Talk:Nanban trade/Archives/2013

Changed title
Changed the article title to "Nanban Trade Period" following the Japanese usage (南蛮貿易時代, see also 戦国時代). Will incorporate further information on the period, including propagation and eradication of Christianity, and Japanese expansion in Asia on Red Seal Ships. PHG 22:54, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

By Japanese history, "Nanban trade period" usually is not used but "Nanban trade" is used. I propose to movie a rarticle name to "nanban trade" from ”nanban trade period".--Forestfarmer 08:49, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Nanban or Namban
This should be Namban rather than Nanban, shouldn't it?

Spventi 16:01, 3 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I am not sure. The word is a compound of "Nan" (south) and "Ban" (Barbarian), and is also clearly pronounced Nan rather than Nam. Google seems to give double the amount of hits for "Nanban Japan" compared to "Namban Japan". Regards PHG 22:34, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. Although I'm not a native speaker of Japanese, I do know the language well enough to state with a reasonable amount of certainty that the word is normally pronounced "namban" rather than "nanban." Also, irrespective of what you'll find on the Web, a great many encyclopedias and academic presses prefer the rendering namban, so I guess what I really meant to say was: I'd like to move (rename) this page to "Namban trade period" and try to unify the spelling in this and other articles.

Would anyone object to that?

Spventi 00:40, 4 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi Spventi! I was glad to read your User page, and see that we have somewhat been in Japan for about the same amount of time (I've been here on and off since 1989). I am aware that both transcriptions might be acceptable in the West. For the sake of discussion however, regarding the pronunciation, the Japanese Katakana transcription is ナンバン, which would make it Nan-Ban. Something like Nam-ban would have to be transcribed ナムバン, which never happens. Regarding also the Western orthography, I agree that an "n" is transformed to an "m" before "b" and "p", but I think the convention is not usually respected for Japanese. I was struggling to find parallels, and here are a few: the word kanban (spelled 10 times more often with an "n" than with an "m" on Google), the word kanpaku (3 times more often for "n"), or kanpai, or Nanboku-cho. On balance, I would tend to think that Nanban is more accurate than Namban, and also more accepted generally. Regards PHG 01:19, 4 June 2006 (UTC)


 * OK, I won't move the page unless several other people come out strongly in favor of the suggestion. My experience is that the convention is usually followed in printed media, and I specifically would like to use the same forms that are used in the Encyclopedia Britannica and other academic works that I refer to, but I'm not stickler about it, either. Thanks.
 * Spventi 02:20, 4 June 2006 (UTC)


 * The Manual of Style (Japan-related articles) indicates that an "n" should be used rather than "m" unless the "m" form is more widely known (Asahi Shimbun, for example). ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjo e  02:03, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
 * An ordinary Japanese cannot do distinction of "m" and "n" of a consonant.The sound of Japanese "ン" has the case of "n" and "m."(I'm Japanese and I cannot do distinction of it).Japanese people pronounce "ン" with "n" fundamentally.but an "n" before "b" and "p" is pronounced "m" without a thought by Japanese."ン" is written as "n" by Japanese because It is unconscious.and in order that Japanese people may unify how to write the character,Japanese people have it educated to write "ん" to be "n.".That is, I think that it may write "ん" to be "m" as long as it turns out that the Roman alphabet of formal Japanese is a Hepburn system.If it says simply, since "朝日新聞（あさひしんぶん）" is a company, it is made into "Asahi simbun" with sound."朝日新聞（あさひしんぶん）" is written as "Asahi sinbun" by the official gazette of the Japanese government.additionally,usual japanese never wirte "namban".If japanees see "namban", think that the artilce is not written by Japnese.please make it reference as I only wrote an ordinary Japanese's feeling.Although I am a Japanese, whichever is satisfactory for me.--Forestfarmer 10:07, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Good Article status
I think this article is almost ready for Good Article status if claims and facts are properly cited (preferably using the The &lt;ref&gt; element and the tag in the References section). Someone should also go through and make sure all the wording is good and tight. With just a little more work beyond that, I think it could reach Featured Article status fairly easily. ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjo e  02:03, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Population of Japan
This may be a minor point, but it seems somewhat dubious that Japan would have had 26 millions at the beginning of the 17th century, when it was about 28 millions by the middle of the 19th century. I have no idea how notable Ikegamo Eiko is considered, but his "Taming of the Samurai" estimates the population to 12 million (which might be seen as low-end), with Kyoto being the only city over 100.000 inhabitants before Tokugawa established his court in Edo. Snapdragonfly 18:00, 16 December 2006 (UTC)


 * There's an unhealthy load of purple prose, to which we should add inaccuracies.
 * in the 16th century, Japan had 26 million inhabitants against 16 million for France and 4.5 million for England
 * This line is inaccurate insofar as it takes a. 16th century England as a benchmark; 16th century England was still something of a backwater, b. gives inflated Japanese figures (as commented earlier), c. gives French figures inferior to what they were; the population was, during the century the civil war lasted, stagnating around 20 million people. The accompanying paragraph still affects my purple alarm (can monastic learning really be compared to universities; was Japan that urbanized, etc.), but I know little on the specific subject. Snapdragonfly 00:12, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

As far as I know, these numbers and qualifications are generally exact, although details may vary with authors. I added the reference for the quoted data. Alternate references are also welcome, to added to the article. PHG 06:10, 3 February 2007 (UTC)


 * As noted above, "Taming of the Samurai", by Ikegami Eiko; he himself quotes from a paper (that used to be available online, but in Japanese, which I don't yet read) by Miyamoto Mataro. This same paper also gives a global production of 19M koku in the last generation of the Sengoku Jidai period, which makes it hard to fathom how Japan could have sustained the same population it had at the beginning of the reign of the Meiji emperor. As for England, it was itself a relatively late-comer to the renaissance, compared with the Italian peninsula, which was a patchwork of principalities, but mainly centered around a number of cities. 70.55.54.170 18:08, 3 February 2007 (UTC) (Snapdragonfly under an IP)

food spice?
Saw the section on foods, but isn't Nanban also a dipping sauce for sushi? I've had 'nanban rolls' before, like a spicy oil sauce you dip the rolls in. Worth mentioning? ThuranX (talk) 23:23, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Slave trade
500, 000 slaves traded? Ridiculous.

Is this some kind of attempt to excuse the holocaust in Japan?

Isidoros47 (talk) 11:06, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

This page seems to be quite one sided
There is some things I reacted to. 1. was the claim that Japanese steel and iron was superior to that of the west? 2. The superior of the japanese fighting style. Information I have seen, indicates that Europa had the knowledge of using several layers of steel and iron for weaponproducts around 200 years before the japanese etc. Another thing I heard was that the Dutch felt that the Samurai swordstyles where inferior to their own.

Could anyone comment on this? Or give some information regarding the thruth about these claims?

These swords are often durable, but fairly brittle in comparison. If the Taiwanese were able to fight and break katanas using bamboo-based weapons, that should tell you how strong they were were. The fighting style is certainly not "superior" in any sense than any other culture's fighting style. Anyone who outright claims that Japanese steel is better than that of the west is either fanboying or grossly misinformed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.130.209.102 (talk) 15:38, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Slaver trade that Catholicism brings
Why isn't there description at all? It is a famous, negative inheritance. (211.122.225.129 (talk) 01:55, 27 October 2009 (UTC))


 * If it's so famous, would you care to share some sources? I've been looking for some on this topic, but haven't had much luck.  Joren (talk) 15:30, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Catholicism in Japan section
It seems highly unprobable to me that the Jesuits would encourage Hideyoshi to eliminate a rival order. Spreading the Gospel was a priority for both. Such an action would severely undermine this. In adition, Japan was far beyond the reach of Spanish or Portuguese military machine. Spain would never risk sending her troops to the Far east when being in constant war with multiple enemies(Ottomans, Dutch, French, English). Such a large scale invasion of a distant country was maybe not even possible because of contemporary logistics and technology. It seems to me this section of the article is trying to somehow excuse subsequent massacre of Christians in Japan. --Isidoros47 (talk) 13:15, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

European/Japanese accounts of the other
This section essentially boils down to "Japanese thought Europeans were smelly and simplistic barbarians while Europeans thought the Japanese were better than them at anything and everything". Now, this is fine as far as it goes, and I have no doubt that these views existed and were expressed, and were quite possibly even the prevailing opinions held about each other. I do doubt however, that they were anything like universally held, and the quotes lack citations. Altogether this section, like much of the rest of the page actually, seems somewhat biased in favour of the Japanese. 86.1.194.255 (talk) 12:53, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Phổ Hiền or Phố Hiến?
Changed "Phổ Hiền" to "Phố Hiến" (舖憲). It used to be an old famous port in Hưng Yên Province, Vietnam (http://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ph%E1%BB%91_Hi%E1%BA%BFn). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.77.194.49 (talk) 16:11, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

First contact?
Was the first contact in 1543, or 1541? Here is a sentence that is floating around the internet:

''1541 A Portuguese ship drifts ashore in the ancient Japanese province of Higo (modern day Kumamoto Prefecture). (Traditional Japanese date: July 27, 1541) on this day in history.''--Filll (talk | wpc ) 16:42, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Noel Perrin
References were given to a book of Noel Perrin, "Giving up the Gun". Perrin was not a historian and is considered to be one of the Japanophiles who promoted the "superiority" of Japan in the 1980's. In his book he made sevaral claims about the quality of japanese swords, and even mentioned a cutting test when a european blade was cut by a Katana. However he failed to cite credible sources, thus his statements about swords has to be taken as anecdotes or Japanophile folklore, not facts. In my eyes his book should be taken with a grain of salt, especially without credible references. Gladifer (talk) 20:00, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV
I've removed an old neutrality tag from this page that appears to have no active discussion per the instructions at Template:POV:
 * This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. Remove this template whenever:
 * There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved
 * It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given
 * In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.

Since there's no evidence of ongoing discussion, I'm removing the tag for now. If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 22:42, 20 June 2013 (UTC)