reproduced to more or less the same size: the degree of reduction is left to vary and it's not easy to distinguish between what was originally small and what was originally large.

If the Mediawiki software is left to do the job, there'll be no distinction between &#332;tachi (Ecce Homo) at the one extreme and In-Between on the other. I therefore specified the sizes.

The heights of the covers are, to the nearest half-centimetre:
 * Persona (1st ed): 33cm
 * In-Between 8: 17.5cm
 * &#332;tachi: 35cm
 * Ya-chimata: 21cm
 * Indo ya Gassan: 20cm
 * Perusona (2nd ed): 21cm
 * India: 30.5cm
 * Labyrinth: 23.5cm
 * Shanti: 28cm

The tallest is of course &#332;tachi; the shortest In-Between. If &#332;tachi is 240px high (which is big, but I think not too big), In-Between is 120px (which is small, but I think not too small). At this scale:


 * Persona (1st ed): 226px
 * In-Between: 120px
 * &#332;tachi: 240px
 * Ya-chimata: 144px
 * Indo ya Gassan: 137px
 * Perusona (2nd ed): 144px
 * India: 209px
 * Labyrinth: 161px
 * Shanti: 192px

(In-Between 8 and India are wider than they are high.)

Thence the image sizes. -- Hoary 10:50, 28 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Creative idea, linking the relative image sizes to their relative real sizes. I like it! Phidauex 16:19, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Article and book titles, and bibliographic info
I've assembled the Japanese (transcribed, rōmaji) titles, Japanese (Japanese script) titles, English/Latin original (alternative) titles, and English (freshly translated) titles with some care. (Of course this doesn't mean I haven't made mistakes.) I've also put quite some care into their markup, attempting for example to distinguish between original and freshly translated English titles. (Again, this doesn't mean I haven't made mistakes.) I couldn't find very useful guidance for this in MoS (possibly because I didn't look hard enough), and had to devise a few distinctions and solutions by myself.

This isn't "my" article and of course others can edit. However, before rushing to fix an apparent inconsistency, do please examine the system so far. Briefly:


 * Japanese-language titles of magazine articles, etc, aren't italicized, despite being in Japanese; they're merely in quotation marks. (I thought that italicizing them would obscure the distinction between them and book titles.)
 * The English (or Latin) alternative title of book is added after a slash. If it's a book title, of course it's italicized.
 * An explanatory English translation of a title (one that's not on the original but instead is added for this article) is added in parentheses.

Of course it's possible that there are mistakes here, and people might disagree with the whole system. -- Hoary 10:15, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Graduation
Perusona -- the later, cheaper edition -- states that Kikai graduated from university in '78. This is clearly wrong: it's contradicted by for example his statement in the same book that he'd known his prof for over thirty years since graduation. Elsewhere, we sometimes read that he graduated in 1968, sometimes 1969. My uninformed guess-inference is that he graduated at the end of the 1968 academic year (1968nendo), i.e. in the spring of 1969.

Not that it really matters, but it's good for an encyclopedia to get the facts right. -- Hoary 10:53, 24 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Kikai has an exhibition in Ginza now. I went there today, and since there were few visitors and he was happy to talk, I asked him. The answer was 1968. (He also pointed out that he hadn't taught at university the university where ja-WP said he was teaching: misinformation which I subsequently fixed there as well as here.) And if this is going to be decried as "original research", I'll counter that it's easily reproducible original research. -- Hoary 06:23, 3 March 2006 (UTC) (Slightly reworded 23:11, 14 March 2006 (UTC))


 * Great article! Why not add the Perusona information conflict as a footnote, just to help explain the truth to anyone who may have come across the mistaken date and assumed it to be correct. And although I doubt this is very WP - I've never seen this done in an article - there is a way to reference a conversation that we use at the museum/research centre where I work. Something along the lines of:


 * e.g. * Lee, Robert (Associate Professor, School of Humanities, University of Western Sydney). Conversation with Colin MacWhirter, 7 April 2004 (see object file PH1980:0205.01:001-033; PH1980:0205.02:001-025).


 * so: * Kikai Hiroh (Associate Professor, School of Humanities, University of Western Sydney). Conversation with Hoary (but real name), 7 April 2004.


 * You could then post a summary (or in an ideal world, a transcript) of the conversation in the Talk Page...


 * I was just ruminating on the amazing fact that there is presently no Ken Domon article... Pinkville 12:43, 14 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the praise. I'll add something about the years a few hours from now. The article is terribly lumpy and it will probably become lumpier before I get around to smoothing it -- and also, I hope, getting permission to use some images. (As for Domon, well, his images aren't "utterly adorable", so it's hardly surprising that they don't interest great swathes of right-thinking Wikipedia editors.) -- Hoary 23:11, 14 March 2006 (UTC) PS done. I did not add my name, because it would mean nothing to readers and might look like self-advertisement. Hoary 00:08, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Amazingly, Labyrinthos also has him graduating in 1978. Not coincidentally, it's from the same (otherwise excellent) publisher that put out Persona. -- Hoary 12:26, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Shōmeidō Gallery link
A lot of notes point to "Shōmeidō Gallery", i.e. this page. The content of this page is very similar; if the former disappears, the latter can be substituted. -- Hoary 10:11, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Name and article title
"Hiroh" is the way in which Kikai fairly consistently spells his name when writing it in r&#333;maji/r&ocirc;mazi (though I have seen "Hiroo" in the occasional magazine article); it's for this reason that this article is titled with "Hiroh". And it's "Hiroh Kikai" rather than "Kikai Hiroh" (a form that Kikai also uses) merely to accord with a Wikipedia guideline with which I heartily disagree. (I await the analogous renaming of Mao Zedong as "Tse-tung Mao", and the analogous renaming in ja-Wikipedia of Tina Modotti as "Modotti Tina".) -- Hoary 00:17, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

an observation
Hi Hoary, Certainly a good candidate for Good Article. (Thanks for the nomination of the less-worthy Ueno Hikoma article.) I don't see any need for changes in this, but for part of one sentence:

...and has said that he would have worked in film production if this had not needed writing and money This phrase seems a little odd, but I'm assuming it's film production that requires writing and money and that Kikai had few resources for either. Maybe this could be a bit more clear? Otherwise, it looks very good indeed. Pinkville 02:16, 21 June 2006 (UTC)


 * What awful prose; thank you for pointing it out. He claims not to like writing. (Which is odd, as people who are hugely better judges of Japanese prose than I tell me that his written style is superb, and to me that suggests practice fueled by some degree of enjoyment.) And his point is that film work would have needed writing and begging for money. I"ve rewritten the sentence, not necessarily for the better. Don't hesitate to point out other flaws.


 * And really, Ueno Hikoma looks a pretty good article to me. -- Hoary 05:58, 21 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks.
 * The rewrite was better - but I've tried a more concise version that I hope you like. Pinkville 13:20, 21 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I had a feeling that my rewrite was crap, and now that I see your rerewrite I know it was crap. Well done. Do feel free to tinker (or of course do much more than tinker); I'll waive the usual requirements for advance permission, fee, etc etc [emoticon]. -- Hoary 14:04, 21 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks all round. By the way, what's an [emoticon]? (o_O) [smirk] Pinkville 14:32, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

This is a Good Article
I'm promoting this article to GA status, based on the qualifications for Good Articles. It is well written, clear, and very well referenced. The tone is neutral, and it appears fairly comprehensive in its treatment of the subject. I appreciate the good fair use rationales on the images.

I do have a few suggestions for further improvement:


 * This article does not completely follow the Manual of Style. Thats OK, because it is well written, but to polish things up, bringing things into MOS compliance is key. Here are some examples:
 * I edited the lead paragraph as an example. Please look over Manual of Style (biographies) for suggestions for biographies. Lead paragraphs should include the date of birth (and death, if applicable), place of birth, and the 'reason we care about this person'. The previous intro paragraph (sentence?) didn't include any of these things. It was a simple update, however. There may be other small issues to look at, to make the article conform to the guidelines for biographies.
 * Place names do not always conform to the MOS either. IE, Tokyo (Japan) would be better formatted as Tokyo, Japan.
 * Image formatting could be adjusted. You may wish to play with image formatting for better flow and asthetic value. Right now, all the images are aligned right. Try making some aligned left, and play with their size and position between paragraphs to make them flow into the article better. Guidelines aren't strict here, but it would be worth a minute or two of tweaking to make them flow better.

This is a well done article, about someone who I'd never heard of, (though I'll have to look up his work in the library, now!). Its in good shape now, and with a few more tweaks, will be truly excellent. Keep up the good work. Phidauex 17:47, 23 June 2006 (UTC)


 * As the author of a large part of the article, I thank you for your comments (and promotion of the article). But while I hesitate before countering your advice and changes when they're expressed so kindly and on such a happy occasion, I do have to disagree in places. Guidelines are just guidelines, and I must risk infringing WP:DICK by purposely breaking a few here. I'll explain.


 * I too was unhappy with the lead paragraph as it stood 24 hours ago. I'd agree with a claim that it was too short and not sufficiently informative. However, the rewrite managed to say "born" twice in a single sentence; gave detail (of little or no interest to most people in Japan, let alone anywhere else) of where he was born in a sentence immediately preceding its repetition at the very top of the following section; and, after saying that he was Japanese, pointed out that Tokyo was in Japan (as opposed to Texas?), which I think is an insult to the reader's intelligence. (After all, these are people choosing to read about a photographer, and not, say, some teen pop star.) So I undid a lot of your work. I have to rush off now, but I'll be back soon with more changes, because I'm still unhappy with the lead. -- Hoary 22:42, 23 June 2006 (UTC)


 * PS I've just looked at the relevant MoS (perhaps for the first time ever) and note that it doesn't say that the lead should include the place of birth. It does prescribe: ". . . Nationality . . . / What they did / Why they are significant." I'll amend accordingly -- and I'll also fiddle with the image placement, as you suggest. Hoary 02:52, 24 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Fair enough, fair enough. I realize my version of the intro article wasn't perfect either (the exact location of birth was probably too detailed, as you mention), but the original one seemed distinctly lacking. It can be hard, when one is very familiar with a topic, to see through the eyes of someone who is not familiar with it. The previous version included roughly, "He's some guy who people liked because he took pictures in a place you've never heard of, at some unknown time." The intro paragraph must include relevant information about who this person is, when and where they lived, and why they are here. The current version is better. At least my efforts served to shake things up a bit.


 * You don't want to insult people's intelligence, but you also don't want to make too many assumptions about what people do and do not know. I had no idea where Asakusa was, for instance, and the context of Japan had not yet been set. The restating of facts is partially due to the fact that many people won't (or do not need to) read an entire article. Maybe they don't care about all the details of his childhood, but want to know his location and era. Making them 'hunt' for this sort of information isn't good. You may end up repeating yourself in the end, but it means you have a usable article for both skimmers, and detailed readers. Phidauex 23:44, 24 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Keep on shaking! Yes, you make some good points here. I'll look again at the article a bit later today. (This stupidity has wasted some time that could have been spent more profitably.) Keep this article on your watchlist, and direct a shoe at my posterior whenever it starts to slip downward. -- Hoary 00:06, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

GA
No surprise. Actually I'm opposed to the newspaper-like style of iterating, then reitierating, then culminating the facts of a story in Wikipedia - I believe it to be a condescending style, as if I can't reasonably decide on my own to read on from an opening sentence! Regardless, an article well deserving of Good Article status better! ...added by Pinkville at 22:56, 23 June 2006)

Blogospherical appearances
There's so little about Kikai in English that I thought it might be acceptable to add a couple of blog entries that were informed, fairly interesting, and even informative. Not as sources, of course, but in the "external links" section. So I was about to hit "submit" with:


 * Review of “Tokyo Labyrinth” at the Yancey Richardson Gallery. DLK Collection, 22 September 2008.
 * Review of Asakusa Portraits. DLK Collection, 4 February 2009.

but then I got cold feet and didn't. Still, here they are; and if the obviously knowledgable "dlkcollection" were to reveal who he or she was, it might even go in. -- Hoary (talk) 14:35, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Pronunciation of his name
In this edit (which I accidentally reverted; I'd intended to undo it with a polite comment), an editor changed "Hiroo" to "Hirō".

Both "Hiroo" and "Hirō" would be trimoraic. However, the former is also trisyllabic (at least in principle), whereas the latter is bisyllabic.

I believe that a careful speaker of his name would pronounce it like the placename Hiroo (and the miscellaneous other Hiroos), and thus that "Hiroo" is preferable as a romanized form. -- Hoary (talk) 04:45, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 17:57, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Removal of images
Hullaballoo Wolfowitz, you removed several images: edit summary, "multiple nonfree book covers in author bio". Where's the beef? ("Minimal usage requirement"?) -- Hoary (talk) 00:30, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Per the annotation to WP:NFCI#1, while such covers may be used in articles where the primary topic is the book itself, the basis for their inclusion "does not usually apply when the work is described in other articles, such as articles about the author". The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo). Treated like dirt by many administrators since 2006.   (talk) 00:36, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified (January 2018)
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I have just modified 20 external links on Hiroh Kikai. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
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Sourcing for exhibitions and publications
, you write. A somewhat tired and sleepy glance at the exhibitions section suggests that it's pretty well referenced, though I wouldn't be surprised if dead links or questionable sources lurk therein. Please point out where the problems are.

By contrast, I'm very surprised to read that the publications section could also do with some more. Simply, the section doesn't have any separate "references", because (in my view at least) it doesn't need any. I'll take a list item as an example:
 * Tōkyō mutan (東京夢譚) / Labyrinthos. Tokyo: Sōshisha, 2007. ISBN 4-7942-1572-X. Collection of 118 monochrome photographs and essays; captions (for each, the approximate address and the year) and essays are in Japanese only.

The book is titled both 東京夢譚 (read as Tōkyō mutan), and, less conspicuously, the roman-script Labyrinthos. What might conceivably need to be referenced? "Approximate", perhaps? Right now I don't have a copy at hand and therefore can't check for sure, but my (dodgy) memory tells me that a typical photograph might show anything from part of the facade of one building to most of the facades of a dozen buildings. If it has one building, then the actual address of that building might be 東京都大田区東大井3ー1ー8 (a fictional example for explanatory purpose), and if a dozen then their actual addresses might range from 東京都大田区東大井3ー1ー5 to 東京都大田区東大井3ー1ー17 (ditto); by "approximate", what's meant is that the caption for either would have an address "rounded" to 東京都大田区東大井3丁目 (ditto). Well, I think that's what he does. If my memory is right, then a very legalistic editor may say that "approximate" is imprecise (how is it approximated?) or even an undesirable value judgement. Well, one could get around both objections by saying instead "(for each, the address [specified to the chōme] and the year)" but this strikes me as pretty pedantic. Everything else that's said about the book can be verified by an inspection of the book itself. Similarly, virtually everything that's said about each of the others can be verified by an inspection of that book. (Or do I perhaps misunderstand your objection?) -- Hoary (talk) 12:50, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I was mostly hoping for some more english language sources, though I am surprised at the shear number of links i missed when skimming through (maybe I just saw all of the notes and assumed that the sections were unsourced), so consider that a mistake on my part. I would still like a few more english language sources though, but other than that I guess this gets the ok from me. Gex4pls (talk) 13:12, 21 October 2020 (UTC)


 * , in the "English-speaking nations", few people seem to be interested in Japanese photography. Most of those who are have a small number of names in their heads: Araki, Hatakeyama, Kawauchi, Morimura, Moriyama, Sugimoto, and that's about it. Japanese photographers such as Kikai, Kimura, Nagano, Shiotani, Suda, and Yasui are very little known. Unfortunately I can't read Chinese, but I can work out that, for example, a news item in Chinese on Kikai's death is just that. In order to reduce the dependence on Japanese, I might add some more Chinese-language sources. A 2015 exhibition in Paris was accompanied by a slim book and a website, each in both French and Japanese; but unfortunately (if unsurprisingly) the website doesn't seem to have been updated. (Also, both book and website are introductory.) Perhaps I should hunt for more sources in French; after all, unlike Chinese, it's a language that can be read by a lot of the people who read English-language Wikipedia. -- Hoary (talk) 13:42, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I see that there very well may be no English sources, but they would certainly help the page, especially with the fact that it has been added to the home page. However, it isn't that big of a deal for now. Gex4pls (talk) 13:51, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Ya-chimata and its meaning
, somewhere in this series of edits, you changed


 * Ya-Chimata, published a year later, has a greater number of portraits printed more cheaply on smaller pages.

(with no explicit reference) to


 * Ya-Chimata, translating to 'A Gallery of Kings' was published a year later in 1996.

(with two explicit references). This raises a number of minor points, but I want to bring up just one.

It seems to me that you're having the article imply that ya-chimata means "a gallery of kings", and doing this because you believe this source says so.

The title of the book is や・ちまた：王たちの回廊. It lacks any roman-letter title. It's here at Ci.Nii (which is far more reliable than WorldCat). This gives the reading of the title as ヤ チマタ : オウタチ ノ カイロウ. I'm guessing that you're unfamiliar with katakana, but this online utility to the rescue. It transliterates the katakana as "ya chimata : ōtachi no kairō".

Now let's look at the reference you cite. It says:


 * 1996 Ya-Chimata: Dtachi no Liro ("Yachimata: A Gallery of Kings). Tokyo: MisuzuShobo,1996

So "Ōtachi no kairō" has become "Dtachi no Liro". Grotesque! But at least that web page doesn't suggest that ya-chimata means "a gallery of kings". On the contrary, it shows that "a gallery of kings" is a translation of the subtitle. (Incidentally, an accurate one.)

So what does や・ちまた mean? It's in hiragana, suggesting that it's not thought of as a loanword; yet it's hyphenated with a nakaguro. This is an unusual combination -- one that goes unexplained here. Kikai is pointing out that it's not "yachi-mata" but "ya-chimata" and thereby hinting at the meaning. This yachimata is more formally written 八衢, and it means a place where a road divides into eight (or some comparable number), or a place where the paths going off are confusingly numerous (source). A problem is that the kanji 衢 is obscure and little known. Where it must be written, it's often simplified as 街; however, 八街 is how the name of Yachimata (a "city" in Chiba) is written, and thus might give the wrong impression of the content of this book. Thus the hiragana. -- Hoary (talk) 23:35, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
 * , Appreciate the note. Please can you go ahead and fix as appropriate. The earlier statement had no references at all, and had to go. Good luck, and thanks! Ktin (talk) 23:56, 21 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Thank you, . Fixed, I hope. Arguably, an explanation of the word ya-chimata ought to appear on the the first appearance of the title. Feel free to move it there if you wish. (My own way of thinking is that a list of publications is where pernickety stuff -- ISBNs and so forth -- is expected, so detailed notes are better attached to a list item than to a sentence of the main text.) -- Hoary (talk) 00:53, 22 October 2020 (UTC)