Wikipedia talk:Japan-related topics notice board/Dec05

Dodompa
I have just deleted Dodompa but left a neutralised copy of it at Talk:Dodompa. I note that the article had a link to ja:ドドンパ. Either: -- RHaworth 15:44, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
 * the word is an hoax and should be deleted from ja: or
 * it is genuine, in which case perhaps the article here should be re-instated.


 * The Japanese site indicates the word is legitimate ... personally I only know it from the context of Hikawa Kiyoshi's song (Kiyoshi no Dodonpa) but I think it's fair to say it's not a hoax. I'd call this one a "keep and expand" if it were up for a vote. CES 16:39, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

List of kanji by group
Hello,

The article List of kanji by group has been nominated for deletion. If anyone has an opinion, please express it on the article's entry on Wikipedia:Articles for Deletion.

Is anyone aware of another article on the same topic on Wikipedia?

Fg2 02:14, 3 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Deleted. Fg2 08:17, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Most Wanted List
Half a dozen Japanese astronomers are on the list of most wanted stubs. The articles are in the format "XXX is a Japanese astronomer. He is a prolific discoverer of asteroids." If anyone knows more about these people, please see #106, 108, 165, 199, 208, and I'm pretty sure there was one more... Fg2 02:03, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

looking for Minka
i am looking to purchase a minko and move it to Fukuoka. where do i begin??


 * I have no idea, but we could use an article on minka ... the article on Minka was ... um ... not what I expected! CES 03:58, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Why nothing to put on the user page?
Most Wikiprojects have a box or something to stick on the user page to say you're a member. Why don't we have one of those? Can someone make one? --DannyWilde 10:53, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Take a look at this. You can copy it into your user space and make any changes you like. (I especially dislike the color of the red link against the nearly red background.) I copied this from the language templates, so it should line up with language statements. Fg2 11:32, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I made it into . It comes out like this:  . I had to remove the float because it messed things up. Somebody please improve it. --DannyWilde 13:55, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I like the idea but this one is definitely too ugly. Can't we have a nice picture of a temple or cherry blossoms? The colour is awful too. -- Mkill 01:35, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't mind, just edit the template to add the picture you think is appropriate. --DannyWilde 02:14, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
 * The color is vermillion, the color of the torii. I didn't choose it because I like it; I chose it because it represents Japan in some way. If you don't like it, please feel free to change it. As for the flag, I chose it because it too represents Japan; feel free to replace it with a graphic or a photo that you like -- preferably one of mine ;->  Fg2 07:10, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
 * If it was a person I'd rather choose my girlfriend, but you are a close second, of course :) -- Mkill 00:45, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm sure she's very attractive, but even so I don't want a picture of Mkill's girlfriend on my user page. The problem with the Japanese flag ("hinomaru") is that it is a charged symbol in Japan. The map is very neutral, and the Hokusai picture also seems OK to me, although there are some religious connotations of Mount Fuji. By the way, there is nothing at the end of "Wikiproject Japan", it's a red link. I was thinking of links to the Japan-related topics board. Also, torii are a religious symbol, so I'm not sure how appropriate it is to use the colour from a torii. Maybe just a boring colour is OK. How about "uguisu iro" or something? --DannyWilde 07:00, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I made a "straw man" with the intent that people would change it. Try some things! See what works in that size. Or change the size. Harmonize the colors with whatever image you like. The curtain in a Kabuki theater has five colors that are traditional; maybe one of them would work. Commons has enormous numbers of ukiyo-e; maybe one of those would work. A Sharaku? Bold and graphic, perhaps just right for a small box like that. Have fun!


 * Also, if you don't like the color of the Japan portal (it's the same), please do feel free to change it, too. It started out blue (if I recall). Fg2 08:17, 8 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Should add that the Great Wave is nice at that size. Nice choice. Fg2 11:09, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Ok, enough about the box, btw. I like the new picture, too. As for the red link, I would suggest we start the Wikiproject Japan and try to integrate all the different Japan-related Projects, notice boards and collaborations into it. It would be nice to have a central meeting point. -- Mkill 16:22, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Hey, all. There's now an actual WikiProject Japan, so I'm wondering if changing the name of this userbox would be okay. Maybe to something more intuitive like or something similar? --日本穣 16:46, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Seems ok by me. Don't know if anyone uses it--- you might check the template and see if any user pages link to it. User:DannyWilde has withdrawn from Wikipedia. Also the discussion above might be relevant. Fg2 20:14, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Japanese translation note
I moved the former article "Japanese translation note" to the Wikipedia namespace. It's now at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles)/Translation note. The reason for the move is that it's not an article; it's about Wikipedia conventions, and those conventions are most closely related to the Manual of Style. Fg2 11:24, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Housing in Japan
Fg2, DannyWilde, and Neier have all gotten this off to a rapidly-improving start; while the formal Japanese Collaboration of the Week process appears to have faltered lately, drawing in more interested editors to collaborate on this article would be great. Let's keep up the good momentum! — MC MasterChef :: Leave a tip — 09:27, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
 * If you have lived in Japan, or have information about housing there, please look through the article. Perhaps you have some knowledge or have a viewpoint that would make the article more valuable? A photo or illustration? A statistic, reference, or article for the See Also section? Or just a question or suggestion to leave on the talk page? This is the closest thing we've had to a collaboration in quite a while!

Peer Review Request: Miyamoto Musashi
The article Miyamoto Musashi has been listed on Peer review. The listing is at Peer review/Miyamoto Musashi/archive2. This is an excellent opportunity to discuss the present state of the article, identify its strengths, isolate its weaknesses, so that it can improve and perhaps reach Featured Article status. Fg2 05:02, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Station List Help Request
A recent conversation at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles) prompted me to finish something I started a couple of months ago. Of course, if it was really finished, I wouldn't need help.

Category:Lists of railway stations in Japan has been remade from the old Japanese AIUEO order, and I scrubbed the Japanese WP for all of the stations it had listed. A couple of perl scripts later, and the lists you see in that category are the result. A lot of red links, but that is only a minor concern right now.

There are two main things to fix. The biggest glaring problem is that the romanization script didn't know about macrons. Lots and lots of ou's to fix, etc. Secondly, there are many stations already with entries which will need disambiguation links, based on the fact that their romaji name is the same as another station (many of these did not have any disambig pages in the Japanese site because the kanji are different).

Besides those two areas, hyphenation (I admit that I don't know when it should be used) and maybe some romaji-to-English conversion (the obvious ones like dizuni-rando I've already taken care of... probably) can stand some work. There are probably a few isolated places where the scripts hiccoughed too.

Feel free to grab a letter and start in. It will probably work best if messages are left on each section's talk page documenting the progress (ie, macrons fixed).

I think that I've stretched the automated part of this about as far as it can go, and that's why they're posted now. Neier 15:16, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Help!
I don't know why, but on the Shikoku Pilgrimage page, the list of 88 temples appears below the external links instead of above them where they belong. I've tried fixing it, but with no success. Could someone please take a look at it and see if they can figure out what's going on? Thanks a lot. CES 01:16, 15 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Fixed it. The end of the table was marked |-} instead of |}.  Neier 02:40, 15 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks a lot, I appreciate it! CES 03:31, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Category:Japanese clans
There seems to be no standard in this category, some are listed as families, some are listed as clans, some are listed just with the name. For example, there is an article Fujiwara clan, but a Category:Fujiwara family. I'd personally prefer family, as it sounds nicer than clan, but clan seems to be used more often. Anyway, we should define a standard and rename articles accordingly. -- Mkill 20:07, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Furthermore, the content of some articles is the clan, while others it's the han. Fg2 22:22, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
 * And some clans are court noble families of the Asuka to Heian period, while others are bushi families from the Kamakura period onwards... Looks like the first thing we would need to get some order in the chaos is a table of the han, like this:
 * Name (kanji) - Reading - Size (koku) - ruling family - castle - shingen / fudai / tozama - today

-- Mkill 01:36, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Ruling families often changed, as did assessment in koku so if you're thinking of a template to build the table, it's something to keep in mind. I clicked through a couple of entries in ja:Category:藩 but didn't see tables or templates so this would be forging new ground. The shinpan/fudai/tozama classification is a Tokugawa system; perhaps different contents of table for different shogunates? Fg2 01:53, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I checked again and now I see what the problem is: some smartbrain confused 藩 han = "feudal domain, fief" with 家 ke (?) = "clan, family". Gah. We have to check every single article about clans and families and start a major disambiguation. I created Category:Domains of Japan (for 藩 han; not to be confused with provinces 国 kuni) to catch all the domains. And the question "family or clan" still remains. Any opinions on that one? -- Mkill 16:38, 20 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Note: I checked all the clans and moved Aizu and Satsuma in the domain section, the others were ok. -- Mkill 19:40, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Suggestions for new articles
I've updated the list of article titles that I mentioned in August. These are listed in a project as "missing articles" and seem to be Japan-related. If you're looking for ideas for new articles, this list will give you a lot of suggestions. It's at Japanese Wikipedians' notice board (section)/Topics. For comparison, the original list is at the bottom. All titles in the original list were red when I compiled it; you can see how many new articles (or redirects) have turned the links to blue. Fg2 04:01, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Featured-article candidate is now featured
The article Imperial Japanese Navy is now a featured article. Fg2 11:17, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Ikebana
I was not quite sure whether to put Ikebana and some related articles to Category:Japanese crafts or Category:Japanese visual arts. They#re now in the second one, but maybe they should be moved? -- Mkill 23:32, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

八幡平市
Ashiro, Iwate, Nishine, Iwate, and Matsuo, Iwate recently merged, forming the city of 八幡平市. Google translates this as "Yamata flat city", but the new city's website is http://www.city.hachimantai.lg.jp/. I assume the correct English name is "Hachimantai". Can someone verify this please? Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:04, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Looks good to me, based on the gif at the top of the gov't page, and 八幡平市 on the Japanese wiki also has the hiragana in the pronunciation guide as  はちまんたい.  Neier 02:39, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Arigato! -- Rick Block (talk) 04:25, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Category:Japanese people
I'm a little unsure if this category should list all articles about ethnic Japanese or only those that don't fit in one of the subcategories. What's the standard? -- Mkill 00:27, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Subdivisions of Category:History of Japan
To get more structure in the history, I'd like to split the history in broad era categories. But I'd like to get a few opinions beforehand, as there are a few options:

One is to use a broad scheme, like | Prehistoric Japan - Ancient Japan - Feudal Japan - Early Modern Japan - Modern Japan |. Or we could use the scheme of Template:History of Japan: | Paleolithic - Jomon - Yayoi - Kofun - Asuka - ... - Heisei |. Or mix and match, depending on how many articles are there...

I'm also unsure on how to split the history after 1868: Meiji - Taisho - Showa - Heisei is not optimal, as Taisho is rather short, while Meiji and Showa are long periods, and the breaks between the periods are not the big breaks in modern Japanese history, like the the Surrender. Category:Empire of Japan gives a broad range from 1868 to 1945, maybe we should keep this one (or rename it to Category:Imperial Japan) and create subcategories for important events, like Category:Meiji Restoration. Category:Japan during World War II would be another one. For the period after 1945 I would suggest Category:Occupied Japan and Category:Post-occupation Japan, or Japan since 1952 -- Mkill 01:07, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I'd definitely prefer the use of periods, e.g. Nara, Heian, Kamakura, Muromachi, Sengoku, Edo/Tokugawa, Meiji, though I agree that it's a bit unclear what to do after that. Perhaps Mkill's last suggestion, "Imperial Japan", "Japan under the American Occupation" and "Post-Occupation Japan" would be best. LordAmeth 16:46, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

I apologize to revive an old discussion, but I've recently re-discovered that the "Ancient Japan" sub-category includes Nara and Heian periods, and this just really doesn't feel right to me. I've nominated Category:Ancient Japan for renaming, but what I'd really like to propose is that we either split it into Ancient (Haniwa, Yayoi, Kofun, Asuka) and Classical (Nara, Heian), or simply create separate subcats for each of those periods. Nara and Heian may not be the Japanese equivalent of the High Middle Ages as Sengoku and early-to-mid-Edo period are, but they're certainly not Ancient either. Please head over to Categories for deletion/Log/2006 March 19 and let me know what you think. Thank you. LordAmeth 03:19, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Holidays of Japan
I've been puttering around on Holidays of Japan for a couple of weeks, and am nowhere near my goal of submitting it for Peer Review (to nobody's surprise). I invite the community to visit the article, help fill in more detail on the remaining holidays, spruce up my prose, add nuggets of interesting information, provide illustrations, correct errors, and improve the article in any way you see fit. Fg2 11:56, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Collaboration of the Week: Delete?
A discussion has begun about whether to delete Japanese Collaboration of the Week. The community is invited to take part in the discussion. Please visit Wikipedia talk:Japanese Collaboration of the Week. Fg2 01:54, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

What's a good title?
In editing Itabashi, Tokyo, I happened across the article ja:江戸四宿 and would like to translate it. I'm not sure "Four post towns of Edo" is best. Can anyone make a better suggestion? The post towns were the first stops for travellers leaving Edo. They are Shinagawa, Naito Shinjuku, Itabashi, and Senju, so links from those articles are natural, as well as from the Kaido articles. Fg2 01:41, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Outposts of Edo ?? Neier 03:26, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Wheat gluten (food)
This article has seen quite a lot of good activity today, including a move from its previous title, seitan. I'd like to encourage anyone who might be interested in fleshing out the Japanese and macrobiotic sections. Particularly the different types of fu and their culinary use in Japan. It could use some copyediting as well. Dforest 07:16, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

old Japanese currency
Is there an article (or even a category) encompassing the old forms of Japanese currency? Koku has an article, but it's not quite a currency, in the same way that ryō is. But is there an article that encompasses those, as well as koban and oban and kan and monme? (If not, I'll get a start on it.) I just can't seem to find it, and I'm not positive what it would be under. LordAmeth 12:20, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
 * From 和同開珎 to the B Yen of occupied Okinawa, it would be a great topic. A good addition would be hansatsu. I don't see it in the Japanese Wikipedia. There's a stub on zeni. I don't know of anything on silver in the English Wikipedia, but the gold-silver exchange was important internally, and became more important internationally in early Meiji, I think. There are brief entries on ja:一部銀, ja:二朱銀, ja:豆板銀 etc. Check ja:Category:通貨 and within it ja:Category:硬貨. All of this would make a great article, perhaps with ryo merged in. BTW, "momme" is fully English (with two m's) even though monme is the Japanese word. -- Fg2 12:59, 14 December 2005 (UTC)


 * As far as I know, we are still missing such an article (or set of articles). I though about it, too, but so far I only created the stub Hansatsu. Maybe we can start small by creating smaller articles on different currencies, and later creating a bigger overview article Currencies of Japan. -- Mkill 20:53, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Kagawa Toyohiko
I just saw Kagawa Toyohiko as a requested article on the main Community Portal page and created it. Thought I'd drop a line here and ask for people more knowledgable about Japanese topics to check it over. Thanks! — Jonel | Speak 02:47, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

crazy fruits
hello all, i tried searching wp for anything on those ultra-expensive japanese fruits, you know, like the square watermelons and $15 apples with calligraphy on them. anyways, i can't find anything, and though it's probably my incompetence at searching properly, i would like to request that such an article be created by someone who knows more about this, if any such article(s) don't already exist. thank you. Eduardo Cuellar 09:44, 17 December 2005 (UTC)