User talk:Nishidani/Archive 1

Sock puppet
Nishidani,

I know this may seem rude, but I think you should make a personal page containing your introduction as it seems a certain editor named Hermeneus considers your account a sock puppet created by me to bolster my argument with him on the Nihonjinron article's discussion page.--Jh.daniell 01:24, 28 May 2006 (GMT+9:00-Tokyo)


 * I don't think a personal page would help. On the net, we are all virtual, and personal pages can be as fictional as, say, much of Hermeneus's thinking about his knowledge of the nihonjinron. Let me say that were I you, I certainly would not write 'Nihonshoki', the title of one of the two primary classics of early Japanese mythohistory, for 'Nihonjinron' as you did in your last post. I should add that I think Hermeneus had a point, only it got lost in his attitude, which certainly lacks any delicacy of feeling, in its hypersensitiveness to, apparently, what he takes to be Japan's endangered status. My argument was with his attitude, which might be tolerable were he erudite, since his knowledge would balance out his character defects. I detect in his manipulation of contributions to this site a political strategy to tone down to what he construes to be ideas that might cast shadows ons Japanese dignity, by throwing up pseudo-distinctions, as though there were established academic distinctions, between 'stereotype' and 'theory' (ron). All stereotypes, as Lord Keynes would have reminded Hermeneus had the latter ever read him, are born of theories. Most cultural theories of the kind we witness in the nihonjinron degenerate into clichés. In some sense the cliché reflects back on the theory. But Hermeneus can't grasp this. If, in warning you, I upset you by creating a misleading impression, I apologize. But the game underway has been played many times in here, and the eventual outcome was forseeable. I hope I saved you your time and probable wasted efforts, at least Nishidani 20:29, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Hermeneus’s behavior here violates all the implicit rules of serious contributions to Wikipedia in so far as he refuses to write the article (apart from some mediocre contributions to the corresponding Japanese voice), asserts a knowledge of the material he never divulges, and seems intent only on impeding others from contributing to the article. In fact, if you go back over the discussion, it becomes quite clear that he has succeeded in driving away anyone who tries to write anything substantive on the subject. It is clear by now that he knows, with acute omniscient insight, what should not be written. The joke it he cannot write one word as to how it should be written. He always of course appeals to Wiki rules, but in such a laboriously dull-minded style, that, while he manages invariably to convince himself, he bores the rest of the potential readership to tears.

It is scandalous that Hermeneus and a few of his allies have managed to hoist a ‘disputed site’ banner when the person whose contributions they took exception to erased his material (some of it appears to have been adopted in the meantime). Since what was objected to was removed, the flagging of the article as ‘disputed’ should also have been dropped. No. It stands there as a warning to all and sundry not to meddle with Hermeneus’s fussypot dominance over the page, and its meagre contents. Nothing can, apparently, stand without his approval. Nothing can pass his scrutiny, which asserts an ideal of ‘neutrality’ in order to defend a perspective of bias. The bias being, nothing that injures what he, with thin-skinned punctiliousness, thinks is the proper international reputation of Japan. His scrupulous call for documentation can be read also as a fishing expedition, to elicit information he pretends to know, but actually lacks. Thus, while stopping the article from being written, he enriches his own personal knowledge by badgering potential contributors. A clever game, in so far as the pedestrian mind that plays it can be called ‘clever’. If no one in Wikipedia monitors Hermeneus’s spoiling tactics, the article will never be written. There is no device to stop sterile kibitzers of his kind from playing this malevolent game. Therefore, I propose that Hermeneus, ‘the interpreter’ translate the Japanese article he apparently approves of, and post the English version here. If he does not accept the challenge, his bad faith will be self-evident. Nishidani 18:02, 26 May 2006 (UTC)


 * (1) We are currently discussing the relevance of this particular excerpt from a book written by an armature historian and published from a vanity publisher. If you think that such an excerpt should be included in the article, then state the reason why and prove it's relevance. (2) ja:日本人論 on the Japanese Wikipedia has no more significant contents than this article and so there is no point in translating it into English. (3) The "Types of Nihonjinron" section, "History" section except the first paragraph, and the first half of the "Nihonjinron as cultural nationalism" section are my inputs, all of which are well-sourced with reputable works of scholarship by Dale, Yoshino, Sugimoto, and Mouer as required by the Wikipedia policies and guidelines. I'm only holding other edits to the same decently rigorous standard. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a personal website; you cannot publish any unfounded unsourced craps on here. See WP:NOR and WP:NOT. (4) You created a new account just to say this? Hermeneus (user/talk) 18:58, 26 May 2006 (UTC)