Talk:Koichi Sugiyama

Article improvements
Mr. Sugiyama is such a underated video game composer, I would like to write a more detailed article about Mr. Sugiyama it is just I need correct sources. I can not really find anything on him in english that has something like a time line, if I could only have someone to please translate some of Mr. Sugiyama's official website I could write a nice article from his beginning to present and future. Alus 1:00, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Picture
Here is a picture of him composing an orchestra with the London Philharmonic Orchestra http://www.icheg.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Koichi-Sugiyama.jpg —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zymyne (talk • contribs) 20:19, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

I added his photo as default picture. SimpsonsMan1234 (talk) 10:39, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Political Activites
This section was a mess, so I cleaned it up and made some clarifications. I also added citation requests to two of the items that carried no sources. One item however, I struck, but only because my Japanese is very weak and I can't figure out what the reference article is referring to (and thus what Mr. Sugiyama's actual involvement was, if any). Evidently, he was a signatory to something and is loosely connected to a politician in Japan, but the original text that was added to this wiki article is unclear:

"Also in 2010, Imuki Fujii and Kosuke Nishimura and accused then-premier Yukio Hatoyama for "Public Offices Election Law violation" suspicion, Sugiyama is the one linked the name in the signature. "

--Ndtronerud (talk) 23:51, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
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I have just modified 4 external links on Koichi Sugiyama. 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:
 * Added archive https://www.webcitation.org/679rmugJL?url=http://www.nobuouematsu.com/steffen.html to http://www.nobuouematsu.com/steffen.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060329235341/http://rhapsody_1st.1up.com/ to http://rhapsody_1st.1up.com/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060820070544/http://sugimania.com/sugi.html to http://sugimania.com/sugi.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20140222200104/http://sugimania.com/says1.html to http://sugimania.com/says1.html

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Eight Things left to cite
Anyone have a reference for the games that don’t have a reference? Judgesurreal777 (talk) 06:19, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
 * All of the Dragon Quest games can be easily cited to their respective ending credits, if not a soundtrack. But I don't think I've ever seen them for Derby Stallion 64 and Backgammon. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 19:39, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Perhaps, but I haven’t found a reference with their ending credits anywhere... also, does that mean you think we should cut those other random games if no source can be found? Judgesurreal777 (talk) 20:56, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

Inaccurate and misleading use of political science terms in current lead
The repeated watering down of my additions to the lead made by user Dissident93 are frankly bizarre, and I shouldn't have to be defending objectivity in favor of subjectivity on wikipedia, but here we are.

In both of my additions, I merely summarized the material in the "Political activities and beliefs" section of the article. I worded things, maybe admittedly provocatively in my first edit, but my most recent edit is nothing but clear, concise, and objective. This is a major section of the article and I see no reason why it should not be referenced in the lead.

Both times, Dissident93 reduced my additions to "Sugiyama is also a political activist whose conservative/nationalistic views have been met with criticism.", with conservative in the first edit and nationalistic in the second. This is a blatant use of the passive voice, surely meant to try and tone down the political character of Sugiyama's actions, and barely even has a place in mass media journalism, let alone wikipedia.

First, Sugiyama is not a "political activist", so much as he is someone who has engaged in political activism. There is no citation for this being a major aspect of his public life. Which is why my additions were particular about making statements that were supported by the evidence as presented in the article.

Second, the association of war crime denial with conservativism and nationalism is undoubtedly a willful misrepresentation of what Sugiyama has said in public and what he has supported. War crime denial is roundly regarded as politically extreme, it isn't a standard aspect of either political conservatism or nationalism, really, war crime denial is not even unique to conservatism or nationalism. These words have meaning and to use these broad terms simply because they may contain war crime denial in extremist ideology is obfuscating at best and apologism of the ugly aspects of extremist ideology within broader political movements at worst. David Duke's lead article doesn't go out of its way to not say that he is a Holocaust denier, Michael Jackson's lead article has a whole paragraph on the child sexual abuse scandals even though the allegations against him were never definitively proven, so, why is Sugiyama exempt from being identified for doing what he has done, publicly and seemingly without reservation?

Thirdly, Dissident93 has repeatedly failed to identify who these mysterious groups or individuals who have been meeting Sugiyama's political views with criticism. They should cite these publicly available critiques made of Sugiyama in order to make that statement in such a prominent position in the article. Or, they should just drop that shameful use of the passive voice and stick to an objective description of the facts. Wikipedia should be clear, concise, and factual. If someone denies war crimes in public, the encyclopedia entry on them can and should simply say that they are a war crime denier due to them having denied war crimes vocally in public. That is what this article has citations for, after all.

At the very least I would expect someone blatantly trying to sanitize the lead article of this entry on Wikipedia wanting to say something about why it's not fair to tarnish Sugiyama's legacy, because if this was about emotional attachment to the music in his games, fine, that makes sense, it makes for bad judgement calls on wikipedia in a way that I think is unequivocally politically motivated censorship, but at least it makes sense. And, honestly, don't even try to argue that it's fine to leave out of the lead because it's in the article, again, it's about a quarter of the body of the article already and it's what Sugiyama has chosen to make himself known as, I am not tarnishing anyone's legacy here. But it's insulting to hide behind the seemingly emotionally disaffected motivation to make the article shorter. That's spineless. It's one single sentence. It's relevant information about a public figure that I would say that most people would want to know about someone if they are curious enough to access their wikipedia page. Far less morally repugnant things are in the leads of other public figures, and in the digital age, I think we all have a right to ease of access to information like this. You can like his music, even love it, frankly, I love the music in Dragon Quest. But it is a disservice to fans to make this information about Sugiyama any more obscured than it should be. People have a right to know about this, upfront. And don't even bother trying to say "well everyone should just read the whole article." They won't, we all know it.

So, go ahead and trim down my addition to the lead if it really is brevity or conciseness that you want, but do so without obscuring the important information. The lead should summarize the article well and it isn't complete without a summary of an entire quarter of the article. No oversimplifications or misrepresentations. Use the correct political science terms in good faith. No phantom meetings of criticism. Summarize the major section of the article that in the current iteration of this article is not at all communicated let alone summarized.

--Thenewjay777 (talk) 08:46, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Dissident93, I thought I would let you know that as of this [|this edit], I approve of the current state of the lead of the article.

My disagreement with the state of the lead was not exactly that the lead didn't include enough information, but that it didn't include enough signifiers as to the nature of the content in the article, and then, later, when we got into a bit of an edit war, enough unambiguous signifiers. A lead does not have to be a list of sins for a controversial figure, but I would say that it is essential that, if one were to read the lead and then subsequently read the article, there should not be any content in the article that would be a shock to the reader. That, to me, would signify that the lead had been written in a way which attempted to obscure relevant or controversial information from anyone who was not willing to investigate thoroughly. Yes, it would be ideal if everyone could do their due diligence when learning and ensure we have investigated everything to the best of our ability, but, well, that's not necessarily why people consume wikipedia in the first place. One can only blame users for using something incorrectly for so long before it becomes absurd to not just make the thing in a way that accomplishes your objectives without demanding users follow unspoken rules or demands.

It matters very much, I think, to draw attention to war crime denial, in this age of mass disinformation, misdirection, and historical revisionism. Ideologically, I find his views absolutely abominable, I still play and love Dragon Quest games and can even acknowledge Sugiyama's skill and craft, but it can be very isolating to consider how few people outside of Japan probably know about it, or even care. So I think it's very important to make these conversations more visible. At any rate, again, it's probably the only thing I agree with war crime deniers on—they can be public with their views all they like and I won't stop them from associating with it. Reasonable people will continue seeing it for what it is.

At any rate, Dissident93, I hope that this part of the lead will not change, you are obviously much more active on wikipedia than me, so I hope that you having done this yourself means you have taken my criticisms to heart and acknowledge the intent of my contributions or, at least, you were willing to compromise and you're tired of the back and forth. So I hope to see this change be carried through into the future. Well, I mean, unless Sugiyama were to do an about face and publicly disavow his past views strongly enough to warrant a shift in the degree to which those views can be attributable to him. Stranger things have happened!

2604:3D09:CF80:A000:2C45:6D7E:9C1F:C71C (talk) 18:28, 25 June 2021 (UTC)