Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2018 April 8

= April 8 =

Tombs of the Kings of Zhou
Are there any known tombs of the kings of the Zhou Dynasty? Searching seems to bring up only the tombs of vassal lords during this period not the kings of Zhou.--KAVEBEAR (talk) 18:46, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Internment of Japanese-, German-, and Italian-Americans - how did they distinguish them from other people?
Did the US just target Japanese-Americans, sparing the people of Korean and Chinese descent that may look like ethnic Japanese people in white American eyes? And what about German-Americans and Italian-Americans who apparently were also placed in internment camps? How did they figure out who was of German, Italian, and Japanese descent anyway? If a person of German descent, 2nd or 3rd generation, erases the German ancestry by changing the family name, then will he be protected in ways that an ethnic Japanese wouldn't? SSS (talk) 20:02, 8 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Few "German-Americans" and "Italian-Americans" who were U.S. citizens were interned -- mostly it was German citizens and Italian citizens. Then as now, many, many millions of Americans have some degree of "German descent", and it would have been a huge disruption to the society and economy of the U.S. to imprison any significant number of them.  I assume that Japanese-Americans were located through immigration and census records, and characteristic surnames... AnonMoos (talk) 20:27, 8 April 2018 (UTC)


 * So, does that mean if you have a Japanese-American mother and an Anglo-American father or Black-American father, then no one can really figure out that you are of Japanese descent through the census records? SSS (talk) 21:23, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep in mind, per Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States, that prior to WWII it was often illegal for Asians and whites to intermarry, including much of the west coast where the Japanese were probably most populous. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:09, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
 * It would have been kind of awkward to put Ike in a concentration camp. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:54, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
 * See Internment of German Americans. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 20:47, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
 * In part, in the US, Japanese would be more visible as foreigners than Italians or Germans. I dare to say that even nowadays US-citizen of Japanese ancestry are viewed as kinda foreigner. Add to it the paranoia caused by the fact that Japan had indeed attacked US territory, and that an invasion through the West Coast could not be excluded completely. Hofhof (talk) 23:43, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
 * The threat of invasion was not just fantasy. The Japanese conducted a firebomb campaign in the Pacific Northwest. And as I recall, the Germans had submarines watching our eastern coastline. A lot of this stuff was kept out of the newspapers. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:00, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
 * It was relatively easy for U.S. government agents to identify Japanese-Americans in the early 1940s. Most lived very near the Pacific Coast in neighborhoods often called "Japantowns". The vast majority had clearly Japanese surnames. They were ordered to report for relocation at certain specific transit centers on specific dates. Those who refused to cooperate in any way were sent to the punitive maximum security Tule Lake War Relocation Center instead of the other slightly more lenient relocation centers. No Japanese-Americans in western states could work, attend school, get a ration card, keep a bank account or do anything that required them to show identification without being arrested. Cullen328  Let's discuss it  01:20, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
 * The main article is Internment of Japanese Americans. I have visited the Manzanar National Historic Site in the Eastern Sierra Nevada three times. The National Park Service operates an outstanding museum devoted to the relocation there. Cullen328  Let's discuss it  01:31, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
 * The threat of invasion was a fantasy. Transporting and supplying anything more than a token force across several thousand miles of ocean onto a hostile shore was beyond the capabilities of Japan at any time in the war. They managed to land a couple of thousand troops on isolated Attu and about 500 (plus 5000+ civilians) on Kiska, but that was about it. Fire balloons and Nobuo Fujita hardly constituted a serious threat. And the Germans couldn't get across the English Channel, much less the Atlantic. Clarityfiend (talk) 10:01, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Nonetheless, the government censored those activities. There was at least one known civilian death from the firebombings, the main purpose of which was to cause panic, which it might have if the government had not kept it out of the national news. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:05, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
 * The question also asked about Koreans and Chinese. In 1941 Korea was part of the Japanese Empire, so Koreans would have been considered Japanese citizens. Chinese have very different naming conventions to the Japanese, they look different, and their documentation would have been different: distinguishing them would not have presented any problems, and I have never read anything about Chinese being interned because they were mistaken for Japanese. Wymspen (talk) 12:09, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Murder of Vincent Chin states otherwise. Apparently, the people can't really tell the difference between Japanese and Chinese. To be fair, Chinese people can be as fair-skinned as Japanese people. When you combine the fair skin with black hair and dark eyes, you have to be familiar with Asian faces. White people may experience something called outgroup homogeneity. As a result, they will say, "Asians all look the same. We whites look different." SSS (talk) 17:48, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I recall an Asian comedian years ago (can't think of his name), who lampooned the stereotypes with this comment (as given): "Awr Americans rook arike!") ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:02, 9 April 2018 (UTC)


 * I read an anecdote once about a Chinese journalist or diplomat whose American colleagues literally hung a sign around his neck saying "I am Chinese" in the days immediately after Pearl Harbor"... AnonMoos (talk) 04:07, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Not just a rumor. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 11:37, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

"Did the US just target Japanese-Americans, sparing the people of Korean and Chinese descent that may look like ethnic Japanese people in white American eyes?"

Korea under Japanese rule lasted from 1910 to 1945. Part of the Japanese military forces in World War II actually were Koreans. "Japan did not draft ethnic Koreans into its military until 1944 when the tide of WW II turned dire. Until 1944, enlistment in the Imperial Japanese Army by ethnic Koreans was voluntary, and highly competitive. From a 14% acceptance rate in 1938, it dropped to a 2% acceptance rate in 1943 while the raw number of applicants increased from 3000 per annum to 300,000 in just five years during World War II.... "Starting in 1944, Japan started the conscription of Koreans into the armed forces. All Korean males were drafted to either join the Imperial Japanese Army, as of April 1944, or work in the military industrial sector, as of September 1944. Before 1944, 18,000 Koreans passed the examination for induction into the army. Koreans provided workers to mines and construction sites around Japan. The number of conscripted Koreans reached its peak in 1944 in preparation for war. From 1944, about 200,000 Korean males were inducted into the army."

Koreans in the Japanese military were also accused of war crimes, and some were placed on war trial following the war:
 * "After the war, 148 Koreans were convicted of Class B and C Japanese war crimes, 23 of whom were sentenced to death (compared to 920 Japanese who were sentenced to death), including Korean prison guards who were particularly notorious for their brutality during the war. The figure is relatively high considering that ethnic Koreans made up a very small percentage of the Japanese military. Judge Bert Röling, who represented the Netherlands at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, noted that "many of the commanders and guards in POW camps were Koreans – the Japanese apparently did not trust them as soldiers – and it is said that they were sometimes far more cruel than the Japanese." In his memoirs, Colonel Eugene C. Jacobs wrote that during the Bataan Death March, "the Korean guards were the most abusive. The Japs didn't trust them in battle, so used them as service troops; the Koreans were anxious to get blood on their bayonets; and then they thought they were veterans." "
 * "Korean guards were sent to the remote jungles of Burma, where Lt. Col. William A. (Bill) Henderson wrote from his own experience that some of the guards overlooking the construction of the Burma Railway "were moronic and at times almost bestial in their treatment of prisoners. This applied particularly to Korean private soldiers, conscripted only for guard and sentry duties in many parts of the Japanese empire. Regrettably, they were appointed as guards for the prisoners throughout the camps of Burma and Siam." The highest-ranking Korean to be prosecuted after the war was Lieutenant General Hong Sa-ik, who was in command of all the Japanese prisoner-of-war camps in the Philippines."

Now lets see how the Americans handled selection for internment. Internment of Japanese Americans actually notes that some of the internees were not actually Japanese ... and not Americans either.
 * "The manifesto was backed by the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West and the California Department of the American Legion, which in January demanded that all Japanese with dual citizenship be placed in concentration camps.> Internment was not limited to those who had been to Japan, but included a very small number of German and Italian enemy aliens. By February, Earl Warren, the Attorney General of California, had begun his efforts to persuade the federal government to remove all people of Japanese ethnicity from the West Coast."
 * "Those who were as little as 1/16 Japanese could be placed in internment camps. There is evidence supporting the argument that the measures were racially motivated, rather than a military necessity. Bendetsen, promoted to colonel, said in 1942 "I am determined that if they have one drop of Japanese blood in them, they must go to camp."Removal process, A More Perfect Union: Japanese Americans and the U.S. Constitution, Smithsonian Institution. :
 * "Upon the bombing of Pearl Harbor and pursuant to the Alien Enemies Act, Presidential Proclamations 2525, 2526 and 2527 were issued designating Japanese, German and Italian nationals as enemy aliens. Information from the CDI was used to locate and incarcerate foreign nationals from Japan, Germany and Italy (although Germany and Italy did not declare war on the U.S. until December 11)."
 * "Executive Order 9066, signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, authorized military commanders to designate "military areas" at their discretion, "from which any or all persons may be excluded." These "exclusion zones," unlike the "alien enemy" roundups, were applicable to anyone that an authorized military commander might choose, whether citizen or non-citizen. Eventually such zones would include parts of both the East and West Coasts, totaling about 1/3 of the country by area. Unlike the subsequent deportation and incarceration programs that would come to be applied to large numbers of Japanese Americans, detentions and restrictions directly under this Individual Exclusion Program were placed primarily on individuals of German or Italian ancestry, including American citizens.
 * "March 2, 1942: Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt issued Public Proclamation No. 1, declaring that "such person or classes of persons as the situation may require" would, at some later point, be subject to exclusion orders from "Military Area No. 1" (essentially, the entire Pacific coast to about 100.2 mi inland), and requiring anyone who had "enemy" ancestry to file a Change of Residence Notice if they planned to move. A second exclusion zone was designated several months later, which included the areas chosen by most of the Japanese Americans who had managed to leave the first zone."
 * "March 24, 1942: Public Proclamation No. 3 declares an 8:00 pm to 6:00 am curfew for "all enemy aliens and all persons of Japanese ancestry" within the military areas. "
 * "These edicts included persons of part-Japanese ancestry as well. Anyone with at least one-sixteenth (equivalent to having one great-great grandparent) Japanese ancestry was eligible. Korean Americans and Taiwanese, classified as ethnically Japanese because both Korea and Taiwan were Japanese colonies at the time, were also included."
 * "During World War II, over 2,200 Japanese from Latin America were held in internment camps run by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, part of the Department of Justice. Beginning in 1942, Latin Americans of Japanese ancestry were rounded up and transported to American internment camps run by the INS and the U.S. Justice Department. The majority of these internees, approximately 1,800, came from Peru. An additional 250 were from Panama, and Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. "
 * "The first group of Japanese Latin Americans arrived in San Francisco on April 20, 1942, on board the Etolin along with 360 ethnic Germans and 14 ethnic Italians from Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. The 151 men — ten from Ecuador, the rest from Peru — had volunteered for deportation believing they were to be repatriated to Japan. They were denied visas by U.S. Immigration authorities and then detained on the grounds they had tried to enter the country illegally, without a visa or passport. Subsequent transports brought additional "volunteers," including the wives and children of men who had been deported earlier. A total of 2,264 Japanese Latin Americans, about two-thirds of them from Peru, were interned in facilities on the U.S. mainland during the war. "
 * "The United States originally intended to trade these Latin American internees as part of a hostage exchange program with Japan and other Axis nations. A thorough examination of the documents shows at least one trade occurred. Over 1,300 persons of Japanese ancestry were exchanged for a like number of non-official Americans in October 1943, at the port of Marmagao, India. Over half were Japanese Latin Americans (the rest being ethnic Germans and Italians) and of that number one-third were Japanese Peruvians."
 * "The completed October 1943 trade took place at the height of the Enemy Alien Deportation Program. Japanese Peruvians were still being "rounded up" for shipment to the U.S. in previously unseen numbers. Despite logistical challenges facing the floundering prisoner exchange program, deportation plans were moving ahead. This is partly explained by an early-in-the-war revelation of the overall goal for Latin Americans of Japanese ancestry under the Enemy Alien Deportation Program. The goal: that the hemisphere was to be free of Japanese. Secretary of State Cordell Hull wrote an agreeing President Roosevelt, "[that the US must] continue our efforts to remove all the Japanese from these American Republics for internment in the United States." " Dimadick (talk) 14:47, 9 April 2018 (UTC)


 * "Bendetsen" (whoever he was) wasn't making something up, but applying a well-known principle at the time... AnonMoos (talk) 15:39, 9 April 2018 (UTC)


 * "Bendetsen" is Karl Bendetsen (1907-1989), the man credited as the "architect of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II". Of partial German, Polish, and Lithuanian ancestry, though he repeatedly claimed to be Danish. Dimadick (talk) 16:03, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Works of art named after works of art - Matryoshka books
Douglas Adams entitled his first book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It is not, in fact, a hitchhiker's guide at all, but a novel about people using and indeed contributing to an electronic travel guide of the same name. Are there other works employing a similar technique? (Let us leave aside history books - there must be endless examples of tomes called The Battle of X or The Treaty of Y, which then qualify themselves with a lengthy subtitle.) I suppose I can imagine this in narratives (novels or films), but less so for visual arts. My mind is playing tricks on me: either there are hundreds of examples that I'm simply blanking out, or it is indeed a rare phenomenon. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 20:16, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I suspect that once we've put our collective minds to it, we'll find that this is not particularly rare. Just off the top of my head, there's A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka, actually a novel written in English (though later translated into Ukrainian) in which one character is writing said book.
 * I tried entering "a Guide to" into the search box, and immediately found the film A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, which is of course no such thing.
 * Perhap there's scope for a list article along these lines? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.218.14.51 (talk) 21:13, 8 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Leo Tolstoy named his novel The Kreutzer Sonata after the Violin Sonata No. 9 (Beethoven), which had acquired the nickname "Kreutzer" after its second dedicatee. Then, inspired by Tolstoy's novel, Leoš Janáček wrote his String Quartet No. 1, which he subtitled "Kreutzer Sonata". There have been at least 11 films of Tolstoy's novel, of which at least 8 were called "Kreutzer Sonata".  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  21:22, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Many works are at least partly named after themselves: see recursive acronym. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 22:01, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

There must be tons of novels, like The Picture of Dorian Gray. For self-referential visual art, there's the famous painting sometimes called Ceci n'est pas une pipe. Escher's Drawing Hands might also fit. The Princess Bride by William Goldman is a frame story a fictional novel of the same title by "S. Morgenstern". I don't remember if exactly the same was true of The Neverending Story but the book uses separate ink colors to distinguish between the words of the frame story and the words of the inner story. A Perfect Vacuum is a collection of reviews of nonexistent books. These keep coming to mind while I try to remember a certain famous example that I'm forgetting. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 22:46, 8 April 2018 (UTC)


 * The Hobbit, or There and Back Again is actually the name of Bilbo's book about his journey. Adam Bishop (talk) 23:47, 8 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Well, not exactly. In The Hobbit it says that he is thinking of calling it There and Back Again, a Hobbit's Holiday.  (I can't find my copy, but I got that from a Google Books search for "There and Back Again", so I don't know if another version of the title also appears.)  Then in The Lord of the Rings, at least in the edition I have, right at the beginning of the prologue it gives Bilbo's title for the book and it's just There and Back Again.  But near the end of LOTR, Frodo has taken Bilbo's unfinished manuscript and made it into a joint memoir of both of their adventures, in which:
 * The title page had many titles on it, crossed out one after another, so:
 * My Diary. My Unexpected Hourney. There and Back Again. And What Happened After.
 * Adventures of Five Hobbits. The Tale of the Great Ring, compiled by Bilbo Baggins...
 * The final title for the joint memoir was selected by Frodo: The Downfall of the Lord of the Rings and the Return of the King.
 * --69.159.62.113 (talk) 08:09, 9 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Deathtrap involves the writing of a play, Deathtrap, which turns out to be the frame story itself. —Tamfang (talk) 08:02, 9 April 2018 (UTC)


 * That's a good one! Another that comes to mind is Cloud Atlas. In both the original novel and the 2012 movie, the plot involves a musical composition called the Cloud Atlas Sextet. --69.159.62.113 (talk) 08:09, 9 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Something similar was asked a while ago here: "Book Within a Book" Title. Some of the answers there fit this question as well. ---Sluzzelin talk  08:28, 9 April 2018 (UTC)


 * The Manuscript Found in Saragossa is a real matryoshka book - several stories nested in one another. The novel begins with a charater finding an old manuscript in Saragossa, which he proceeds to read. — Kpalion(talk) 11:33, 9 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Gene Wolfe's tetralogy The Book of the New Sun, set in the far future, makes mention of a lost ancient document called The Book of the New Sun which may or may not be identical with the novel sequence in which it appears. --Antiquary (talk) 11:52, 9 April 2018 (UTC)


 * It is a common trope to have a book that is apparently written by one of the characters. The Hobbit, mentioned above is an example. Another is The Outsiders. If, at any point, one of those books references the title of the book as the book being written, then it would fit as an answer for this question. I've been using the Timmy Failure books as bedtime stories at the children's hospital recently. They are written as though the main character (Timmy) writes them. He makes references to the books in the books. So, that fits as books that refer themselves as though written by the main character. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 12:03, 9 April 2018 (UTC)


 * A couple more examples: The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers is a collection of short stories, some of which describe and quote from a fictional play of that title; Girl With The Pearl Earring is the title of a novel by Tracy Chevalier, and a derived film and play, fictionalising events surrounding the real 17th-century painting by Vermeer so named. {The poster formery known as 87.81.230.195} 2.218.14.51 (talk) 13:14, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Along the same vein, Sunday in the Park with George is a musical based on a painting by George Seurat. --Xuxl (talk) 18:08, 9 April 2018 (UTC)


 * I'm surprised no one has yet mentioned Pictures at an Exhibition, a music suite by Modest Mussorgsky which was named after an exhibition of works by painter Viktor Hartmann. -- Jayron 32 14:00, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
 * At least three of Borges' short stories – "The Garden of Forking Paths", "The Book of Sand", and "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim" – are named after non-existent literary works of Borges' invention. --Antiquary (talk) 14:43, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

"It is a common trope to have a book that is apparently written by one of the characters."

Such books often feature an unreliable narrator. He/she does not have information on some aspects of the narrative, lets his/her own biases colour the narrative and the characters portrayed, censors or alters part of the details, lies about part of the details, or is mentally ill and is narrating his/her own version of reality. A famous example is The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926). The narrator is Dr. James Sheppard, who helps investigate the murder of his friend Roger Ackroyd and records the process of the investigation in writing. Much later, it is revealed Sheppard himself is the murderer and was withholding incriminating information. Plus, the narrative is his final account... as he was preparing his own suicide while seemingly talking to the reader.

Note that Dr. Watson in the original Shelock Holmes stories also served as an unreliable narrator, though there were two stories narrated by someone else. Watson is the self-styled biographer of Holmes and writes down the stories years or decades after they actually occurred. But admits to tampering with the details: "Watson is also represented as being very discreet in character. The events related in "The Adventure of the Second Stain" are supposedly very sensitive: "If in telling the story I seem to be somewhat vague in certain details, the public will readily understand that there is an excellent reason for my reticence. It was, then, in a year, and even in a decade, that shall be nameless, that upon one Tuesday morning in autumn we found two visitors of European fame within the walls of our humble room in Baker Street." Furthermore, in "The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger," Watson notes that he has "made a slight change of name and place" when presenting that story. Here he is direct about a method of preserving discretion and confidentiality that other scholars have inferred from the stories, with pseudonyms replacing the "real" names of clients, witnesses, and culprits alike, and altered place-names replacing the real locations." Dimadick (talk) 15:53, 9 April 2018 (UTC)


 * (OP here) Thank you all - and please keep them coming. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 17:14, 9 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Interview with the Vampire, etc. Also, the Illuminatus! Trilogy contains a somewhat clouded humorous self-reference. 93.142.79.83 (talk) 22:56, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I have a copy of the Necronomicon (although its actually just an anthology of HP Lovecraft stories). Iapetus (talk) 09:22, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
 * There have been several published pseudo-Necronomicons (Necronomica?), as you can see from our article, the most well-known of which is a strange yet boring Mesopotamianized version of old grimoire occultism... AnonMoos (talk) 03:34, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

The opera Ariadne auf Naxos is about a performance of the opera Ariadne auf Naxos. LATER: In the film The Grand Budapest Hotel, there is a writer who is working on a book, "The Grand Budapest Hotel." Herbivore (talk) 15:09, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Dictionary of the Khazars? -- AnonMoos (talk) 03:34, 12 April 2018 (UTC)