Talk:Isoroku Yamamoto's sleeping giant quote

change of title
Can we change the title of this article from "Isoroku Yamamoto's sleeping giant quote" to "Isoroku Yamamoto's alleged sleeping giant quotation?" Why should we expect the word "quote" to do the work of both a noun and a verb when we have "quotation" ready to use as the former? 165.91.64.199 (talk) 00:52, 28 March 2008 (UTC)RKH

replaced all uses of the word quote with the word quotation in the actual text and i also correcte the grammar of the quotation itself. 76.68.204.52 (talk) 15:00, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

From Votes for deletion

 * Isoroku Yamamoto's sleeping giant quote - somewhat unverifiable analysis, this is interesting research into the veracity of the quote, but it seems to be more appropriate as the beginning of a snopes.com piece rather than a Wikipedia article. Daniel Quinlan 09:47, Aug 3, 2003 (UTC)
 * It's at least as valid as the Bill Gates "Open letter to hobbyists" article. Keep. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 16:37, Aug 9, 2003 (UTC)
 * Well, I agree that the subject matter is on the borderline - at best - for an encyclopaedia. It turns out it's not suitable for snopes.com, because it falls outside their definition of an urban legend (which includes multiple variants). If we can find a site which will take the content, and which is not likely to disappear (so much web content is *not* permanent - Snopes itself might easily go away if the maintainers - a couple - can't continue, and nobody is around to pick up from them) then yeah, we can lose it. Until then, it has real content (some of which would be very hard for the average person to find out on their own), people use it (I did!), and it's "mostly harmless". -- Noel 15:13, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)
 * I needed it — Please keep, TORA! TORA! TORA!'s directors need Wikipedia entries also. - Sparky 12:01, 23 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * Found this article useful. Citing some sources would be great, but this is far from the sort of thing Wikipedia needs to worry about cleaning out - just cleaning up.

I think it's time to quit using Wikipedia to forward the idea of REVISIONIST HISTORY. Translating JAPANESE is an INEXACT SCIENCE at best. People work on expressing the MEANING, not the exact words in a statement. The only language that comes close to exact meaning in words is GERMAN, and you STILL have to work on the EXACT meaning of what the author has to say. ( For example, Does MIEN KAMPF mean " My STRUGGLE " or " MY BATTLE ( or WAR ) "?

I disagree with translation being an inexact science. A talented and knowledgeable translator can translate quotes quite accurately. In fact, Japanese is one of the easier languages to match up directly with English provided you finagle with grammatical and sentence structure enough. Because words in Japanese are made up of kanji compounds, and each kanji typically corresponds more or less directly with an English word, phrase, or idiom, the meaning and "feeling" of a Japanese sentence is rather easy to express in English. However, for this article the actual Japanese quote (or alleged quote) should be included. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.28.179.6 (talk) 21:42, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Aeb1barfo 16:23, 22 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I happen to be bilingual in Japanese and English. Japanese is not an easy language to translate into English.Oldbubblehead (talk) 21:14, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Napoleon
If Yamamoto did indeed say it, he might have been paraphrasing Napoleon, who said something very similar about China. I typed napoleon china sleeping giant into Google and got over 5000 hits.


 * Are you serious? I typed alien napoleon INSTANT DEATH RAY into google and got 311,000 results.  Hardly a reliable source to find out if anyone said something.  Liquidtenmillion 23:42, 5 June 2006 (UTC)


 * It seems like he had a point though; just taking the first quote, it seems Napoleon said "China is a sleeping giant. Let her lie and sleep, for when she awakens she will astonish the world." Similar enough, eh?


 * I disagree, I only got 161,000. Aaрон Кинни  (t) 09:23, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Original research
Is this article not original research? It certainly has an air of it. Ben Finn (talk) 17:19, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Giant, or tiger?
Is this the correct translation? (Some) Swedish history books says that he talked about a sleeping tiger, not giant. Are the books incorrect? 81.16.160.34 (talk) 08:54, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Most sources agree that the term Yamamoto used is "kyojin", giant, or more literally (translating each kanji in the kanji compound) "huge person".

No Japanese?
Does no one have the original Japanese text? If someone can find, cut and paste the original Japanese text I could provide a literal translation. In the American film "Pearl Harbor", Yamamoto is quoted as saying something along the lines of "眠れ巨人が起こらせた可能があるな”, which if literally translated, "I believe a sleeping giant may have been awakened" is a huge departure.

In fact, now that I think about it, this article is in desperate need of touching up. Yamamoto's quote "I can run wild for six months..." and several others also need the original Japanese text. I mean, even Wiki articles about Japanese video games feature the original Japanese titles, why not an article of some significance such as this one? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.28.179.6 (talk) 21:28, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I have provided a reference to the original source (below). If you can gain access to a copy, and transcribe the original, that would be great. Noel (talk) 02:04, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

The 'Run wild' quotation
The 'run wild' quotation text was changed in this version of the article to read:


 * "I can run wild for six months ... after that, I have no expectation of success" which may be true, but there are no primary source documents to support it" (emphasis mine)

and gives a reference to Haruo Tohmatsu, A Gathering Darkness. However, one review of this book chides it for "factual inaccuracies", and it appears there may be another one here.

Agawa, 'Reluctant Admiral' gives the quote (pg. 189), and says it was said to Fumimaro Konoe during a meeting at the end of September, 1940. Alas, my English translation of Agawa does not give source notes, so in this edition at least it is not sourced. The text does indicate that there is confirmation that such a meeting happened, in a contemporaneous letter from Yamamoto to Shimada Shigetaru, which Agawa quotes directly.

Prange, 'At Dawn We Slept' also gives the quote (pg. 10), and attributes it to "Reports of General MacArthur: Japanese Operations in the Southwest Pacific Area: Volume II - Part I", pg. 33, n. 1. Here we run into luck, as this is now available online, and in fact the note cited in Prange is here. The "n. 1" in Prange appears to be a typo for "n. 14", as Note 14 concerns the Yamamoto quotation. It reads (in its entirety):


 * In a conversation with Premier Konoye shortly after the conclusion of the Tripartite Alliance in September 1940, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet, stated with regard to a Japanese-American war: "If I am told to fight regardless of the consequences, I shall run wild for the first six months or a year, but I have utterly no confidence for the second or third year. The Tripartite Pact has been concluded, and we cannot help it. Now that the situation has come to this pass, I hope you will endeavor to avoid a Japanese-American war."

The source is recorded as being "Konoye Ayamaro Ko Shuki (Memoirs of Prince Ayamaro Konoye), p. 3." The existence (and publication) of such a volume is attested to by the Japanese National Diet Library, which indicates it was published by Asahi Shimbun-sha, in 1946.

Now, I don't have access to a copy of that volume, but given that both Agawa (which Tohmatsu and Willmott themselves describe as "carefully researched", n. 26, pg. 102) and the MacArthur book give the passage, apparently translated independently (given the differences in the text in the two versions), I'd say that's pretty good confirmation that it in fact says what these two well-respected books say it does.


 * Prange was the chief historian at SCAP and as such was the primary author of the Reports of General MacArthur.Oldbubblehead (talk) 21:14, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

And if the memoirs of one of the two people present at the meeting aren't a good enough "primary source document", what is?

Interestingly, neither the Agawa version nor the MacArthur version is the same as the one given in the article ("I can run wild for six months ... after that, I have no expectation of success")! I am the person who added it originally, but that was in 2003, and I no longer can remember which book I found it in (and a search in Google Books gave no result). I have this vague memory that this version was given to a minister other than the Prime Minister; if I manage to track down the source, I will add it.

Anyway, I propose we put some translation of this back as a confirmed quotation by Yamamoto. Noel (talk) 02:04, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Someone changed the "critical turning point" in the Pacific War from the Battle of Midway to the Doolittle raid. Almost all historians consider Midway to be the turning point. The Doolittle raid was a mere pinprick and which was more about U.S. morale than it was about damaging the Japanese. I think this edit should be reverted. If there are no objections I will do soOldbubblehead (talk) 07:17, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Yamamoto quote.
The book 'Admiral of the pacific' included this quote line line. I read it about 1965. So the line precedes any mentioned here. Potter, John deane Published by Heinemann, London, UK (1965) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 110.20.87.12 (talk) 05:35, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

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Unduly implied invention
While it's true that there is no proof that Yamamoto said this exact 'giant' quote, it's not exactly pulled out of thin air either. The Reluctant Admiral cites Yamamoto after Pearl Harbor saying that if you smite a sleeping enemy, he will awaken angry and counterattack. I think most readers would comfortably come to the conclusion that this quote is 'close nuff' yet the article seems to be going out of its way to suggest nothing like it was ever uttered. The quote is buried beneath unsourced and prejudicial commentary. As a brief mention in Safire is the only real source for the mystery, I think it constitutes borderline WP:UNDUE to shift this article so heavily against the quote existing. Granted, we also shouldn't unduly suggest Reluctant Admiral is the genesis without secondary sources, but fair is fair and it's not for the editors to say what, if anything, the quote comes from. 24.251.106.103 (talk) 21:20, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Don McNeill quote
The December 8, 1941 quotation from Don McNeill can be heard at 49:30 in his show: Johnvr4 (talk) 06:57, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Misattribution?
The "sleeping giant" part is also attributed to Admiral Chuichi Nagumo in a somewhat different form here: https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Chuichi_Nagumo

Which has this source: "Energy Technology XI: Applications and Economics" - Page 988 - Richard F. Hill - Science - 1975

Notably, this is 5 years after Tora, Tora, Tora! and thus might be downstream of the initial alleged misquote. The book is $500 and not on any online source I could find, so if anyone has access to it it might have a thread to pull on if it sourced itself properly. Ketura01 (talk) 21:40, 6 September 2023 (UTC)