User:Fg2/essays

Talk:Shibuya
I think a reference should be made to the Nintendo DS game "The World Ends With You" as it's set in Shibuya. 203.211.77.193 (talk) 04:32, 25 July 2009 (UTC)


 * It's the other way around. In the article on the game, a reference should be made to Shibuya. The main idea is that if it helps readers to understand the topic of the article, it's relevant. Readers don't learn about Shibuya by knowing that a video game is set there. However, they do learn about the game by learning that it's set in Shibuya. The mention in the article on the game is a good place for a link to the article on the place, so readers who want to learn more about the place can find it just a click away. For more insight into this, take a look at Relevance of content, especially the section Relevance of content, and at Handling trivia, especially Handling trivia. The Connective trivia section explains how information can be relevant to one article but not the other. Fg2 (talk) 05:28, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Talk:Shibuya

 * Hi Fukumoto. I'll offer a few thoughts. First, Shibuya is a special ward; it is not a ward. The difference is important. A ward is part of a larger city, and all the wards in the city share the same mayor and city council. The special wards are separate cities and have individual mayors and city councils. The special wards were wards of the city of Tokyo until 1943, when the city of Tokyo's city government was abolished and its functions taken over by the prefecture. In 2000, they became by law cities, in effect. You can find information about wards at Wards of Japan and about the special wards at Special wards of Tokyo.


 * Most of the special wards have web sites in English. They do not call themselves "X Ward"; they use the form "X City." You can see Shibuya's English web site here.

Separate from the question of whether it is a ward or not, there is the question of whether to put a word like "ward" or "special ward" or "city" after its name. It's sometimes useful for discussing the governmental body. However, when not discussing the governmental body, it's not necessary, and in my opinion, not desirable. Taking the U.S. as an example, we say that a person is from Miami; it's rare to specify that someone is from the "City of Miami." Likewise, we say that someone is from San Francisco; it sounds strange to say that someone is from the "City and County of San Francisco." There are some cases like Oklahoma City in which "City" is part of the name; the full legal name is the City of Oklahoma City (as you can see on their web site here). We drop the extra "City of" and just say that a person comes from Oklahoma City. So despite the fact that cities in Japan translate their names into English according to the pattern "X City," we have no reason to copy the "City" unless talking about the governmental body ("Fukuyama City enacted an ordinance prohibiting smoking," "Shimonoseki City hired 20 new sanitation workers" etc.). And the same applies to special wards.

If you have further questions or comments, you might ask at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles). Thanks for asking about this. I'd be interested in hearing your views too. Best regards, Fg2 (talk) 10:03, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Talk:Fukuyama, Hiroshima
Would the proper name in English be Fukuyama City? Reading the official website (external link), I got that impression. Likewise, this is a particular city in Hiroshima Prefecture, not a neighborhood or quarter of Hiroshima City as might be thought from the present form of the page name with the comma. Disambiguation isn't a likely reason, as this is the only geographic habitation named among the instances of Fukuyama. Please advise! -- Deborahjay 16:30, 20 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Please refer to here CES 16:45, 20 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Since this is the only geographical Fukuyama (in the Japanese wikipedia there is mention of a part of a town in Kagoshima with that name, but that's not likely to get an entry of its own), why not just make it Fukuyama and correct the disambig to say something like "Fukuyama, a city in Hiroshima province, Japan"? TomorrowTime 16:52, 20 December 2006 (UTC)


 * No - the format rule (provided by CES, above) is quite decisive regarding Wikipedia styling of page names for Japanese cities. I'd only like to know whether this city's name is simply Fukuyama or Fukuyama City. --- Deborahjay 17:00, 20 December 2006 (UTC)


 * As -shi (市) is appended to the names of nearly every city in Japan, it could very much be argued that "City" is not part of the name of the city, only a grammatical element. You're welcome to use whichever you'd like, but technically speaking, I'd say Fukuyama City is no more or less correct than Hiroshima City, Sapporo City, and Nagoya City. So, it's up to your tastes and preferences, I'd say. LordAmeth 17:19, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
 * The city's name is Fukuyama and the current page name is correct. The sole reason that the -shi is appended is to clarify the hierarchical position of the local government. Dekimasu 02:27, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I lived near there, and spoke to many English-speaking people in that area, and everyone called it simply "Fukuyama" rather than "Fukuyama City." So, "Fukuyama, Hiroshima" is the correct way to list it here according to the WP:MOS-JA (as previously mentioned). There are many places, even outside of Japan, which have "City" as part of their official name, but the Wikipedia articles almost never include "City" in the title of the article. ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjo e  20:59, 26 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Agreed, 日本穣. Likewise, there are many places outside Japan that have "city" before their legal name, for example, the City of Boston, Massachusetts. Note that Boston's web site has the title "City of Boston," but the Wikipedia article is at "Boston, Massachusetts," not "City of Boston, Massachusetts."


 * The word "City" serves to distinguish the corporation (the legal body that governs the place, with the power to hire and fire employees, borrow and spend money, enact ordinances, levy taxes and carry out similar actions) from the patch of land, citizens, history, buildings, transportation and other things that altogether make up Fukuyama or any other city. If the article were only about the corporation, then "Fukuyama City" would be desirable as a title. Since, however, the article is about the corporation, and the patch of land, and the citizens, and the history and all the other things, we should (in my opinion) not name it "Fukuyama City, Hiroshima" but rather "Fukuyama, Hiroshima."


 * Now, Deborahjay stated "I'd only like to know whether this city's name is simply Fukuyama or Fukuyama City." My answer is that the corporation that governs it is Fukuyama City. In Japanese, it has the legal name 福山市 which in the Latin alphabet is Fukuyamashi. The last kanji, 市 or shi, means "City," and this city's governing corporation calls itself Fukuyama City in English. The Wikipedia article is only in part about Fukuyama City (the body that governs Fukuyama) and it's also in part about Fukuyama, in the broad sense. So if you are entering into legal transactions with the city, such as by lending it money, paying taxes, accepting employment at City Hall, you are dealing with Fukuyama City. But if you're writing about the geography, people, history, and other aspects, you are discussing Fukuyama.


 * The source of confusion might be Hiroshima, which is the name of both a city and a prefecture (not a province). This is closely analogous to New York, which is the name of both a city and a state in the United States. Just as "Albany, New York" does not mean "Albany, a part of the city of New York" but rather "Albany in the state of New York," "Fukuyama, Hiroshima" means "Fukuyama in the prefecture of Hiroshima."


 * It's interesting to contrast this with Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. A person who wants "City" to be part of the title of the Wikipedia article might be quick to point out this as an example. But if you go to the city's web site, you discover that the legal name of the governing corporation is even more complicated: The City of Oklahoma City. So the Wikipedia article removes "The City of" from this, as well. For an even more complicated name, see Kansas City, Kansas (Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kansas).


 * In any case, if one wished to pursue the matter of renaming, the place to do so would be Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles), because the discussion pertains to all cities, towns and villages in Japan, not just to Fukuyama.

Fg2 04:48, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

NOTE: TOKYO IS NOT A CITY (Talk:Tokyo/Archive 1)

 * Tokyo is not a city under Japanese law. Under Japanese law, Tokyo is incorporated as a metropolis, and is like a province, or a state of the United States, or a prefecture. There are dozens of municipalities incorporated as cities inside Tokyo. Tokyo has a governor (as opposed to a mayor), like a province or a state or a prefecture.

The "downtown" part of Tokyo consists of 23 parts called "special wards." Each special ward is like a city. Every one of them has its own mayor and city council. Each has a name, and several special wards have the English word "city" as part of their English name. Not one of them has the name "Tokyo."

The 23 wards together do not make up all of the Metropolis of Tokyo. Tokyo encompasses many more cities, towns, and villages outside the downtown part. Tokyo even includes some faraway islands such as Iwo Jima.

Decades ago, there was a city named Tokyo. You can find out more information by reading the article Tokyo City. Since 1943, no city in Japan has had the name Tokyo.

What makes this different to any other major city in the world? Cities such as London, Sydney and New York are all divided into smaller cities. They're still refered to collectively as a city. 62.254.168.102 14:46, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
 * New York is perhaps a good analogy. Tokyo is more like the state of New York than like the city, but there isn't a city in Tokyo called "Tokyo City".  Referring to Tokyo as a city is like referring to New York State as a city.  Just as no one would say "the city of the State of New York", no one should say "the city of Tokyo".  The highly urban "downton" area within Tokyo is perhaps commonly thought of as "the city of Tokyo", but this is simply incorrect.  Back to the New York analogy, the 5 boroughs comprising the city of New York really are a collective legal entity named "New York City".  The 23 special wards comprising the analogous downtown section of Tokyo are NOT a collective legal entity called Tokyo - they aren't a collective legal entity of any kind, but cities in their own right in the larger subnational entity named Tokyo.  -- Rick Block (talk) 19:43, 28 November 2005 (UTC)


 * To add to what Rick Block said very nicely, Tokyo includes things that nobody would call a city: towns and villages and farms and mountains and islands, including remote islands with no permanent population such as Iwo Jima. Some of these stretch a thousand miles and more from the bright lights of Ginza. There used to be a city named Tokyo but it was abolished long before I was born. Up to that time, the city of Tokyo had a mayor and a city council and wards and was very closely analogous to New York, New York. Now, Tokyo does not have a mayor, city council, or body corporate the way New York City does. It's not a city any more. Six decades and more after the city was abolished, isn't it time to stop calling Tokyo a city? Fg2 21:06, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Note: Tokyo-to is not a city (Talk:Tokyo/Archive 2)
The Wikipedia article Tokyo is about Tokyo-to. Other names for it are Tokyo Metropolis and Tokyo Prefecture. The article is not just about the city of Tokyo, which is inside Tokyo-to along with two dozen other municipalities. It's also about the other municipalities.

Tokyo-to, the subject of this article, is not a city under Japanese law. Tokyo-to is incorporated as a metropolis. It is like a province, or a state of the United States, or other prefectures of Japan. Tokyo-to has a governor, like a province or a state or a prefecture. It does not have a mayor, city council, or body corporate the way New York City does.

Tokyo-to is analogous to the State of New York. It's geographically larger than the former city of Tokyo. Its government is a prefectural (or provincial or state) government, not a city government.

Decades ago, there was a Tokyo City. Up to 1943, the City of Tokyo had a mayor and a city council and wards and was very closely analogous to the City of New York within the larger State of New York. Just as both the city and the state have the name New York, both the city and the prefecture had the name Tokyo. In 1943, Tokyo City was disbanded. Presently, no municipality has the name Tokyo. Instead, 23 legal entities, each an individual city, occupy the boundaries of the former city of Tokyo. These are the 23 special wards. Each special ward has its own mayor and city council. Each has a name, and several special wards use the word "city" as part of their English name.

These 23 special wards together do not make up all of Tokyo-to. Tokyo-to encompasses two dozen more cities, towns and villages, ranging from dense suburbs to farms, forests, mountains and islands, including remote islands with no permanent population such as Iwo Jima. Some of these stretch a thousand miles and more from the bright lights of Ginza.

The discussion below is based on an earlier version of the preceding explanation. To see the discussion in context, read an earlier version (click history and click a version on, for example, July 9). Fg2 11:14, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


 * This is a legal technicality. In common usage both inside and outside Japan Tokyo is thought of as a city, albeit an extremely large one with a unique governmental system. --D. Meyer 23:00, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
 * It is not a legal technicality: It is reality. It is impossible to have a proper, even basic discussion about Tokyo when assuming it is a city, because within the borders of Tokyo there are numerous entities such as Hachioji City which are very clearly designated and acceptable cities, and cities do not exist within cities. This point is not up for discussion, the NOTE: is left at the top of the talk page because it has been settled on numerous occasions in the past and it does not need to be argued any further.  freshofftheufo ΓΛĿЌ 05:19, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
 * You and the original author of this section are assuming a detailed technical definition for the word "city" that is not born out in common usage. The Japanese have no difficulty using the word "city" for both Hachioji and Tokyo, and the official term "Metropolitan" as well as "Metropolis" used by the section author refer to kinds of cities. --D. Meyer 05:35, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Tokyo is one of 47 prefectures of Japan. Although -to (都) is usually translated as metropolis and metropolis usually means major city, people in Japan rarely consider Tokyo-to as a city. --Kusunose 06:15, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Can you verify that "rarely"? I have direct testimony from two individuals in Japan plus the Tokyo Metro. Gov't website and 147,000 other Japanese websites considering Tokyo a city. Of course, Tokyo is one of Japan's prefectures, but it is at the same time Japan's leading city. It is also true that Tokyo is not a city like Hachioji or Osaka or New York, but the absolute "Tokyo is not a city" is pedantry at best. If there is really a problem with editors using "Tokyo City" in a way that suggests there still exists a governmental entity called 東京市 requiring a rule like this to be spelled out, "Tokyo is both a city and a prefecture" is the simple, correct, common sense answer. --D. Meyer 07:06, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
 * There are dozens of municipalities incorporated as cities inside Tokyo. I'd rephrase that as something like: "There are a lot of suburbs and towns incorporated as shi inside Tokyo." These shi extend to such dormitory suburbs as Komae, Tokyo, population under 80,000. If Japanese officialdom cares to translate shi here as "city", that's fine with me. (Ditto if it cares to translate ku [borough] as "city" rather than "ward".) I don't even mind if en-WP calls Komae-shi (or Arakawa-ku) a city: after all, this has a considerable comedy value. But to say (other than in some legal context) that Tokyo can't be a city because a city can't contain other cities such as Komae -- that really seems too absurd. -- Hoary 08:04, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't really understand why you choose Komae as an example: it's well known that city borders are calculated rather tightly in Japan (giving the appearance of lower urban population) and Komae has a population density more than three times that of Toronto, which gives it a pretty good reason to be a city. Mr Meyer seems equally misinformed, as your link to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government page provides the user with a link to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government's "TOKYO City Information" radio program, which broadcasts information to Tokyo residents living in cities and/or experiencing city life. As for the "detailed definition" that you seem to believe doesn't exist, please read city, especially the section about the way the word city can have different explicitly defined boundries in different regions of the world. Just because you're not willing to admit the existance of an entity larger than a city (a metropolis) doesn't mean that it's not real.  freshofftheufo ΓΛĿЌ 00:38, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I thought of Komae because I knew it was small; I hadn't known it was the smallest but WP told me this. OK then, how about Akishima? &para; Yes, I know that "city" has a variety of definitions. Yes, I know that there are bigger conurbations than mere cities; just to take one example, as I type this, I'm sitting close to what is regarded as the center of the world's greatest (or anyway, um, superlativest) megalopolis, the &#332;miya-to-&#332;funa monster. This particular part of it is called Tokyo, and Tokyo is routinely called a city in the lects of English with which I'm familiar. There are certainly occasions where it is better referred to as something else, but its inclusion of such suburbs as Akishima (population circa 110 thou, a shopping mall being its only feature noted by en-WP) seems a bizarre reason to disqualify it as a city. For better or worse, cities these days do tend to contain such suburbs as Akishima; this is part of their city-ness. -- Hoary 04:20, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
 * From my own studies, the closest things to Tokyo-to (東京都) in the United States are New York City, which has five Boroughs (originally Counties prior to incorporation into the New York City metropolitan government) (vs. twenty-three Towns for Tokyo-to), and the District of Columbia, which has five towns within the District; both are run by mayors rather than a governor, but one government rules each of the three, notwithstanding structural differences. - B.C.Schmerker 00:42, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Tokyo is, of course, a city. We all know it and feel it. People say it and write it. There once was a legally incorporated city here, and there still is a city, and it's called "Tokyo." So what's the problem?

As I've already written, two things had the name Tokyo. One was a city, like other cities of Japan (but with more people). And the other was a prefecture, Tokyo-fu, like some other prefectures. The prefecture contained various local governments, each with the status of city, town, or village. One of them was the city of Tokyo. Then, in 1943, the government of Tojo Hideki abolished the city government of Tokyo, leaving the broader prefecture intact. During the Occupation, 23 cities with separate governments were established within the boundaries of what had previously been the city of Tokyo.

The city did not disappear by fiat. Allied bombing and occupation did not eradicate the city. There's still (or again) a city there, and lots of people call it Tokyo. And there's still Tokyo the prefecture. It sports a new name, Tokyo-to. The "to" is the part that's usually translated "metropolis"; this is probably a misnomer, because Tokyo the prefecture encompasses much that's not metropolitan: rugged mountains, unpopulated islands, active volcanoes.

The article Tokyo is about the prefecture, or metropolis. The Big To. This Tokyo includes in its scope not only the 23 special wards, but also Komae and Akishima and other things that really, really are not the world city. Miyakejima and Hachijojima. Minamitorishima. Mount Kumotori. I hope we can agree that Tokyo-to is not a city.

The article Tokyo City covers the city whose government is defunct. But the modern city of Tokyo does not have an article of its own. Rather, each of the 23 special wards has a separate article.

If you want to think we're being pedantic and legalistic, you may have a point. But there are some pretty practical reasons to consider the special wards as individual cities. Each elects its own mayor and each elects its own city council. Each enacts ordinances. As an example, on one side of the line that separates them, you can get busted for smoking in public; on the other side you can't. If you live on one side of the line, you vote in Arakawa's elections; if you live on the other side, you vote in Bunkyo. That's just like Osaka and Sakai, or Kobe and Ashiya.

What are the boundaries of the city of Tokyo? To some, Tokyo is only the world city, the central wards: Chuo, Chiyoda, Minato. Others point out that the recently developed Shinjuku has the skyscrapers, and Shibuya has the center of youth culture. To many, the "real" Tokyo is the Shitamachi area: without Shibamata, or tatami- and tofu-makers, nothing can be a worthy successor to Edo. Komae has never been part of the city of Tokyo, but Nerima, with its daikon farms, was. Should we really consider it part of the city of Tokyo? Should we trim Itabashi and Suginami, making Tokyo smaller than the historical city?

The article on Shinjuku illustrates the point. Yesterday, Akanemoto added a map to it. The map shows Shinjuku dead center within the 23 wards. Yet if you look at the third (January 22, 2003) version of the article on Shinjuku, you see that the author placed it (Shinjuku Station) in western Tokyo. That author's concept of Tokyo seems to be the area served by the Yamanote Line. That's one view of what constitutes the city.

So the problem is, what is the extent of Tokyo? Maybe Tokyo the modern city is synonymous with its old borders. But does that really make sense six decades later? Since the boundaries were drawn, Kawasaki has swollen right up to the Tokyo line, and if we were going to establish a new city of Tokyo, reversing Tojo's act, wouldn't we include it? Let's annex Yokohama, too, and Mitaka to the west, Kawaguchi to the north, and some other formerly separate cities. Sure, everything from Omiya to Ofuna. If you're a sociologist or a geographer, you might have data on residence patterns, or transportation, or communications, to prove that all of these are part of Tokyo. And maybe even that Nerima isn't. People who live on one side of the Tama River know that they're in Tokyo, and on the other side, in Kawasaki. But we needn't draw the new lines to coincide with the old.

Even after all this, Tokyo is a city. In fact, it's lots of cities: it's the world city, it's the Yamanote Line, it's everything east of Nakano, it's Shitamachi, it's the whole strip from Omiya to Ofuna.

Where does that leave Wikipedia? With a solid article on Tokyo-to. With a separate article on the city whose legal framework is gone, but which lives on in the hearts and vocabularies of the people of the world. With 23 articles on the special wards, and one on the special-ward system.

Should Wikipedia also have an article on Tokyo, the modern city? Without the law to define the boundaries, we'd have to decide what geographic area such an article would cover. Clearly not Komae... but... where? Should we develop consensus that Tokyo ends with Nakano? Roppongi is in, and Suginami is out? Or should we be legalistic and pedantic? I'm not Tojo Hideki, so I can't answer these questions.

I wish I had named this topic "Tokyo-to is not a city."