Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mizuo Tamai


 * 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 delete.  Sandstein  16:27, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

Mizuo Tamai

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Boilerplate rationale adapted from my previous AfDs of similar photographer articles (such as Keizaburō Saeki), which itself was largely borrowed from at Articles for deletion/Hideki Kasai. Keizaburō Saeki, Hideki Kasai, and this currently-nominated article are all identical bot-created articles. I have nominated several others for deletion, but have improved and de-orphaned quite a few more when sources have been available. To quote Cckerberos: "This article is a generic stub, generated by a bot in 2007. It makes no specific claim to notability; it appears that similar stubs were created for every photographer listed in 328 Outstanding Japanese Photographers, all with the format "Name (years) is a renowned Japanese photographer" (compare the nominated article with Gen Ōtsuka, for example). Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography states that the sole criteria for inclusion in the book was to have a single photograph in the museum's permanent collection at the time the book was published. That doesn't seem to meet WP:CREATIVE."

In addition to Cckerberos's excellent commentary, I'll note that I've done as thorough a WP:BEFORE check as possible for an English-speaker: Google searches of both the English and Japanese order of the English transliteration of his name. None of the English transliterations turned up anything of use. He appears once by name in the reasonably thorough The History of Japanese Photography, but without elaboration.

I have also checked his Japanese name, but all I found was this page, which appears to be either a fan page or something produced by the photographer himself, so it is not reliable for the purposes of verifying notability, and this book,, which appears to be a trivial mention. The Japanese Wikipedia has no article about him, so there are no sources to be borrowed from it. I searched his Japanese name there and found nothing.

In the absence of reliable sources, we cannot verify that this person is notable, so the article, like many of the previous bot-generated photographers before it, should be deleted.

Courtesy ping to, who is knowledgeable on the topic of Japanese photographers, and whose commentary on these AfDs is invaluable to me, especially when it causes me to alter my opinion. &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 16:36, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. DannyS712 (talk) 17:26, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Photography-related deletion discussions. DannyS712 (talk) 17:26, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Japan-related deletion discussions. Bakazaka (talk) 20:40, 15 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete: I could've sworn most of the non-notable Japanese photographers had been nominated en bloc. Anyway, PMC's thorough source searches corroborate the conclusion I reached looking for offline sources through WorldCat, JSTOR and Dawsonera which is that Tamai fails WP:CREATIVE.    SITH   (talk)   21:43, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I've deliberately been doing them one by one to avoid a WP:TRAINWRECK. Some of them are reasonably notable - I've avoided nominating anyone who actually has a ja.wiki article, or who I can find even a decent sliver of sourcing for. &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 21:51, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
 * that moment when I go through my AfD stats for my old account and realised I had a Japanese photographer trainwreck nomination...  SITH   (talk)   12:04, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Chalk it up to youthful enthusiasm and never speak of it again? &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 15:46, 16 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Yes, 玉井瑞夫インターネット写真展 (Tamai Mizuo intānetto shashinten, described above: "appears to be either a fan page or something produced by the photographer himself") is the top page of a website about Tamai and his works. It seems to have been put together scrupulously. However, it's a private production by a niece of the photographer, and thus hardly usable for our purposes. Tamai had a long and complex career in which he seems to have tried his hand at a wide variety of photography, reaching a professional and/or exhibition-worthy level in several of them but not obviously becoming particularly well known in any. Perhaps he's best known now as an associate/friend of Ei-Q; perhaps the most widely used photograph of Ei-Q is the one by Tamai that's used on the cover of this book (published by this rather prominent art gallery in Shibuya), which is also described as containing a photo-essay on Ei-Q by Tamai. I suspect that I could find more sources about Tamai in books, but I'll lack the time to search for them until a year or so from now (if not longer). Tamai was still alive in 2005; I don't know if he's still alive now, but if he is then he surely would have retired. His niece's website about him seems appreciative but primarily informative. A [beyond-a-mere-stub] article here about him is something I'd like to read. However, I can't foresee anyone creating it. Delete without prejudicing the fate of any future article about him. Uh, PMC, on your pinging Polbot, please see the last part of my comment at your previous AfD nomination. -- Hoary (talk) 00:22, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Oh shit. It's not intentional, I forgot to uncheck the box on Twinkle. Although I suppose it does create a helpful record of all the nominations in one place. Thanks as always for looking into these for me. &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 00:39, 16 November 2018 (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.