Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jigai


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   merge to Seppuku. J04n(talk page) 11:29, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Jigai

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This article, until I fixed it a few days ago, was filled with OR and unverified/inaccurate statements. Now, it consists of nothing more than a dictionary definition. The word "jigai" just means "suicide" in Japanese: it's slightly more archaic/euphemistic than the word "jisatsu", and I'm sure it has an interesting etymology, but this page really doesn't belong here. elvenscout742 (talk) 04:24, 12 February 2013 (UTC) Note The article, and several other articles, previously claimed "jigai" was the female equivalent of seppuku. This is not, as far as I can establish, the case, although a number of English publications seem to have erroneously taken it as fact. elvenscout742 (talk) 04:24, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Also, they're not reliable sources, but here's a few native Japanese speakers giving a few definitions that differ slightly in the details but all have basically the same gist. And none of them define "jigai" as "women of the samurai class performing ritual suicide by cutting their throats" or anything of the sort. elvenscout742 (talk) 04:30, 12 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Automated comment: This AfD was not correctly transcluded to the log (step 3). I have transcluded it to Articles for deletion/Log/2013 February 12.  Snotbot   t &bull; c &raquo;  04:41, 12 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete . Looks like a simple dictionary definition to me. --DAJF (talk) 03:22, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Keep Changing !vote, see below Unfortunately, whether jigai correctly refers the suicide of samurai-class women or not, many sources have, as elvenscout points out, reported that it does. What is true and what is verifiable may be two different things. In this case, since a number of sources have stated that jigai is the female version of seppuku, that's what we should be reporting. If there are sources that specifically claim otherwise, they can by all means be added to the article to maintain balance. No comment on the possible Sasori sockpuppetry; I haven't fully investigated the claims yet. Yunshui 雲 &zwj; 水  12:00, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Just a note: We may be getting a vote from the IP of a user who recently got indef-blocked for harassing and threatening me. With no explanation, he reverted my above-mentioned removal of highly questionable material. If/when he shows up here, he might try to cite some of the poorly-researched works (apparently written by non-Japanese-speakers) as evidence in support of this article, but everyone please just ignore him. Honestly, if I knew more about this subject-matter, I probably would have moved the page to its proper name (I'm sure buke women's cutting their own throats has a special name) and made "jigai" a redirect, with a notice: "Jigai" redirects for. For general discussion of suicide in Japan, see Suicide in Japan. elvenscout742 (talk) 03:40, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Would a merge with Seppuku suit you? (The title of that article not being "hara-kiri" is another point that might be brought up...) Honestly, I don't mind Wikipedia mentioning this particular misunderstood word, but having an independent article on it is problematic because then we have people questionably adding the word "jigai" to the "See also" section of Jauhar, and so on... elvenscout742 (talk) 15:56, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I just noticed this funny note on Japanese Wikipedia: "It seems that in the west the word jigai has been erroneously taken to refer to the suicide-culture of Japanese women." (爆)
 * Anyway, I don't really have a problem with this material being included in Wikipedia, but I definitely oppose it having an independent article. The version of the article that existed until 10 February heavily implied that either Japanese historians in 2013 use the word "jigai" specifically to refer to samurai women cutting the arteries in the throats, or that people in medieval/early-modern Japan actually used the word this way. It is essentially just a mistake, and not a very widely-made mistake, considering the number of works in English that discuss this topic without calling it "jigai". Therefore, giving it a subordinate section in the seppuku article, in which we explain the phenomenon, then state that some works by western authors have erroneously called this phenomenon "jigai", and then cite the actual Japanese dictionary definition of "jigai".
 * elvenscout742 (talk) 02:33, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

KEEP. I would like to point out that the user who is called elvenscout742 has serious issues with WP:OWN, see here. Wikipedia as far as I know my rules here is that it is not about TRUTH per se. It is about identifying reliable sources WP:RS and rewriting what they say from a WP:NPOV. I say all this as a completely neutral observer (my caveat, been here since 2004 but never had an account because I am not interested in the game) I only came here following a trail of amusing Admin events with elvenscout742 (as I do like a petty squabble). Just going through past events seems to suggest they are a WP:LAWYER who is less interested in the tenets of verifiable sources  but just ensuring their viewpoints' win-out. I thought "I don't like" is meant to stop this sort of thing because as long as the source which the statement is based on is a reliable, third-party sources then its use is fair irrespective of "truth" or someone's opinion. 86.177.63.126 (talk) 22:42, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Take that personal attack back now. Who do you think you are? When have I ever claimed "ownership" of any article?? I was temporarily blocked because a disruptive user had been posting spam on numerous articles, and in order to stop him/her I accepted a mutual interaction ban. When the user realized that he/she could WP:OWN any article he/she edited, and effectively force me out of them, he/she immediately started editing in an area in which I have made hundreds of edits over the past 8 years, and he/she had never edited before. WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!?!? Additionally, it would be nice if you actually contributed something to Wikipedia before showing up here to vote against me based on ad hominem argument. Since your only significant contribution to Wikipedia before posting on this AFI was to remove a sourced statement and replace it with an unsourced "update", for all anyone else here knows, you are a sockpuppet of the user who got me blocked in the first place.
 * I apologize to all present if this post seems somewhat aggressive. I am just getting kind of sick of anons with no edit history suddenly showing up all over the place and making personal attacks against me.
 * elvenscout742 (talk) 01:02, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
 * (By the way, if you had actually been following what went on between me and Tristan noir -- and Yunshui and numerous others -- you would know that immediately after the above-linked block post about a dozen impartial users immediately voted to lift all restrictions on me and place harsher restrictions on Tristan noir. There has never been any community consensus that I have WP:OWN issues or that I have done anything wrong. elvenscout742 (talk) 01:32, 18 February 2013 (UTC))
 * @86.177.63.126: as Keep !votes go, ad hominem accusations against the nominator rank pretty much at the bottom of the effective arguments scale. As my old gran used to admonish, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. And pass the gin, there's a dear."
 * @elvenscout742: I understand your frustrated response, but chill; just about every editor and admin working in Japan-related areas is now aware of the problems you're having, and no-one's going to take such accusations seriously. Even those of us who disagree with you are still capable of spotting a spurious argument. Shrug it off, DENY, carry on regardless. For what it's worth, I've got no objection to a merge with seppuku, and I can see the validity of your reasoning; I'm willing to consider changing my !vote but I'd like to hear what other editors have to say on the matter first. Yunshui 雲 &zwj; 水  08:39, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Gotcha. Thank you once again for the advice. elvenscout742 (talk) 06:31, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Japan-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:33, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:34, 19 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, J04n(talk page) 11:31, 20 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Merge to seppuku. Louis Frédéric does contrast jigai with seppuku, and Lafcadio Hearn mentions it as a variation of hara-kiri. I'm not aware of others who make a similar comparison or contrast, but a merge or at least redirecting to keep this history may be warranted. Cnilep (talk) 07:36, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * As I pointed out on the talk page, Hearn didn't speak Japanese, and who knows where he could have picked up the misconception the jigai means what he and others since him have claimed it means. No Japanese dictionary includes this definition, and the article has actually pointed this since Vapour's edit five years ago. Anyway, as I already said a merge is a good idea here, because we have a misconception that is fairly widespread, and while it doesn't deserve its own article (the fact that it doesn't actually exist means there is very little we can say about it) a merge with its parent topic seppuku works. I actually didn't bring my copy of the Japan Encyclopedia with me when I moved to Japan. I figured I wouldn't need it because I had come across a number of what I recall were errors in it. They may in fact have been unfortunate translations from the French. I've never read Frédéric in French, so I really don't know how good he was on Japanese history. I also can't seem to find Frédéric's original French version: was it called Encyclopédie du Japon? It's definitely not on Amazon -- all these books are too short to have been the ST for the Japan Encyclopedia the article cited...
 * The most depressing part about this, though, is that while this misconception has apparently been around for over 100 years, it's entirely possible that the majority of sources written on the subject since 2005 were actually based on Wikipedia...
 * elvenscout742 (talk) 14:56, 21 February 2013 (UTC)


 * In two minds, merge or expand/retitle - on the one hand this dicdef is largely nonsense, in terms of real Japanese, but on the other hand it is notable nonsense celebrated/created/perpetuated within otherwise completely reliable (but not reliable about real Japanese usage) Western sources -.e.g. Jan Van Rij Madame Butterfly: Japonisme, Puccini, & the Search for the Real Cho-Cho-San 2001 Page 71 "..of the samurai class could not be sold by their family but they could sell themselves; and finally the act of jigai, suicide by a dagger or short sword piercing the neck, was.. " A similar case is the awful bụi đời article generated by a lyric in Miss Saigon where a French librettist's misunderstanding of a Vietnamese term ("street kids") has been redefined by Western popular culture as "the-Vietnamese-term-meaning-mixed-race offspring left behind by GIs" (sic - a meaning the word bụi đời doesn't have in Vietnamese). So what does one do? The sources exist, the subject bụi đời is notable, but notably wrong. Likewise jigai. Including into seppuku is one option as a new paragraph Female ritual suicide in Japan. However for categorisation purposes maybe keeping this article separate with a new title might be a better alternative. It depends, does one want an overweight paragraph on female seppuku inside the main seppuku article, or outside it? [Also this AfD should probably have been notified to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women's History by listing or Talk tagging]. In ictu oculi (talk) 14:36, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * By the way, IIO, you seem to know more than most about RMs and the like: why has no one moved the page Seppuku to Hara-kiri or Harikari in accordance with WP:UE and WP:COMMONNAME?? (I really want to put a winking or sticking-tongue-out smiley here to highlight that I'm joking, but on Wikipedia they don't look very good/clear, and I really don't want anyone to think I'm serious.) elvenscout742 (talk) 15:00, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * With regard to the lack of women's history notification: you'll notice that I removed the relevant categories and WikiProjects two days before AfDing the page, I actually thought that the problematic OR/inaccurate information should be removed in the short term, the page could be moved to an accurate title (I still do think the Japanese had a word for this somewhere -- I just can't find it), and then the information/WikiProject coverage and so on could be restored and put in its proper context. I apologize if this is not how I should have gone about it, but I really thought for a while that the article could be saved if I completely overhauled it. elvenscout742 (talk) 15:07, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Because "Hara-kiri" has plentiful sources saying in black and white "this is a wrong name" and discussing why it was used at length - there aren't plentiful lexical sources saying jigai or bụi đời are wrong, just sources giving the real meaning.
 * The maximum of project tags should be present when any action picked up by Alerts is considered. That's the whole point of Alerts. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:18, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
 * (Regarding alerts) I know that. That is why I apologized for having removed the WikiProjects, categories and stub tags prematurely. My point was not that WikiProject Women's History should not be informed, but rather that it was probably my fault that they had not. elvenscout742 (talk) 00:25, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
 * (Regarding hara-kiri) I also know that. That is why I needed to lampshade the fact that I was making a corny joke. But I was also referring to a recent tendency on a number of RMs to interpret WP:COMMONNAME and WP:UE to mean that if something is commonly known by an incorrect name in English, we should still use that name even though we know it's incorrect. ;) elvenscout742 (talk) 00:30, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
 * (1) I know, no problem. (2) The problem lies in the recent edit history of WP:COMMONNAME and WP:UE as much as intepretation, personally I'd like earlier versions restored. Cheers. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:49, 22 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep, I found references about this quite easily.Darkness walks (talk) 04:20, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Check the above discussion. Everyone is in agreement that references for this subject exist, and the phenomenon of samurai women cutting their throats as a form of ritual suicide may well have existed in medieval/early-modern Japan. The problem is that no reliable specialist sources on Japanese history refer to the phenomenon as "jigai" (which just means "suicide" in general). We are discussing what to do about this issue. I didn't comment on IIO's second proposal of expanding and renaming; either a merge to Seppuku or a renaming to Female ritual suicide in pre-modern Japan (or something) would be a fair solution to the problem. However, keeping the article as it was before I removed the contentious material would mean we have an inaccurate and self-contradictory article, and keeping it as it is now would violate WP:NOTDICT. elvenscout742 (talk) 01:31, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
 * On the basis of what seems to be convergence of various opinions above, I suggest one way forward would be (1) first move jigai to Female ritual suicide in pre-modern Japan as a place-holder title, and THEN, after a bit of sourcing and copyediting, to see whether it justifies a standalone or should be merged with Seppuku. A brief sourced mention of "jigai" (sic) can be in a lower para as "in popular Western sources" or something. How does this suggestion address the impass? In ictu oculi (talk) 04:09, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Update - a very cursory look immediately indicated a staggering number of sources when jigai was removed from search (this suggests that jigai is not WP:PRIMARY for this article by any means), I have added 2 from history and 2 from film books into the article as an example. Thoughts? In ictu oculi (talk) 04:21, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Support IIO's updated proposal. elvenscout742 (talk) 04:45, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Rename and possibly merge after rewrite, per In ictu oculi. I think that resolves the issue rather well, good idea. The proposed title's a bit clunky for my liking, but I can't think of anything better right now. Yunshui 雲 &zwj; 水  09:00, 25 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Support In ictu oculi's proposal to temporarily rename the article and reassess the content. Personally it looks as though what useful information there is could be merged straight to the Seppuku article, but I suppose there is no need to rush this. --DAJF (talk) 12:41, 25 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Merge or at least concur with in ic ictu ocli - The overall article is both inaccurate and pointless. The term is gender-neutral. In JA Wikipedia it redirects straight to the general article on suicide as pointed out multiple times because there is nothing in Japanese that could possibly see it as a stand-alone article unless it was some sort of list. This doesn't even address murder of children (mothers killed their children before themselves) which was not unusual in such cases.
 * For what it's worth, the method of death for females was actually a straight thrust with blade upwards under the chin through the windpipe, as depicted in Japanese popular culture (for recent example, Shigurui (シグルイ) comes to mind). The other method was binding ankles together, placing the blade point on top of the heart and then falling on the blade. But these were just accepted techniques for 'proper' suicide, in vast majority of cases mother and children were killed by a male relative, usually father, in role as kaishaku.
 * Most Westerners specializing in this content suffer from either linguistic handicap (in Japanese) or great distance from source material and the academic community in Japan (Turnbull). There is far more useful source material in something out of Gakken than any of these borderline references in the article, which have a ridiculous, idealized version of Japan from the Muromachi Period onwards. If these references carry over, Hearn, Frédéric et al need to be referenced in terms of the Western perceptions of Japan at the time rather than as inviolate modern sources. Jun Kayama 20:08, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Merge with Seppuku. Reasoning stated by others above is sufficient. — Zujine |talk 10:05, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.