Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Japan-related articles/Archive 28

Ruby RfC June 2015
The following text as shown in this revision of Manual of Style/Japan-related articles (minus the boilerplate) has become dated. "Do not use the tag to further annotate the kanji, as most browsers cannot display it properly."

Therefore I am requesting that proposals to replace it be submitted and evaluated. Each proposal should have the user name in the header (such as produced by ) with nested text and comments subsections placed just above the general comments header. – Allen4names (contributions) 01:27, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

This RfC follows on previous extensive discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Japan, itself a follow-up to ten previous discussions of the idea. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:21, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Background:

Proposal by – Allen4names (contributions)

 * Last modified 21:34, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

The included notes may or may not be included in the final text.

Text
Ruby (furigana) shall not be used to further annotate Japanese in text.

Comments (Allen4names)

 * Per comments made by User:Curly Turkey below and concerns I have about old browsers I have made some minor changes to my proposal. – Allen4names (contributions) 17:34, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I have struck item 2.3 with some reluctance. I hope this can be re-added or a substitute found (Nihon-shiki perhaps) but until then I do not expect it to remain in the final draft. I have chosen a technical approach to limiting some of the use of ruby (list item 2 in the text section above) to the lead and infoboxes but this is by no means foolproof. I would like input as to what terms should be used ie. "should" or "must" and how the  parameter should be set " " or " " when the Nihongo template is used outside the lead. – Allen4names (contributions) 20:13, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Clean up of my initial proposal (preferred) and add an alternative (fallback). – Allen4names (contributions) 12:39, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Abandoning the original text. – Allen4names (contributions) 17:11, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Clean up and clarify. Only the substitution of "should not" for "shall not" is contemplated now. – Allen4names (contributions) 21:34, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

General comments

 * The technical bits of the proposal are way above my head, but I strongly support introducing the use of ruby characters (furigana) in the manner prescribed by it. RGloucester  — ☎ 04:46, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
 * There should be something to make it clear that there ruby should never be used in place of a romanized gloss. The text must remain readable to those who don't read Japanese. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 05:06, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
 * That appears to have been addressed. See Manual of Style/Japan-related articles. – Allen4names (contributions) 05:35, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Assuming people don't try to interpret the above text as overriding that instruction (as it would be "redundant")—we should proactively discourage such disputes. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 05:45, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
 * In other words, I really want to support this, but I want to see explicit wording that prohibits the use of furigana in place of romanization. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 05:12, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
 * At bare minimum. I want to see it limited to a specific class of cases where it's thought to be genuinely necessary.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:26, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I too find it hard to follow exactly what is being proposed. But I don’t support anything that would encourage the use of ruby. Whenever Japanese appears in the body of an article it should be alongside the Romanisation, whether immediately and inline such as using nihongo or in a table or infobox Adding furigana is therefore redundant. For most readers it is meaningless clutter; even those who can read it can just read the Romanisation, probably more easily. It can get in the way of e.g. copying text. The one benefit is it helps readers determine the reading of a particular character. Or at least it does in theory: I notice that the examples given all fail to associate the kana with particular characters. But even if used properly few people will use this; wp is not a Japanese language dictionary. Anyone interested in how a particular character is read can use a proper dictionary, such as wiktionary.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 18:25, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I should note that the above comes with obvious exceptions: articles discussing the use of ruby, such as Furigana, should obviously use it. In other cases where the ruby is relevant or notable, or just needs explaining such as when describing an image, then it could be given. But otherwise I do not see the need and see it as unnecessary.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 18:31, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
 * For the oft-cited case of A Certain Scientific Railgun, the furigana is part of the title ( とある科学の 超電磁砲【レールガン】 ) and the fallback of putting "レールガン" in brackets after 超電磁砲 is not optimal since the reader doesn't know where レールガン begins if it's in brackets and not above. I would therefore recommend that if furigana is used as part of the title in the original work, then ruby should be used to reflect the official title. I understand this is a rare case, but we should examine these in a case-by-case basis and not ban the use of ruby in a broad stroke. On the other hand, ruby should not be overused since they don't add much to the English reader. _dk (talk) 19:45, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I would support that usage. I also support removing the prohibition as pointless now since pretty much all browsers from the last few years support ruby. ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 04:05, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I would be OK with lifting the prohibition, as long as it is clear that ruby will rarely be useful. The railgun title might be one exception, but in general 1) blocks of Japanese text in the English Wikipedia are rare, much less blocks with ruby in the original source 2) We don't need to flag unusual readings for our readers. They may be unusual to Japanese readers, but the vast majority of our readers are reading the romanization and they don't care if a reading is unusual. 3) Similarly, they don't care about possible ambiguity in romanized kana because they're not reading the kana, they're reading the romanization. 4) It would be nice if Japanese sources regularly provided furigana for personal and place names, but in practice they don't, so why should we?


 * What I'm afraid will happen if we relax this too much is a proliferation of kanji character names + ruby in video game and manga articles. We shouldn't be providing kanji and ruby just because they look cool. Also if someone wants to use ruby, it is that person's responsibility to set the line height to a value large enough to display them without messing up the page layout, and I doubt that editors would go to that much trouble, even if they could. Or even if we want them to. Are we going to have a different default line height for manga articles or other articles that might contain ruby? – Margin1522 (talk) 09:44, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
 * It would be nice if Japanese sources regularly provided furigana for personal and place names, but in practice they don't, so why should we?: because we don't want to be stuck in the same Web 1.0 purgatory that the majority of Japanese websites are? (Oops—did I say that out loud?) Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 11:24, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
 * WP:GREATWRONGS/WP:SOAPBOX/WP:ADVOCACY. It is not WP's job (much less en.wp's) to out-Japanese the Japanese.  This is not an HTML technology demo site.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:31, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
 * (That was supposed to be a joke at the expense of japanese websites for those of us who get scarred by them daily) Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 10:48, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Noted, but there's an undercurrent to previous discussions that leans in this direction. "The technology is finally here to do it, so we certainly must!", absent any usability rationale for going on such a linguistic campaign. I call this the the "Robocop fallacy": Just because we use technology to do something weird that someone thinks will solve a problem, like build a mind-wiped cyborg cop to suppress supposedly intractable urban crime, doesn't mean we , absent any evidence that the proposal is actually the best solution, to a real problem.   — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:41, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

PS: I agree that if furigana has been included, that placing it in brackets after the main Japanese text isn't helpful. But this is as much an argument for eliminating the furigana as for doing it in ruby. How does it help me or any other English speaker, however it is marked up? That's the key question. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:33, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm generally (with exceptions) opposed to this for the various reasons mentioned in this and previous discussion of the idea. This is en.wp, and use of furigana does not help our readers. If anything it's just confusing to many of them. English Wikipedia's purpose does not encompass aiding learners of the Japanese language in working out unusual readings of Japanese.  Whether "The ... text as shown in this revision ... has become dated" as the RfC asserts (without evidence) is essentially irrelevant to the question of whether to permit ruby markup of furigana in general Japanese representations in en.wp. I don't think anyone objects to it in special cases, such as the Furigana article itself, and in rare direct quotations of Japanese script that included it in the original.  IIRC, Onna Nabe uses this, and a case has been made for doing so at Gosei (meditation).  But it simply doesn't do anything useful for en.wp's target readership, English speakers; there's evidence it is still problematic in some browsers that are still in fairly popular use; and it presents display problems like excessive spacing between lines in all browsers when used in running prose.  Some kind of narrow compromise could probably be worked out, e.g. including it in the first line of an article, only, when it's presence is especially meaningful, e.g. in helping to distinguish between two different uses of the same Japanese words; and also using it, again where deemed crucial, in quotations; and probably some other encyclopedic usage case I'm forgetting . As a more general approach to the presentation of Japanese in en.wp, it's unlikely that anyone will derive anything at all from it other than native and very advanced-learner readers of Japanese. The main desired case for it seems to be pop-culture trivia like teenagers' pronunciation of video game titles, about which I honestly don't think en.wp gives a damn.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:17, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I have no idea what "teenagers' pronunciation of video game titles" is supposed to refer to. Something that happens in Japanese literature is to give the kanji for a particular meaning and to gloss it with a word that has that meaning but whose pronunciation cannot be gleaned from the kanji: for example, in Yukio Mishima's The Sound of Waves, the kanji 巻揚機 "wind-up lifting machine" is given the furigana gloss ウヰンチ uinchi "winch", a reading impossible to get from the kanji as uinchi is a foreign loanword.  The kanji provides the meaning of the word while the furigana provides the intended actual reading—almost as if the kanji were the gloss, even though it is the kanji that appears in the regular running text.  One could not quote this text properly without the furigana (this is pretty much what's happening with the "railgun" example above).  It's in places like this that the restriction on ruby should be lifted. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 10:47, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Having the ruby appear in brackets is the standard W3C recommended fallback for the ruby tags—in Japanese the furigana is sometimes necessary and not just "helpful", so if can't be displayed properly it at least gets displayed. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 10:51, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I linked to previous discussions for a reason. The fact that people mostly want to inject furigana into en.wp articles for video games, anime/manga titles, and other pop-culture stuff is no accident. It  in any way to give a pronunciation guide for kanji here in obscure Japanese furigana characters, since this is not ja.wp; just give Latin-script pronunciation guides like we would for Russian Cyrillic or any other non-Latin writing system.  It's pure trivia that uinchi is a loanword from winch.  (On the W3C side point: I know the bracketed display is a standardized fallback. That doesn't change the fact that it's not ; we've already been over two reasons why it's not helpful: One is the same, that furigana is generally not helpful here at en.wp at all, while the other is that when put after the kanji, it's unclear exactly what in the kanji the furigana was referring to. This has already been addressed in prior discussions.)   I'm done here other than adding that if an editorial consensus agrees that The Sound of Waves actually  one of the cases where furigana would be helpful for some reason, then fine. I'm already allowing for that. I just personally think that pronunciation and etymological trivia regarding pop-culture titles is perhaps the least compelling kind of case. My take that some exceptions should be made, while keeping a general rule against furigana (a usability analysis), is severable from my opinion of what is a good case to qualify for the exception (an encyclopedic relevance analysis).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:19, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
 * It's pure trivia that uinchi is a loanword from winch.: the point went entirely over your head—it is not a case of highlighting that a word is of foreign origin—the same technique is used with native Japanese words that are not normally associated with the kanji displayed. It's a technique that makes use of furigana as part of the text, and not as a mere pronunciation guide. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 11:39, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
 * re in Yukio Mishima's The Sound of Waves, the kanji 巻揚機 "wind-up lifting machine" is given the furigana gloss ウヰンチ uinchi "winch": that’s a Japanese text, the gloss is to help Japanese readers (or people with near native Japanese reading skills). It is of no help to the vast majority English readers; even those who have picked up some Japanese and can perhaps read the kana will gain nothing from having it presented in addition to the Romanization, which should always be included.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 14:42, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
 * No, you too have missed the point that this use of furigana is part of the text and not a mere gloss. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 20:56, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
 * So far the only proposal submitted is mine. If you insist on an alternative from me you can simply replace the text with "Furigana shall/should not be used." I am not going to add romanization must be used to my proposal as it would just be bloat. If that means no furigana, so be it. – Allen4names (contributions) 19:39, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Then I'll have to oppose. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 20:56, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
 * As I am now convinced that Japanese has been overused I now oppose all use of ruby to annotate Japanese. – Allen4names (contributions) 17:16, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I also oppose using ruby. Thank you. Alec Station (talk) 01:24, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Proposal 2
The use of to add Furigana to Kanji is generally discouraged, for the following reasons
 * Romanisation should always be present, making the kana unnecessary
 * It cannot be read by most readers
 * The extra line height can disrupt layout
 * It can get it the way of copying and pasting text
 * Browser support, although improving, is not universal

Comments on proposal 2
Here’s a new proposal, which I think addresses the various concerns above. It softens the prohibition slightly while giving the main reasons not to use, I don't think it needs noting that there will be exceptions, that is explicit in all MOS guidelines.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 18:14, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I would support that, including the implication that there will be exceptions. As Curly pointed out, authors sometimes do make creative use of their freedom to assign readings to kanji. The railgun case is a good example and I can see using the ruby there. In the Mishima example, almost always the only thing that needs to be said is that he mentioned a winch, which can be translated as "winch". If someone wanted to comment on his use of ruby in an analysis of his writing style that would be another exception, but generally I don't think we need to do that. – Margin1522 (talk) 07:32, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Of course, such a usage should be limited to cases where such a direct quote were deemed important—unlikely in the actual example I gave, but you don't have to think too hard to imagine where such a (rare) case could come up. We should allow for such (rare) usages, while discouraging the idea that furigana should be used as a gloss in running text, as the gloss should always be in rōmaji, making the furigana redundant in all but corner cases (as well as somewhat disruptive with lineheight issues etc).  I'd like to see the total ban lifted, yet furigana should still be discouraged.  I don't like the proposed wording above, though, as it really much to wordy.   Maybe a wording along the lines of "furigana should only be included when its absence would do disservice to the article". Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 08:54, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * The style-guideline at the top of the page already makes it clear that style guidelines are only that, guidelines with occasional exceptions, not hard rules. As such I don't think adding a note to any particular guideline is necessary. It is not that this should be handled any differently to any other cases of IAR, in which case editors can refer to/invoke that.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 18:06, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Of course, but at WP:JAPAN we have a unique problem: the otaku. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 22:43, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Of course, every subject has its otaku. The way I see it, the MOS guidelines should be followed unless there is a really good reason for not following them. They should be the de facto standard, in order to establish and maintain a common appearance and usage across related articles (meaning "all Japan-related articles"). That's the whole point of the MOS. Exceptions should be exceptional and rare. ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 21:26, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Every subject has its otaku, but not every subject is overwhelmed by them. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 00:34, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
 * True, but Japan-related topics are hardly the only subject "overwhelmed" by otaku. Pretty much every ArbCom case deals with otaku of one sort or another. ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 06:10, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Proposal 3
The use of to add furigana to kanji is generally discouraged. It is generally only acceptable when giving titles where the pronunciation may be otherwise non-obvious (e.g., A Certain Scientific Railgun ( とある科学の 超電磁砲【</rp><rt>レールガン</rt><rp>】</rp> ) Toaru Kagaku no Rērugan). If used, it should generally only be used once in the lead of the article (with rare exceptions), and Romanization should always be present.

Other usage of ruby is strongly discouraged as the extra line height can disrupt layout, it can interfere with copying and pasting text, and it is not useful to the majority of users of the English Wikipedia.

Comments on proposal 3
Thoughts? One thing to note: ruby doesn't seem to work in the template. ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 21:38, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I think the requirement that ruby should only be used at the beginning of articles would be detrimental to lists where Japanese script is included. Maybe a mention that the requirement is for prose only? _dk (talk) 03:03, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I tweaked the wording a little bit. ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 06:07, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I think it'd be better if the wording were more along the lines of: "The use of ruby can be problematic, and should be restricted to cases where not using it would be detrimental to the article." In the Railgun example the pronunciation is not "confusing", it's deliberately non-standard—the furigana is not a mere pronunciation guide. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 03:30, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
 * It is, therefore, confusing, since it is deliberately not pronounced in a standard way. This seems to be a "po-tay-toe" "po-tah-toe" thing. ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 06:07, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
 * You can't be serious—this is nothing remotely like "po-tay-toe" "po-tah-toe". This is more like Raymond Luxury Yacht". Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 07:05, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
 * You saying it's not confusing and me saying it is confusing is absolutely a "po-tay-toe" "po-tah-toe" situation. You say it's one way, I say it's the other. Don't get so bent out of shape. ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 07:12, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Sorry, miscommunication: by "the pronunciation is not "confusing"", I meant "the pronunciation is not merely "confusing"". "Confusing" is not an acceptable reason for including ruby. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 07:21, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Changed to "non-obvious". ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 21:25, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
 * To clarify: the pronunciation of 下手 is "confusing", but we don't provide furigana for it, but a Roman gloss. This is not what's happening with the Railgun example. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 03:34, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

_dk pointed me here because I got rid of ruby on one page because the katakana in ruby is so tiny. It's so hard to read. You can barely even see that it says "rerugan" here, particularly with the dakuten on the ga being so tiny http://puu.sh/jjXwq/cfb81c534b.png --2601:140:8200:23E5:C461:55B8:F4AE:CD77 (talk) 10:12, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
 * It's no smaller than in printed Japanese books. Again, it's not for everyone, but there are a few cases where it would be fine to include it. ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 23:55, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Additionally, anyone with any experience reading Japanese books which use ruby will know that's a dakuten since there are no handakuten on "ga". Japanese relies a lot on context and simply knowing things. It's the way it is. ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 21:25, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
 * But I can't even see the dakuten. It looks like "ka" instead of "ga". It's just a single pixel bump. --2601:140:8200:23E5:CD58:C288:A5B7:C6E9 (talk) 06:19, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
 * And that indicates your unfamiliarity with printed Japanese. Those familiar with it would interpret that "bump" as the dakuten. ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 17:13, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't like it. The pronunciation is given immediately after in the romanisation, and should always be there or somewhere obvious. So in this case there is no need for ruby, for English speakers. Those with some Japanese may be able to read the kana but that, again, just matches the Romanisation. Only those with a fairly advanced understanding of Japanese, who can read the characters and compare their normal reading to the one given, will benefit from such ruby. But they make up probably a tiny fraction of the readers of en.wp, who are very unlikely to be reading this encyclopaedia’s coverage of Japanese topics, given that jp.wp’s coverage is probably much better. So per my earlier comments it should not be used unless it is the subject of the article, e.g. Furigana, or where the ruby is discussed directly.-- JohnBlackburne words<sub style="margin-left:-2.0ex;">deeds 00:33, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Your objection ignores the Railgun example. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 00:38, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
 * How did I ignore it? That example is in the proposal, and it is precisely that, or other cases like that, that I disagree with. It is of almost no benefit to our readers to add ruby; either they can’t read it, or if they can it just repeats what’s in the Romanisation, or the very few that can read Japanese well enough to make sense of it will probably read jp.wp in preference for its much better coverage of such topics.-- JohnBlackburne words<sub style="margin-left:-2.0ex;">deeds 01:58, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
 * As a test I tried looking at this page with another browser, Chrome on Android. And it does something horrible to this:
 * ( とある科学の <rb title="standard reading: Chōdenjihō">超電磁砲</rb><rp>【</rp><rt>レールガン</rt><rp>】</rp> )
 * it minifies the part of the text with ruby. I.e. it makes both the kanji and the furigana smaller so it is no taller than the characters before them. They end up between 3/4 and 1/2 the size they are meant to be. It varies between these two extremes as the screen rotates. I have uploaded a screenshot of the more extreme case. This is an up to date version of Chrome on Android 4.4.2.-- JohnBlackburne words<sub style="margin-left:-2.0ex;">deeds 02:40, 5 August 2015 (UTC)


 * You ignored it in that the romaization in no way handles what's happening in the Railgun example. If your objection is that the technology still doesn't handle it, then make that your objection rather than that romanization will handle what romanization cannot handle. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 02:48, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The ruby just matches the Romanisation. I don’t see how giving both is helpful to the vast majority of readers. And I just did a test with Ruby-ja and that has the same problem in Chrome for Android.-- JohnBlackburne words<sub style="margin-left:-2.0ex;">deeds 02:54, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
 * So (a) the problem is technical; and (b) you don't understand what's happening with the furigana in Railgun. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 02:59, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
 * (b): yes and no. I do understand it because it has been discussed here but I would not if I saw it in an article as although I can read kana I know very few kanji, my study of written Japanese not getting so far. And even my very limited Japanese is exceptional; almost all readers of this encyclopaedia know none at all.-- JohnBlackburne words<sub style="margin-left:-2.0ex;">deeds 03:19, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Proposal 4
There is a really very simple principle which answers almost all of the issues discussed here:


 * English WP is written in English, using the character set and typographical conventions of English.

The only exception to this is:


 * But English WP can and should quote other languages, and when it does, it can and should use the character set and typographical conventions of those languages.

Quoting should be judicious, and may occur typically in the lead, or it may occur throughout an article on, for example, the typographical conventions of another language. This is all that is needed to guide the use of "ruby" in quotes from Japanese. Imaginatorium (talk) 14:09, 1 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I must say this is the proposal I like best. Ruby does not serve the average English reader, so it being a pronunciation guide is not the issue. The issue is, as Imaginatorium rightly points out, providing the original title as it is presented in the original language (like the Railgun example). _dk (talk) 03:25, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Japanese words spelled with the full stop
This follow a post at Wikipedia_talk:Article_titles.

Having looked at issues caused by spellings that include a terminal period ("."), and a little information such as at Japanese_punctuation, it seems to me that the Japanese "fad" of including a terminal period in the spelling of some names should be considered a Japanese stylisation that should not be used as normal English, in either text or titles.

Examples that have come up include Melody. (Japanese singer) and Gangsta.. The use of of the period in the spelling in running text is disturbing to reading of the text, and the use in the title leads to it frequent use in reference to the subject in other articles. For example:
 * "The Japanese lady Melody. is an American-born fashion designer."
 * "Kohske illustrates the Gangsta. comic book series."

In Japanese, does the full stop convey meaning that justifies its use in English translation? In Japanese, does the full stop interupt sentence flow as it does in English?

Would it be appropriate to introduce a recommendation in Manual of Style/Japan-related articles (WP:MOS-JA) that Japanese words or names containing a terminal full stop should not include the terminal full stop when translated? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:41, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
 * The Japanese full stop is . . I have no idea what the period in these cases residents represents, but I suspect it is purely decorative. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 07:14, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I think it's used merely for decoration in these two cases. It would be fine to use it once at the beginning of an article, but I wouldn't use it elsewhere as it would likely cause confusion among editors as well as grammar bots. ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 21:16, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Proposal
There is a really very simple principle which answers almost all of the issues discussed here:


 * English WP is written in English, using the character set and typographical conventions of English.

The only exception to this is:


 * But English WP can and should quote other languages, and when it does, it can and should use the character set and typographical conventions of those languages.

The writing of what looks like an English full stop at the end of a name in Japanese is a typographical convention from Japanese. In fact it is simply "decoration", and all sorts of bits of cruft are much beloved by designers of bits Japanese written in roman letters. Therefore, such names should be written with the closest approach in English ("Melody" etc), but of course it is appropriate to say something like "styled in the Japanese as "Melody."", perhaps adding an explanatory comment that the "." here is not punctuation. There is a similar issue on the title of One-punch man, where the Japanese styling looks a bit like "ONEPUNCH-MAN", but in fact the mark resembling a hyphen is surely a nakaguro, mid-point, representing more separation between 'PUNCH' and 'MAN' than between 'ONE' and 'PUNCH'. As far as possible, translated titles should provide the same semantic overtones as the original, not the closest graphical similarity. (You know, like translating shaku as "R".) Imaginatorium (talk) 14:16, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Quoting should be judicious, and may occur typically in the lead, or it may occur throughout an article on, for example, the typographical conventions of another language. This is all that is needed to guide the use of "ruby" in quotes from Japanese. Imaginatorium (talk) 14:09, 1 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Let's keep all the discussion above (in the other section) so people don't get confused at discussing the same thing twice on the same page. ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 16:08, 1 August 2015 (UTC)
 * But this is a separate discussion -- about Japanese names written with decorative pseudo-punctuation. My point is that one principle pretty much answers all of these discussions, which eliminates the need for anguishing over exactly how and where to allow/encourage/discourage ruby, for example. Imaginatorium (talk) 15:22, 2 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Support adding language based on the above two observations, and concretely stating to mimic Japanese stylings of latin-alphabet text, per MOS:TM, other than one time in the lead with a "styled as". We should using something like "Melody." as an illustrative example, especially because of the difficulty that using "." like this poses for the ability of readers to understand sentence when such stylization is used.  While I !voted for Gangsta. at the WP:RM on that article, not Gangsta (manga), I would actually reverse my position on this now, knowing that it's a stylization fad and not a one-time case of the title of a published work.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  02:53, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Support as User:Imaginatorium says, plus these punctuation stylisms found on English blogs are visual carry-over from use as romaji in among kanji and kana, not what would be used by competent English hardback books writing seriously on Japanese culture. In ictu oculi (talk) 17:28, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Sock in earlier discussion
User:SMcCandlish User:SmokeyJoe User talk:Nihonjoe you guys have been around, recognize the mannerisms in this edit? I've opened an SPI here. In ictu oculi (talk) 08:43, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Looks like he was blocked already. ··· 日本穣 ·  投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 17:05, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

City name change proposal
There is a discussion here which is essentially suggesting a change to the guidelines for naming certain cities in Japan. Because it would have this effect, I think it's appropriate for me to post a notice here. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:28, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Just to follow up on this, a second nomination has been made here related to the same issue. Good Ol’factory (talk) 01:17, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Testing the revised "Modern names" section's criteria
I've started an RM to test community receptiveness to the heavily revised version of MOS:JA we now have. It seeks to move Hikaru Utada back to Utada Hikaru (which was renamed under the old 2008 version of this guideline, which strongly leaned toward Westernized name order). — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:58, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

RM Discussion at Talk:Hikaru Utada
<strong style="color:#606060;">AngusWOOF ( bark  •  sniff ) 17:27, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

"Personal names" section needs clarification
This section needs to separate out the name order vs. diacritics issues. The point #5 under "Modern names" is a total non sequitur, and we know from experience that WP (especially at WP:RM) treats these issues as totally severable, with a consensus in favor of using the correct diacritics (in any language) absent a clear preference by the subject to not do so, but a different consensus to largely favor the name order espoused by the majority of reliable sources, absent a good reason not to. The current guideline wording outlines a good rubric for applying such an analysis to name order, but then veers jarringly into diacritics in the last point, in a way that looks like it is not entirely compatible with actual Wikipedia practice. I would like to see this problems cleaned up, because I think the overall shape of what has been arrived at here is a good model for treatment of family-name-first names generally, and should be made part of MOS:BIO in genercized, non-Japan-specific form. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:03, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm having trouble following what you're saying, but I feel the need to say something about diacritics—there is no "correct" diacritics when it comes to Japanese. Japan doesn't normally use the Roman alphabet, and the romanization they teach in Japan is not the version we use in English (for example, officially they use the circumflex for long vowels rather than macrons: âîûêô.  I can guarantee you any attempt to introduce that on the English Wikipedia will be shot down.  There are several other widely used romanizations, such as doubling long vowels, as I prefer). Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 09:41, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
 * You say "...the romanization they teach in Japan", but it's much much worse than that. Most people have forgotten what they learned in school (which in principle was kunreisiki), but they type Japanese all the time by using Roman input. Sadly, Japanese Roman input systems never accept any standard romanisation system (try 'zannen', which is both kunreisiki and Hepburn!), and worse, accept all sorts of gibberish (like "Funassyi"), while giving themselves names like "You" in the belief that English spelling is helping someone. Imaginatorium (talk) 07:42, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure You didn't choose that spelling for the benefit of foreigners—they're not her audience. She an entertainer and chose an entertaining spelling.  "Zannen" is a practical issue—to get 「ん」 with roman input you have to type "nn", otherwise the system wouldn't be able to distinguish between 「げんいん」 and 「げんにん」.  "Funassyi" is a word that should never be uttered in polite company, and if you do it again I'll take you straight to ANI. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 10:16, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I find some comfort in the thought that romanisation and Japanese text input using Latin alphabet are fundamentally different tasks; and that they are not necessarily commutative. I also concur w.r.t Funassyi. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 11:29, 24 January 2016 (UTC) updated - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 13:12, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Don't want to get too boring, but I only know of two Japanese input systems developed outside Japan*, and both accepted 'zannen' for 残念. There is no technical reason why not -- it's just that using 'nn' to trigger ん is a silly idea. (* I wrote one, and Jim Breen wrote the other.) Imaginatorium (talk) 13:03, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
 * So how does that work? How does it differentiate between 「原因」 and 「下人」? Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 21:18, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, (either) standard romanisation is unambiguously mapped to kana, QED. You accept gen'in for 原因 and genin for 下人. The one thing you can't do is accept 'nn' for ん, because this breaks everything. So they chose it. Imaginatorium (talk) 18:51, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
 * : Good point, and I didn't mean to open an old wound about how to romanize. (I support a consistent approach to romanization instead of randomly doing it differently article-by-article based on a head-count of source usage, because that kind of research is easily skewed by cherry-picking; often whoever is willing to flush the most time digging up sources that support their view so they can WP:WIN will succeed at it. However, I realize not everyone will necessarily agree with that analysis.)  Rather, the issue is that the bullet points all seem to be about one thing, and then veer into another.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:50, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I might be misinterpreting what you're saying, but I suspect the "macronned" wording is just to emphasize that Wikipedia prefers the long vowels to be indicated unless there's a clear preference not to. English sources tend to drop the diacritic, which doesn't necessarily indicate a preference, which can be problematic as there are many names in Japanese distinguished by vowel length: Yuki vs Yūki, Osaka vs Ōsaka.  Would a wording along the lines of "following MOS:JA spelling conventions" address the issue? Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 10:29, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
 * The analysis re skew & cherry-picking seems, at face value & in personal experience, valid. I note that the current MOS:JA still includes room for this to occur with the common usage aspects. I would not be averse to a consistent standard on romanisation; but do see issues where there is an established, non-standard romanisation (e.g. Mazda). - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 12:01, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

- Thoughts on replacing the final point If none of the above is available, use the macronned form. at Historical names 3. & Modern names 5. with If none of the above is available, use the family name first form. or similar? - Thoughts on amending Historical names to Historical & fictional names? Also while the romanisation & name order aspects are definitely separable, we would prefer a common approach, which might mean a combination section, explicitly covering both aspects, works better. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 07:05, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Hi, Having now read through the entirety of the guideline, I see your point. Diacritics would be covered in the "Romanization" section. Per my previous comment, below, I do conceive that we need a "catch-all" for situations where sources do not provide sufficient guidance.
 * It could be better to have separate sets of bullet points on name order and romanization, in different sections or (see below) subsections, even if some of the bullets between the two overlap. Or, a combination section that covers them both more adequately and consistently in one set of steps to follow. The largely successful MOS:JA approach would easier to export into MOS:BIO more broadly if they were separate, for the very reason that CT points out above, of the Japanese macron usage situation not necessarily being a 1:1 map onto typical diacritics matters though it would be if the macron approach were normalized instead of being article-by-article. But because RM debates rarely commingle diacritics and name order matters, I think even within MOS:JA it's best to separate out how to determine name order vs. when to use the macron, even if they're both under a human naming section.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:50, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

In my opinion, this part covers it all: "Follow the usage of academic texts or a widely used reference such as a published encyclopedia in matters of spelling, macron usage, and name order. Such sources generally give Japanese names family name first." Both the "historical name" and the "modern name" sections can be deleted. Fernando Danger (talk) 20:54, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Suggest that we still need a "catch-all" for situations in which such a source does not exist. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 06:44, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, it does seem that the naming-related sections can simply be merged, underneath the principle that Fernando highlights, whether we have one checklist of how to figure out the title to use, or whether (as I suggest above) there would be two subsections or at least paragraphs and rubrics, one for name order, one for the macron.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:50, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I trust your judgement; but am still thinking through: a) whether it is better to have names as a subset of romanisation; or b) romanisation (including the macron) as a subset of names; and which one works best (is easiest to generalise?) for other languages & scripts. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 11:55, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Um, SMcCandlish, there was no "consensus to largely favor the name order espoused by the majority of reliable sources", if by that you mean that journalistic sources should be excluded as less reliable (see your comments about "non-news" sources at Talk:Hikaru Utada). I never agreed to that. What we did have was one tendentiously worded RFC, which was never properly closed. Followed by a hijacking of the MOS by a since-banned sock puppet, one of the many Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of Kauffner. Which may be fine, if you like the result. There are two competing systems for romanized Japanese name order – one preferred by academics, and one preferred by journalists (and, I would say, most Japanese people themselves). In the larger scheme of things it doesn't really matter which system Wikipedia uses, as long as we are consistent. But we should avoid claims that one system is superior to the other. We should avoid claims that journalists are less professional and less reliable. And let's be serious about consistency, which is the first thing that any professional editor will tell you. Currently, since the change to the MOS, we have an MOS that recommends one system, and thousands of articles that use the other system. Are there any plans to address that? – Margin1522 (talk) 12:14, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

RM and Romanization discussions at Kamen Rider Black (character)
There are two separate, but related, discussions on the Talk:Kamen Rider Black (character) page - an RM, and a discussion on romanization. Input from uninvolved editors would be appreciated. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 05:42, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

RM at Talk:Kumi Koda
Greetings! I have recently relisted a requested move discussion at Talk:Kumi_Koda, regarding a page relating to this WikiProject. Discussion and opinions are invited. Thanks, Prosperosity (talk) 01:56, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Use of IPA for Japanese
The MOS mentions the existence of IPA-ja and linking to WP:IPA for Japanese, but does not suggest how or if these should be used. I think that in general articles, IPA for Japanese is not helpful, and I suggest that the MOS should recommend against its use except in contexts relating to linguistics/phonetics. This was prompted by some other discussion at IPA for Japanese and WikiProject Japan.

To summarise why is it not helpful: General articles need a phonemic representation, not a narrow phonetic one, but Hepburn romanisation gives exactly this, and is vastly more widely understood than the rather obscure IPA symbols which are needed to approximate Japanese. There does not even appear to be clear agreement on a "standard IPA" for Japanese.

I imagine it is possible somehow to find all pages including the IPA-ja template - how can I do this? (I also see there is undefined, which sort of demonstrates why phonemic IPA is redundant!)

Grateful for comments. Imaginatorium (talk) 09:56, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I sympathize, and I'm not sure what the best solution is, but your average reader is at least as unfamiliar with Hepburn as they are with IPA. Outside of anglophone countries, IPA is familiar to an awful lot of people, as it applies to any language.  I think there's a problem with the application of IPA on Wikipedia sometimes—often far too hairsplittingly precise to work as a mere pronunciation guide. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 11:22, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
 * How true! ("at least as unfamiliar with Hepburn as...") I have been tracking down the odd pronunciation given for ramen, and see that this edit  was an IP who assumed the 'ā' was the pronunciation guide (cf Merriam-Webster) for 'a' in 'cake', then changed the IPA 'a' to an 'ä', which is "pronunciation guide" for 'cot' and 'cart' (which are two utterly different vowels for me). Imaginatorium (talk) 13:40, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

Language template (cf. the Chinese equivalents)
Greetings! I was wondering if there were similar language templates as there are for Chinese. For example, in the article Yiguandao, they have the following:

"Yiguandao"

that is in raw code

"Yiguandao"

However, the Japanese-translsations would require a similar one. Now we have the "貫道 Ikkandō", but it'd need to be syntaxed in a similar manner.

Thanks for your attention. Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 18:37, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

Asking for more input
Hello. I think more people should weigh in on the discussion at Talk:Pokémon Sun and Moon. It looks like two people have decided that this one Pokémon page should be formatted differently than all of the other ones based on a guideline that no other Pokémon or video game page in general uses.--OuendanL (talk) 23:19, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Numeral romanization debate on 5 Centimeters Per Second
Hi all. There is an ongoing debate regarding which numeral romanizations are to be used in 5 Centimeters Per Second. The discussion can be found at Talk:5 Centimeters Per Second. Input from project members would be appreciated. Thanks, Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 03:27, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * It’s more about whether numeral romanizations should be used at all on WIkipedia. That’s why I thought it should be brought up here rather than confined to a single movie title. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 03:51, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

RfC: Romanization of numerals in Japanese articles
<div class="boilerplate" style="background-color: #EDEAFF; padding: 0px 10px 0px 10px; border: 1px solid #8779DD;">
 * The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Should all numerals (whether it's written in kanji, hiragana or Arabic/Roman numerals) be romanized when they occur in Japanese terms on articles? For example, … 1 … (…1…) as if one (一) were used instead. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 04:53, 3 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Note: There is some prior discussion at Talk:5 Centimeters Per Second. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 04:20, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Support - Given that the romanization's purpose is to explain how to read the Japanese, so whether a mark is a kanji, kana, numeral (of any variety), punctuation, etc., the romanization should show how it is read and ultimately, how it sounds. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 04:19, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Support. Romanization is to indicate how the Japanese is read in Romanized letters. I agree completely with Sjones23. ··· 日本穣 ·  投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 04:50, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Support. I think that possibly the MOS should be made more explicit, even at the cost of sounding a bit silly. "Romanisation is the process of replacing all marks used in a segment of Japanese text (including but not limited to kanji, kana, numerals, any symbols with readings, and Roman letters) by the Hepburn representation of the reading". Or equivalently, the Hepburn romanisation of the kana reading.　But the basic answer seems obvious, as Nihonjoe and Sjones have already said. Imaginatorium (talk) 04:59, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Weak oppose: Numbers are universal, even if their pronunciations are not. A 2 in Japanese is a 2 in English is a 2 in Tagalog etc., and doesn’t need a pronunciation guide for any person literate in any language. Unless it has a nonstandard pronunciation in the Japanese term (like approximating the English word as in Final Fantasy 2), when a number is used as a number, it’s unnecessary to spell it out as a foreign word. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 05:03, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Rephrasing: Numerals are not incomprehensible where kanji and kana may be so. That makes them less necessary to transliterate. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 06:44, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * (Almost) Exactly: "Numbers are universal, even if their pronunciations are not." So you do not need to gloss the meaning of 5; you do need to show the pronunciation of 5, and we do not assume that somehow "everyone" already knows how the Sino-Japanese reading of numerals. (Only "Almost", because what we call "Arabic numerals" are not used in Arabic, where they use Arabic-Arabic numerals.) Imaginatorium (talk) 05:14, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Numerals are familiar to every literate English (and non-English) speaker. CJK characters are not. “19” can be read by anyone in the world, whatever the language. “歩” cannot. You have a point only if we want the reader to be able to speak the number aloud in Japanese, rather than to be able to see that the symbol after the 7 is read like this. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 05:39, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * The purpose of Romanisation is to tell the reader how to read the Japanese. But I am repeating myself, and Nihonjoe and Sjones above... I can't understand your bit about "after the 7", and you also insist on repeating an unjustified (if irrelevant) claim that "everyone in the world" can read '19'. AFAIK, "European-Arabic" numerals are not used in Arabic, because they already have "Arabic-Arabic" numerals. At what age do Arabic speaking children learn "European-Arabic" numerals? Imaginatorium (talk) 06:09, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I meant, if you see some strange symbols, then the number 7, and some more strange symbols, you’d be able to see in the transliteration that the symbols before the number represent these readable words (roughly speaking), and the symbols after the number represent those words. However, if the “7” is transliterated as another foreign word, it’s harder to tell what represents what if you can’t tell which part of it means “seven.” I realize I overgeneralized with “everyone in the world” and such, but it certainly applies to anyone who can read English, or to a broad interpretation of “numerals” (I didn’t specify [Hindu-]Arabic here; fill in your numeral system and reader’s native language of choice). —67.14.236.50 (talk) 06:20, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I think I slipped away from my original point, and I’m not sure I expressed it that clearly to begin with: A number, in numeral form, is readable by someone who doesn’t understand a lick of Japanese. Other ideographs are completely incomprehensible, and might as well be squiggles, so it’s necessary to be told how to read them. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 06:39, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment It really depends on whether it is meant to be pronounced in regular Japanese or in English. For example: the 86 in Initial D is Hachi Roku, but AKB48 is pronounced as if the whole thing were English: A K B Forty-Eight. (or Forty-Eito or whatever) For 5 cm, you need to find how people are pronouncing the title. Do they use "five" or "go" ? <strong style="color:#606060;">AngusWOOF  ( bark  •  sniff ) 05:59, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I really don't think it depends at all. The romanisation should show the agreed reading (if there is one), in Hepburn. So for example "555" might have any of the following readings: gohyaku-gojū-go, faibu handoreddo ando fifutī faibu, surī-faibu, and possibly others. Imaginatorium (talk) 06:13, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * It could also be read as "go go go" or "faibu faibu faibu". That's the dependency. For anime, you get a better chance of knowing how to read it. For manga, not so much. It may also be acceptable just to leave it as "555" in the romaji as what MADB has done with some of their romanizations of video game titles with arabic numerals in it. <strong style="color:#606060;">AngusWOOF ( bark  •  sniff ) 01:55, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Sorry, perhaps I was less that optimally clear: the reading may vary; the reading depends on the circumstance and ad hoc facts. Therefore the reading is always required explicitly, if we are giving the reading, and the necessity for the reading does not depend. Imaginatorium (talk) 10:17, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment See page 16 of the modified Hepburn system of Romanization. It was revised in March 2012 and added a usage of "title proper". Although it discusses about "Word Division", it may be of help to this discussion.―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 02:47, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment: this is about a US govt standard for romanising titles etc, and is thus not relevant to the issue of romanised glosses in the nihongo template. Imaginatorium (talk) 10:17, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Also, the last two pages of that document (under the subheading “Numerals”) don’t really address the question. If reliable guidance can be found, perhaps in Kenkyusha’s dictionary, that would be ideal. Otherwise we’ll have to make our own decision, and whatever that is, put it in the MOS and I’ll be happy. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 22:49, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment It occurs to me that we should make explicit that we are talking (only) about the reading of a term in Japanese given in Roman letters. Explicitly this ("Romaji") says the reading should be in letters, and thus excludes Arabic numerals. This is a different situation from the general problem of romanising titles etc, in which there is lots of scope for variation and discussion. Imaginatorium (talk) 10:13, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Since there seems to be a solid consensus here, I’ve gone ahead and edited to add the following: “When transliterating text that includes numerals, use the most common reading of the numbers in the transliteration rather than the numerals themselves:, not Fainaru Fantajī II.” I trust no one will object to the intention, and I hope all find the wording acceptable. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 05:46, 23 May 2016 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. <b style="color: #FF0000;">Please do not modify it.</b> Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

RfC: Move to "Sesshō and Kampaku" to "Sesshō and Kanpaku"?
Please take part in the discussion at Talk:Sesshō and Kampaku Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 05:35, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Asakusa Station example needs updating.
The MoS description doesn't match current reality, so one or the other should be updated so they correspond. Currently Asakusa Station is a disambiguation page that points to Asakusa Station (Tokyo Metro, Toei, Tobu), Asakusa Station (Tsukuba Express) and Tokyo Skytree Station (which was called "Asakusa station" from 1910–1931). How about the following text? 71.41.210.146 (talk) 19:47, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Stations on private lines that have the same name as other train or subway stations in the same prefecture are disambiguated as Z Station (PrivateCo). For example, there are two stations named Asakusa Station both located in Asakusa, Tokyo. One is an interchange station for three different train companies and one is a smaller station for the Tsukuba Express. As a default, the major station would be Asakusa Station, while the Tsukuba Express station is Asakusa Station (Tsukuba Express). But because there is a third historical use of that name (the current Tokyo Skytree Station was called "Asakusa Station" from 1910–1931), the main station's article is Asakusa Station (Tokyo Metro, Toei, Tobu), and Asakusa Station is a disambiguation page.

English pronunciation
Neither this page nor the nihongo template explains how to add English pronunciation and neither mentions that the English pronunciation should be added to all Japanese words regularly used in English! --Espoo (talk) 18:23, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

And the nihongo template has to be redesigned to allow the English pronunciation first, where it belongs according to our MOS and where it is in articles for terms from all other languages. --Espoo (talk) 18:42, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Japanese name order for Midori (violinist)
Hello. An ongoing discussion regarding the birth name of Midori (violinist) is taking place at Talk:Midori (violinist). Input from project members would be appreciated. Thanks. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 08:12, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Hello, I've responded and would like input from project members again. Also added a new section about the last name this time. Thanks.-Yadap (talk) 17:57, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

Manga and anime
Manga and anime can both be count nouns depending on the usage. For example anime is non count when being used as an animation style, however it is a count noun when being used to refer to a work in the anime style as an anime. "He is the director of 15 anime" for instance, or "these anime". Manga can also be used as a count noun, see https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/manga for definition also including plural. <b style="color: Blue;">Canterbury Tail</b> <i style="color: Blue;">talk</i> 02:53, 17 June 2018 (UTC)
 * That's a WP:JARGON, WP:SSF problem. This isn't common usage, but something that anime/manga fans do, that doesn't parse right to everyone else.  It would be encyclopedically better to use clearer wording.  "An anime" and "three anime" are vague and ambiguous, and could refer to feature films, TV series, TV specials or television movies, direct-to-home-video releases, Web-only releases, etc. "He is the director of seven anime feature films, as well as five short films and three television series in the genre" is far more informative and accurate for readers.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:39, 17 June 2018 (UTC)
 * PS: This is really a discussion for WT:MOSFICTION; anime is a genre spreading around the world, and is no longer the entirely exclusive province of Japan.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:40, 17 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Well ... this is a coincidence. Or it would be if it had happened two weeks later when we were discussing the exact same thing on your talk page.
 * CT and I were having a spirited debate about this same problem the other day. He seemed firmly convinced that the countable sense, if it exists at all, is a recent development, and it apparently looks awfully informal to him, and I agree to a certain extent. (Specifically, I think that since in Japanese the word has the sense of "an animated film" or "an animated television programme", then if we are going to use it in English then we might as well use it the same way they do in Japanese, which would make it countable. But I don't actually like using it to begin with.) If he's right, then this really falls under WP:FORMAL, and even if the countable usage exists it should be discouraged by our style guidelines as having a casual, unencyclopedic tone.
 * Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 00:25, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
 * SMcCandlish brings up a good point that it's ambiguous what an anime would refer to. I've ceded that countable anime and manga have come into use, but I maintain that it looks like broken English to a significant portion (probably a majority) of readers—and regardless, uncountable anime is always correct and always works in any context an anime might be found, so the uncountable should be preferred. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 00:31, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm perfectly okay with however this ends up. I know I've seen countable anime used around the place, but whether we should use it or not I guess is up for debate. So I'm okay with whatever decision. <b style="color: Blue;">Canterbury Tail</b> <i style="color: Blue;">talk</i> 02:07, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I suspect "countable" anime is used as a shorthand for "a work of anime", the way milk is often used countably to refer to units of containers ("I brought enough milks [200ml TetraPak containers of milk] for us all."). Of course, I can't back that up with a cite. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 02:32, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Retired emperor

 * re: : a guy I work with was actually just looking into this. I don't have any sources, but he says Akihito will indeed be called Jōkō in Japanese, but (as Hijiri at least would be aware) there's no way people will be referring to him as such in English.  It appears it hasn't been worked out what he'll be called in English, but it absolutely will not be Heisei.  The two of us speculated it would probably be "retired Emperor Akihito".

(SMcCandlish: in brief, nobody in Japan refers to an Emperor by name—in fact, few even know his given name. Any emperor is called tennō-heika while still alive, and then is given a posthumous name upon death—only in recent history has this name been tied to an era name, as era names didn't used to be tied to an emperor's reign.  How to refer to Akihito has become an issue as no modern Emperor has retired, so there's no precedent.  I don't think there's such a thing as a living god abdicating—at least, I'm not aware of it ever having happened.) Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 05:13, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I wonder what would happen? Would you become a demi-god?  Heh.  I'll defer to y'all on this; was just trying to help with copyediting. For all I know, "abdicate" or "retire" or whatever isn't perfectly applicable to the Japanese emperor situation; maybe there's a special word for it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:25, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't think, in Japanese or English, they will refer to him as "the Heisei Emperor" or "Emperor Heisei" until after he dies. I suspect English mainstream media when they have occasion to mention him after his abdication will refer to him the same way historical Jōkōs are referred to ("the retired emperor" or maybe "the former emperor" or "the previous emperor"). I don't think "Emperor Heisei" will ever be common in English media, but English Wikipedia does refer in several places to his father as "Emperor Shōwa"; this guideline will really only affect that small number of instances where he is named inline, not by his personal name, during the period between his retirement and death. His father died almost thirty years ago and it's still a very small number of places where we call him "Emperor Shōwa", so we can probably anticipate this not being a big issue.
 * SMcC: The official wording used by the special law that was passed in this case is jōi and some right-wing media here are apparently sticklers for this exact word, but taii (or the more respectful go-taii) apparently has fairly broad acceptance in Japanese media as well. I wouldn't be surprised if western media were comparing it to the situation with Benedict XVI a few years back, since there are a lot of points in common. We'll probably have to wait and see, though, since the overwhelming majority of international coverage will probably come in the immediate aftermath, which is coming up next April (I think). I really only brought up the fact that his title will be "Jōkō" because I suspect he will be called that between his abdication and his death, and only then will he become the "Heisei Emperor" or "Emperor Heisei".
 * Of course, it's possible this won't affect English Wikipedia at all, since most of our articles call him by his personal name and will continue to do so regardless. We're not prescribing one name upon his death or abdication; we're saying don't use it until at least then. If it were up to me, I would probably just write the whole MOS passage abstractly about "Japanese emperors" and "era names", since whoever wrote it back in the day probably didn't anticipate the current circumstances, which will for our purposes probably wind up being unique to the current emperor, and definitely not worth us fretting over on an MOS talk page.
 * I dunno: what do others think about removing specific references to "Heisei" and "Akihito" and writing it in more general terms? This would have the dual advantage of not seeming "dated" and needing to be updated when his son is enthroned next year.
 * Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 07:06, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Naming discussion: Nagano
There is a move discussion taking place at Talk:Nagano, Nagano that has implications for several Japanese place names where cities and prefectures share the same name. I believe this is the first time such discussions have taken place since Talk:Shizuoka, Shizuoka and Talk:Nara, Nara. Please consider expressing an opinion at Talk:Nagano, Nagano. Dekimasu よ! 16:50, 20 July 2018 (UTC)
 * There was, in fact, a subsequent discussion of this sort that took place at Talk:Gifu and at Talk:Gifu, which had a different result from the previous requests. Dekimasu よ! 23:00, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Is this a style issue?
I was considering adding For articles on members of the Japanese imperial family, Template:Infobox royalty may be used. However, please be aware that the "religion" parameter in that template is deprecated for use in biographical articles, and is only preserved for cases where monarchs and their families hold religious functions. While this has been historically, and still is to a certain degree, true of the Japanese imperial family, editors are discouraged from using the religion parameter nevertheless, as few Japanese royals are singularly "Shinto" as distinguished from Buddhist.

This appears to have general acceptance among WP:JAPAN members, and is supported by overwhelming historical consensus against the religion parameter in articles on people who are not religious leaders, but I can't find a good place to slot it in here, and when looking it occurred to me that it's not really a matter of style...

Thoughts?

Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 00:12, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't really understand what is meant by 'are singularly "Shinto" as distinguished from Buddhist'. Can someone be plurally Shinto?  I don't see a problem with the gist of the point, but it seems like it could be compressed a lot, e.g.: Template:Infobox royalty can be used at Japanese imperial family biographies. Its religion parameter is only for cases where such a person is also a religious leader. While historically true of Japanese emperors, this parameter is discouraged at their articles because ... [something that editors will understand].  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:09, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Sorry to be several weeks late, but the answer to your question Can someone be plurally Shinto? is yes. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 23:49, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, okay, but "[something that editors will understand]" will still need filling in. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:23, 25 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Actually, the reason I decided not to reply when I first saw your comment was that I changed my mind on the necessity of including this at all, pending someone actually reverting my removal of the parameter, at which point it becomes a dispute resolution matter, not one for a unilateral change to MOS. The reason I chose to respond to you now was because I came back to this page for unrelated reasons, wondered why I had stopped watching the page, scrolled up to see what other stuff had been discussed recently, and noticed you had asked a question that I could answer without actually pushing the issue that I had already decided to drop. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 00:31, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Ghastly, impenetrable markup
We really need to do something about crap like:
 * {special ward, city, town or village-name} (if required), {Tokyo or {prefecture-name} Prefecture}, Japan

Maybe:
 * Special ward, city, town, or village name,  Tokyo or Prefecture name Prefecture  , Japan

It's not even clear what the "(if required)" in that mess was referring to. And we are not actually using "City, Prefecture name Prefecture" article titles at all; I can't find a single one in Category:Cities in Japan; they're all "City, Prefecture name", or even just "City". — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:51, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Can we go back to the wording from last summer and revise from there? Dekimasu よ! 03:29, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
 * No objections from me, but let's look that we don't lose any genuine clarifications in the process. I haven't studied the changes in detail.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:56, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
 * For the time being, I have returned things to the old version. Perhaps there are clarifications to be made, but it looks fairly clear to me. Based upon recent discussions, the main point of contention seems as though it will be whether or not to mandate the inclusion of the prefecture name when the city name is not evidently ambiguous. That was the former practice, at any rate. Dekimasu よ! 20:51, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I note that there were still echoes of the old version in the recent versions: they said "even the prefecture can be dropped for world-famous cities familiar to most Westerners: Tokyo, Hiroshima, Kobe", wording which did not seem to envision that all small towns without apparently ambiguous names would have their prefectures dropped. Dekimasu よ! 20:54, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Place names: "When disambiguation is required"
The place names qualifier "When disambiguation is required" was added to Manual of Style/Japan-related articles by THIS 23 August 2014 edit, as a result of the RfC Mandatory disambiguation for Japanese places? This is the key standard that is affecting recent moves of Japanese place articles. While the non-administrative closer stated "This does not mean that existing references with city name and prefecture name should be edited to remove the prefecture name, only that its use is not required.", I've now seen the "When disambiguation is required" recently interpreted to mean the opposite, i.e. if disambiguation is not required, then the title should be moved to remove the prefecture name. Alas, the MOS update wasn't done by the neutral closing editor, but rather by the proponent of the RfC, so that may explain why the result of the RfC isn't exactly being interpreted in the way the closing editor intended.

The change also left the MOS contradicting itself:
 * When disambiguation is required for cities, use the form {city-name}, {prefecture-name} ; for example, Mishima, Shizuoka. Exception: For designated cities, use {city-name} without appending the prefecture unless disambiguation from another city or prefecture is necessary.

What's the "exception" say now? It made perfect sense before the qualifier was added, but now... we start by taking as a given that disambiguation is required... so for designated cities we don't disambiguate, even though it's required (OK, I'll assume that designated cities are always considered primary topics), unless "disambiguation from another city or prefecture is necessary"... say what? "When disambiguation is required, don't disambiguate, unless disambiguation is necessary". My head is spinning, and my bot has crashed trying to parse that. – wbm1058 (talk) 21:02, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
 * That's most likely cruft from whatever the MoS said before it was updated. It definitely does not "start by taking as a given that disambiguation is required".  Just delete Everything from "Exception" to "necessary" and everything's fine, as the consensus is that we don't disambiguate except where necessary. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 00:04, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Right, cruft left behind by a less-than-optimal update to the MoS following that RfC. The reason I'm here is that I noticed THIS move ( moved page Hiratsuka, Kanagawa to Hiratsuka without leaving a redirect: Primary topic, no disambiguation required, see RM precedents at Talk:Morioka and Talk:Yokosuka), because Hiratsuka populates Category:Articles with redirect hatnotes needing review. Note that no redirect was left behind because the move was a page mover round-robin swap. So there really was a redirect left behind, it was just manually done. These "RM precedents" which were cited to justify this as an uncontroversial move were based on a very thin consensus.


 * , I know that RfC is now four years old, but would you mind reviewing this, and perhaps give us your opinion on the current state of this matter? Thanks. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:58, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
 * As you noted, the RFC is four years old, but I see that the the contentiousness has not changed. There is no need to disambiguate a place name unless there are two or more places with the same name.  There is also no need to move an article that was disambiguated unnecessarily.  The plain form of the name can be added as a redirect.  I haven't looked into this in enough detail at this time to know what the specific issue is.  Is there a question?  Robert McClenon (talk) 19:54, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Although there is no need to mass-move all unnecessarily disambiguated titles, can they be moved? Some editors have suggested at Talk:Nagano (city) that the "City, Prefecture" format is uncommon in Japan. I started the two RMs at Talk:Morioka and Talk:Yokosuka, the two articles were moved, so I started moving other articles as well.
 * I agree that the current MOS wording is ambiguous and can be improved. feminist (talk) 04:07, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I would say that a RM (Requested Move)) is the right way to decide whether to move articles by changing the name from City, Prefecture to City. If anyone has been moving articles without discussion at RM, I would say that is disruptive.  Robert McClenon (talk) 08:07, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I would say that a RM (Requested Move)) is the right way to decide whether to move articles by changing the name from City, Prefecture to City. If anyone has been moving articles without discussion at RM, I would say that is disruptive.  Robert McClenon (talk) 08:07, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Time to allow internal consistency within articles when it comes to naming order?
Should the text In general, proper editorial judgment should be applied to maintain internal consistency within an individual article, whether or not the articles on other people follow a different format. The format used in a given biographical article's title should be given priority in such cases; for non-biographical articles, the format used in the majority of the cited sources (most reliable sources will be internally consistent) should be followed. be added to Manual of Style/Japan-related articles? Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 08:54, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Japanese name order
Just checking in for Japanese modern names should be written in Western order (unless they're stage names like Utada Hikaru or Koda Kumi), correct? , I remember we encountered a similar problem with Produce 48 over MOS:JAPAN; can I get your input? lullabying (talk) 18:21, 2 November 2018 (UTC)


 * They should be in Western order unless there's a large insistence of stage name = Eastern name order by the artist, as was done with Utada and Koda. You can see in Koda's talk page this was a big contentious issue. AngusWOOF  ( bark  •  sniff ) 18:28, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
 * We're running into an edit war about this for Iz One. Can you provide justification for using Western name order? lullabying (talk) 18:31, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
 * See Talk:Produce 48 where I cited MOS:JAPAN standards early in the show, but it may be a moot point if they go with Korean mononyms for their stage names.  AngusWOOF  ( bark  •  sniff ) 18:35, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
 * To be honest, I'm actually having trouble locating the exact text where it says Western name orders are preferred for modern Japanese names on MOS:JAPAN! lullabying (talk) 18:38, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
 * You mean Manual_of_Style/Japan-related_articles? "Use the form personally or professionally used by the person, if available in the English/Latin alphabet (this can include the spelling appearing on their official website or official social media profile, but do not rely on a URL when the actual text is all Japanese);" Right now the only articles that insist on Eastern order for Iz One (and Produce 48) members are the Korean-based websites which fall in the "do not rely", whereas the rest of the English media (mainstream newspapers) use Western order for the 48 group Japanese members and Korean Eastern order for its English members. As mentioned above, it may be moot if all the girls start using mononyms for their stage names.  AngusWOOF  ( bark  •  sniff ) 18:47, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your response. lullabying (talk) 18:49, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
 * The text you refer to was actually removed several years ago but we still tend to follow it, either by force of habit or failure to move articles to meet the current standard. The text quotes was also in the MOS back then, and so was never actually meant to refer to naming order. Back in 2012-2013 it was almost always quoted as being in favour of removing macrons from the names of media personalities based on the stylized roman text on their otherwise exclusively Japanese "official websites" (which were all clearly designed and operated by third parties, with no indication that the person themselves "preferred" one spelling over another).
 * AngusWOOF: The above is not to say you are wrong to interpret it in its current placement in the guideline as referring to naming order, but it clearly could not have been originally intended that way, since it has remained largely unchanged since the guideline explicitly told editors to write modern names in western order and historical names in Japanese order. I'm pretty sure I actually added the "do not rely on the URL" thing myself, or pushed for it to be added, specifically because it was being abused by editors who didn't like macrons.
 * Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 10:47, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Addendum: I've actually done some translations for a company in Japan that has an in-house English style guideline giving the exact same 1868 cut-off point we used to. I'm not sure if they (and presumably a lot of others) got it from us or we picked it up from a similar external source, or if it's just a coincidence. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 10:51, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Oh Nohs!
The introduction to the article Noh, brutally abridged (and with slashes "/" for paragraph breaks), but verbatim:


 * Noh (能), [...] Traditionally, a Noh program includes five Noh plays with comedic kyōgen plays in between; an abbreviated program of two Noh plays and one kyōgen piece has become common in Noh presentations today. An okina (翁) play may be presented in the very beginning [...]. / Nō together with Kyōgen is part of Nōgaku theatre. / [...] Having a strong emphasis on tradition rather than innovation, Noh is extremely codified and regulated by the iemoto system.

So 能 is almost consistently spelled "noh" (exception at the start of the second paragraph), which is consistently italicized and capitalized; "kyōgen" is consistently italicized but inconsistently capitalized; "okina" is italicized and not capitalized.

I understand that "noh" is far more widely used in English text than "nō", "nô" or "no". So OK, we use "noh".

If we did use "no", then this might lead to jarring effects, no? Capitalizing it ("No") would be an anomalous but fairly effective way of avoiding such trouble. However, we're not using "no"; we're instead using "noh". Why the anomalous capitalization? (And since the word is widely used in English, why the insistent italicizing?)

A decade ago, LordAmeth [please come back!] wrote:


 * I stand by my suggestion that (a) all of these terms [for Japanese genres of performing arts] should be uncapitalized (normal case), (b) Noh is an exception, and should be capitalized by convention (I think if we look at enough sources, we will find that the majority use this format)

If we look at enough sources, we find that the majority use "ELLEGARDEN" for what we term "Ellegarden". Putting aside the matter of italicization, the mid-sentence capitalization of "Noh" strikes me as wholly unnecessary and rather bizarre. Comments? -- Hoary (talk) 23:46, 5 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Have you heard the one about the empty wall meant for kyogen advertisements? It had a sign that said "Post No Bills."
 * In my English dictionary, Noh is capitalized. That probably has something to do with when it was integrated into English. But I don't find Noh at all offensive. On the other hand, kyōgen is not really a recognized word in English, so I think no caps and italicized is fine for it. Cf. move wars at Shogi/Shōgi. Dekimasu よ! 02:56, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
 * That's a good little joke. &para; So, words that are capitalized regardless of where they're used are: proper names ("Holland"), adjectives corresponding to names ("Dutch"), words whose references awe the writer ("His" when Christians refer to their god; see also presidential tweets), "I", and "Noh". Still seems bizarre to me. It's certainly true that many writers capitalize "Noh"; but it's also true that many don't (example from Columbia UP). -- Hoary (talk) 13:03, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Fwiw, LDEL (1984) gives a cross-ref to an entry "No, Noh"; capitalised, but "No" preferred. Cf. "Kabuki" it says, and this latter is given as "Kabuki (often not cap)". I think the post hoc (at least) rationalisation would be that it is, sort of, a proper noun. I recally a discussion about whether "Internet" should be capitalised, on the grounds that there is only one of them, so it's "proper". Imaginatorium (talk) 14:29, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Do we enjoy the Opera, Imaginatorium? Or Concerts? At Times it seems that we're going back to the 18th Century. (Jacob Rees Mogg might applaud.) The Guardian regards "no(h)" as so unique that, um, it goes unmentioned in the expected page of its style guide. Its older articles capitalize (example); its newer ones don't (example). -- Hoary (talk) 11:15, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Japanese instructions on names
Surely account now needs to be taken of the Japanese preferences for writing names with the family name first. See Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names. Any comments? What about Shinzō Abe?--Ipigott (talk) 07:44, 22 May 2019 (UTC)
 * The request by the foreign minister could be discussed at Japanese name, perhaps, but our manual of style would not be based upon official names even were we to recognize this as under the purview of the Japanese government (which we don't, really). I never say "Shinzō Abe" when speaking English, but I don't think the story cited here presents any new issues that aren't already taken into account in the style guide. Dekimasu よ! 09:26, 22 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Note that the Ukrainian government actually sent a letter to the foundation asking for Kiev to be renamed to Kyiv, but Kiev is still more common, so ENwiki uses that. The surnames style should reflect the preferences of most English popular media sources. If those sources change suit, Wikipedia shall do so. WhisperToMe (talk) 14:13, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

Template to show in parenthesis: 1) kanji/kana, and then 2) rōmaji
Greetings!

I was wondering if there is a simple tag that just shows in parenthesis (A) the kanji/kana, and then (B) the rōmaji? I would need such a tag in the lede of an article that I'm editing (Lean manufacturing), and the current text go like this (numeration added):

"Lean manufacturing or lean production, often simply "lean", is a (4) systematic method for waste minimization ((3) "Muda") within a manufacturing system without sacrificing productivity, which can cause problems."

I have worked earlier with the MOS:JAPAN and MOS:CHINA, but I've never run into a problem that simple before. In the aforementioned article, all I want to say is the following (numeration added):

"Lean manufacturing or lean production, often simply "lean", is a (4) systematic method for waste minimization ((3) Muda (2) 無駄) within a manufacturing system without sacrificing productivity, which can cause problems."

So, what's the problem? Let's reflect through a China-related article, Fuji (the numerations added):

"Beginning around the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 CE), the fuji method and written characters changed from (2) 扶箕 (1) "support the sieve" (4) (spirit-writing using a suspended sieve or winnowing tray)"

So in a nutshell, we have (1) the English translation (support the sieve), (2) hanzi (扶箕), (3) romanization of the word (not present in the aforementioned quote), and (4) an explanation for the English term ((spirit-writing using a suspended sieve or winnowing tray)). See, in the Japan-related articles there is already a practice on how to deal with this kind of sentences, and the formatting of sentences follows the exact structure as mentioned above ((1) - (2) - (3) - (4)). This is handled by a language tag. For example, in the Shinnyo-en article, a similar piece of text is handled like this:

"Joyful donations (歓喜 kangi, monetary contribution to the organization)"

In plain code, this would appear as: Joyful donations (歓喜)

But now, the queestion is how do we deal with a (4) - (3) - (2) structure? Actually, we could just forget about the first part, number (4) ("...systematic method for waste minimization.) It already gives the English explanation by itself. But how to deal with the remaining part? Something so simple. Inside parenthesis ... (3) the first part transliterated, (3) the second part in kanji/kana.

I hope I could make myself understood! :-) The numerration is supposed to be coherent through all the examples! Cheers! ;-) Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 22:31, 1 February 2019 (UTC)


 * I have read this post of yours three times, but still fail to understand it. Within it, you say:


 * all I want to say is the following (numeration added):


 * "Lean manufacturing or lean production, often simply "lean", is a (4) systematic method for waste minimization ((3) Muda (2) 無駄) within a manufacturing system without sacrificing productivity, which can cause problems."


 * What's wrong with


 * "Lean manufacturing or lean production, often simply "lean", is a systematic method for waste minimization (Muda 無駄) within a manufacturing system without sacrificing productivity, which can cause problems."


 * ? (Incidentally, I'm puzzled by your capitalization of Muda; is this relevant to the thread immediately below?) -- Hoary (talk) 00:08, 7 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Hoary! I don't blame you; I'm so knee deep in hoopla with the topic, that sometimes I can't see the forest for the trees :-) Let me rephrase my question. I was wondering if there exists a template for: Muda 無駄 ?  At the moment, one parameter ((3) romanization of the word) is excluded from the template syntax ((2) hanzi), 無駄.
 * A steady nihongo -template would help the coherence and consistency across the articles. Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 19:03, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I do not understand why it would ever be necessary to have the romanization (3) precede the kanji (2) in such a case. If kanji are important enough to include, they are important enough to include before the romanization. Otherwise, what are you romanizing? Hoary's workaround allows you to do it, but things are already usefully standardized across articles by Template:Nihongo, because as you noted above, waste minimization (無駄) (that is, waste minimization (無駄) ) already yields the kanji and romanization in a specific order consistently. Dekimasu よ! 20:07, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Setting aside for the moment that muda is really the waste itself (what needs elimination) and not actually its minimization or the translation of any other particular term here. Dekimasu よ! 20:09, 23 February 2019 (UTC)


 * You are right. Considering the fact that indeed kanji should precede the romanization, is perfectly sufficient. For example,   gives a nice and beautiful: waste (無駄). And of course, the (1) English translation is there by definition (or else, what would the kanji be referring to?).
 * Even with a longer insert, can be used. For example, the   would appear as: is a systematic method originating in the Japanese manufacturing industry for the minimization of waste (無駄).
 * However, a little more complicated issue arises with the following example, where the parenthesised kanji and romanization are preceded by (4) an explanation for the English term: "Lean also takes into account waste created through ... unevenness in work loads (斑 mura). (emphasis added)"


 * Above, the underscored word uneveness would be the (1) English translation, but there are other explanatory words in between the (2) kanji and the (3) romanization, and thus the template here does not work.
 * In other words, how to cope when such a case arises? Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 11:47, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

Name order
Hi, I have a question about the name order for biographies of Japanese individuals. I'm aware that our articles tend to put the family name last for biographies on living people and those who lived recently, but where exactly do we draw that line> For instance, when I see an article such as Asada Tokunori (an individual who lived from 1848 to 1933), which name is the family name? Lepricavark (talk) 14:37, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
 * The cut-off used to be 1868 (the beginning of the Meiji era), but that was overturned somewhat recently (last couple of years?), and doesn't seem to have been replaced with any other rule-of-thumb. If you follow the 1868 cut-off, though, you probably won't go wrong. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 01:26, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

It looks like the Japanese government is encouraging the surname-first order. Maybe we can just unify all names to that order and not have to deal with that. Ythlev (talk) 19:13, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Double quotation marks/brackets for book titles
Should Japanese book titles, etc. be enclosed in double quotation marks/brackets (『...』) within the text of an article or in a citation?

For example:

As opposed to:

It seems logical to me, seeing as how we italicize book titles in English, and the double brackets are basically the Japanese equivalent of italics. However, I wasn't able to find anything about brackets in the Manual of Style, and the "cite book" template example doesn't use brackets for Japanese titles, either. – KuroMina (talk) 11:10, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Apostrophe between two syllables beginning with vowels
Just to be sure, for terms like Fudō Myō-ō, it should be Fudō Myōō, not Fudō Myō'ō or Fudō Myō-ō. Right? Without an apostrophe it seems a little confusing pronunciation wise, but if that's the standard here then I'll start changing them across the wiki. - A Morozov  &#9001;talk&#9002; 13:19, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Pretty late but seeing that you haven't changed it yet: yes it would be Fudō Myōō unless theres a WP:COMMONNAME for the others, which I don't think is the case. ◢ <i style="background-color:#d103ac; color:#fff">   Ganbaruby!  </i>  (Say hi!) 12:59, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Love (Mika Nakashima album)
The Ø is not wrong. See other articles such as Øresund, they allow the use of Ø.CuteDolphin712 (talk) 09:28, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Sorry, what are you talking about? There is no context to your message, no request for something and nothing for a discussion. What is it you're hoping to gain with this post? <b style="color: Blue;">Canterbury Tail</b> <i style="color: Blue;">talk</i> 20:31, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm talking about the stylization. I meant the letter O with strike in "Love".CuteDolphin712 (talk) 10:08, 14 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Okay lets start again. What is it you are asking this noticeboard to do? Look at it from our context. You've just posted a statement about (presumably) an article. You've made no indication of what you think is wrong or what you want changing. From an outsider your comments above are just random comments, not attempts to improve the encyclopaedia of change anything. Anyway if you have an issue with a specific article, please refer to the talk page of that article. If you have something that is of consequence to a wider range of Japan related articles then this is the right noticeboard. So far from your edit all I'm getting is you have a comment about a particular article, so this is the wrong place. <b style="color: Blue;">Canterbury Tail</b> <i style="color: Blue;">talk</i> 12:09, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Discussion at Template talk:Nihongo
You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:Nihongo. — Goszei (talk) 00:45, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Japanese actor article titles
Following a question I posed in Wikipedia:Teahouse yesterday (here), there are several articles pertaining to Japanese voice actors that I think have grounds to be moved based on the official (& most commonly used in English speaking sources) romanizations of their names. There are some articles that already follow this naming pattern (e.g. Koutaro Nishiyama, Kenjiro Tsuda, & Showtaro Morikubo) but currently a large portion of voice actor related articles default to using diacritical markings instead (e.g. Sōma Saitō instead of Soma Saito). I already have a decent list of articles that I believe could be candidates for renaming, and would be happy to provide sufficient evidence to support each instance.

I'm aware this isn't necessarily the only place to raise this discussion before actually changing any articles, but based on the comments received on my Teahouse post this seemed the most appropriate spot to discuss the issue.

Thanks, Saruhikofushimis (talk) 12:46, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Pokémon transliteration
Folks watching here might be able to help answer a question at Template talk:Episode list. Thanks! -- Beland (talk) 04:31, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Proposed MoS addition on optional stress marking in Japanese, Korean, Russian, Ukrainian, etc.
Please see: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style, for a proposal relating to optional characters/marks for indicating vocal stress, used in some foreign languages, include "ruby" characters for Japanese and Korean, and znaki udareniya marks in Ukrainian and Russian. The short version is that, based on a rule already long found in MOS:JAPAN and consonant with WP:NOTDICT policy, MoS would instruct (in MOS:FOREIGN) not to use these marks (primarily intended for pedagogical purposes) except in unusual circumstances, like direct quotation, or discussion of the marks themselves. Target date for implementation is April 21. PS: This does not relate to Vietnamese tone marks. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:41, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

WP:JFN
What should we move for Japanese-related articles for manual of style in the first sentence for footnotes on Japanese, or I just say MOS:JFN? for example, Japanese video games have footnotes that is recommended that unless the Japanese name (kanji/kana) is critical to the understanding of the topic, one should place it in a footnote to the official English title. --49.150.96.127 (talk) 00:24, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Conversion of full-width Latin letters and Arabic numbers
Greetings! I'm starting a cleanup of characters in the Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms (Unicode block); some of them have leaked into English-language text. Since English Wikipedia uses variable-width fonts and horizontal writing, based on some quick research it looks like it's actually safe to transform full-width Latin letters and Arabic numerals to their ASCII equivalents (Ａ-Ｚ to A-Z, ａ-ｚ to a-z, and ０-９ to 0-9) even when they appear on English Wikipedia in Chinese, Japanese, or Korean text. This of course does not include instances where the characters themselves are under discussion. My plan is to start doing that when the next database dump is available in a week or two. If you have any questions, objections, concerns, or suggestions, please let me know! -- Beland (talk) 20:46, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Name order
I would like the revive the debate about name order. I don't know when or how this happened, but the present section on this subject is woefully inadequate. It presently reads: "In all cases, the spelling and name order used (for the title, and within the article body) should be that most commonly used in reliable, third-party English-language sources (encyclopedias, newspapers, magazines, academic books, academic journals, etc.) per WP:TITLE. If no one form can be determined to be the most common, follow the guidance given below."

The problem is that there is no 'guidance below' on the subject of name order. It seems like it was removed, at some point. Basically, this guideline provides no guidance anymore. It goes on to talk about the 'form' of the name, not the name order, then finishes with 'If none of the above is available, use the macronned form', failing to specify the default name order at all. I think, very simply, we should adopt the following proposal to replace point 5 in the 'modern names' section: "If no one form can be determined to be the most common, default to the modified Hepburn romanisation and Japanese name order." How does anyone feel about this? RGloucester — ☎ 18:21, 21 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I think that works. However, I have another burning question about name order, relating to a problem that I'm running into. With articles that mention multiple Japanese people (as many do), some of whom commonly are referred to by Western name order and some of whom are commonly referred to by Japanese name order (or are not referred to frequently), are we then supposed to switch between Japanese and Western name order? Or would it be better (and this is my thinking) to keep a consistent name order throughout the article, except for possibly people who work in international contexts so much that they almost exclusively go by one order? Sandtalon (talk) 08:22, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Help:Japanese provides a very clear rule that I think would do well here: the names of persons born after the Meiji Restoration should be "First Last" by default, unless there is an overwhelming usage to the contrary in sources (which is very, very rare). This rule already appears to be implemented on widespread scale in Japan-related articles. It is basically the same rule with how we handle romanizations of words, modified Hepburn by default unless there is overwhelming usage to the contrary (rare). — Goszei (talk) 09:15, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Considering that the directive of the Japanese government is for western media to now use the tradition eastern naming convention, if our only source of the name is in the eastern usage, why would Wikipedia continue use the western order, especially as contradicting the source material isn't encyclopedic?  Lympathy    Talk  21:47, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
 * The Japanese government also directs that we're supposed to use Kunrei instead of Hepburn, but the world continues to use Hepburn and so does Wikipedia. Jpatokal (talk) 09:39, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Bumping up this discussion. IMHO the current rules for modern names are hugely overcomplicated and for most part unnecessarily so: as far as I can tell, virtually every article about post-Meiji people uses the Western/First Last order. Dare I suggest the following radical simplification?


 * Modern figures in Japan default to using the Western name order (Firstname Lastname) with Hepburn romanization: Yayoi Kusama, Haruki Murakami. Other romanizations or name orders can be used if they are the most common name in reliable sources: Junichiro Koizumi (not Jun'ichirō Koizumi), Moyoco Anno (not Moyoko Anno).

Thoughts welcome. Jpatokal (talk) 09:56, 8 January 2022 (UTC)


 * I'm 100% for using given name-first order for all names of all cultures when using English. If we don't, it's gonna result in people treating "Abe" as his given name, rather than his family name. To flip the coin, if i were referred to in Japanese, for example, I wouldn't mind being called [Surname] [Givenname]. It's a not hill i especially plan to die on, but I'd much rather remove confusion wherever possible. Starbeam2 (talk) 16:00, 21 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the suppport. Any other views? Jpatokal (talk) 14:29, 27 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Bump. Will assume consensus and plunge forward unless I hear otherwise. Jpatokal (talk) 08:05, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

The rule stated above is best "the names of persons born after the Meiji Restoration should be "First Last" by default, unless there is an overwhelming usage to the contrary in sources"

Yeah sure, it might be nice to do last-first, but it's not our role to dictate style, and the majority of English-language sources (which Wikipedia is based on) follow the guidance above Fredlesaltique (talk) 11:55, 7 March 2022 (UTC)


 * It makes much more sense to do it consistently, rather than how every other source does it. That said, i do support givenname-first order, as stated above. Starbeam2 (talk) 14:23, 15 March 2022 (UTC)


 * I must oppose this change, because it flies directly in the face of one of our policies, WP:AT. AT specifies that an article subject's WP:COMMONNAME should be used. If a person is commonly referred to in RS with family name/given name order, there is no justification for defying those sources and creating our own original styling. There is also no justification, as far as I can see, for defaulting to given name/family name order for those people that don't have a common name in English sources. I see a lot of WP:OR here, but no analysis of actual source usage. Family name/given name order for Japanese people has been the default in academic sources for years. Of course, journalistic sources have yet to catch up, but in a situation where both forms coexist, and one is considered more culturally preferable by the people's government, there are no grounds for outlawing the latter. Any change to this guideline, it seems, will require an RfC, where we can actually look at what RS do. RGloucester  — ☎ 14:33, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Question on Kunrei-shiki redirects and using Kunrei-shiki terms in articles
In this deletion discussion Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2022_May_6 the nominator argued that if I have a redirect from a Kunrei-shiki spelling (for example "Sinobu-zyutu", the Kunrei version of "Shinobi-jutsu"), the spelling needs to appear as an alternative term in some form in the article body.

There are two questions: 1. Should articles use Kunrei-shiki terms in footnotes and/or otherwise in note sections 2. Should Kunrei-shiki redirects and/or Nippon-shiki terms only be retained if the Kunrei-shiki term and/or the Nippon-shiki term appear(s) in the article?

Thank you, WhisperToMe (talk) 18:57, 11 May 2022 (UTC)


 * Not necessarily. Generally, the Kunreishiki shouldn't be a redirect or in the article unless there are reliable sources that use it. It's not all that common for most things. ··· 日本穣 ·  投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 19:34, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

Latin letters and Arabic numerals in non-romanized text
Should non-romanized Japanese text containing Latin letters and/or Arabic numerals, encased within nihongo, use fullwidth or halfwidth characters?

i.e. which of these two is preferable: Foobar123 (フーバー１２３) vs. Foobar123 (フーバー123) – dudhhr talk contribs (he/they) 16:39, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

Help resolving a dispute regarding the ruby field of the nihongo template
Hello,

A few days ago, I noticed a strange use of the ruby field of the nihongo template in this article: "Heavens Arena". The ruby field seemed entirely superfluous to me, considering "てんくうとうぎじょう" is the regular reading of "天空闘技場" (and the romaji field is already there to tell us what said reading is), which is why I edited it out, commenting "unnecessary".

That edit got reverted by user SuperSkaterDude45 for being "unconstructive" without any further comment. I figured said user simply wasn't familiar with the way the nihongo template was used on Wikipedia (fair enough: I wouldn't consider that "common knowledge"), so I explained my reasoning when I fixed the article back: it's just the regular reading of those words.

If you take a quick look at that article, you'll see the ruby field is used... quite a bit, here and there. I personally think it's largely surperfluous, but I can kinda/sorta see the argument that it adds information in cases like this: ""The Cat Who Lived a Million Times": Cat's Name" or this: "Without You" (you wouldn't know the readings "Neko no Namae" and "Kimi ga Inai" are written in katakana based on the romaji field alone). And I imagine adding the ruby characters might also prevent well-meaning editors who know a bit about Japanese but aren't familiar with the series from "fixing" what might, at first glance, look like weird vandalism in the romaji field. And while I wouldn't bother with the ruby field in those cases, personally, I'm not so fundamentally opposed to them that I would go around removing them.

But "Heavens Arena" is another matter, for the reason stated above. The ruby field is just redundant, there. Same thing for two other terms I noticed in the article when I read further: "Needle People" and "Tornado Top". I also noticed an empty ruby field resulting in a formatting error: "Aura Synthesis". I fixed all of those.

... Only to be reverted by user SuperSkaterDude45, who once again didn't justify their revert, but did warn me for edit warring on my talk page.

I have since been trying to explain myself on that user's talk page, to ask for their rationale for their reverts, without any success.

I'm really sorry to bother you with what seems to me like a fairly elementary (silly, even) matter, but could you chime in, please?

Thank you. 89.159.251.169 (talk) 11:35, 22 November 2022 (UTC)


 * There has been discussion about this: I believe there is a consensus that "Ruby" should not be used except in exceptional cases. (I can find my comment in the nihongo template, but sadly can't find any more. Basically I think you are right: it is utterly unnecessary in this case, and is not part of the English language, so would really require proper explanation. Imaginatorium (talk) 13:41, 22 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Silly me, it's in this style article: Ruby Imaginatorium (talk) 04:36, 23 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your reply. 89.159.251.169 (talk) 04:49, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Romanization reform ideas
I want to change to suggest a few changes to the Wikipedia romanization of Japanese names; 1) to respell long vowels, and 2) to distinguish yotsugana. All of the further demonstrations will be in hiragana, to save time writing this.

1. I suggest either a) using ou for long o おう, oo for おお, and o'u for separately pronounced おう; or b) long おう being written as ô (with circumflex), with おお being ō (with macron), and ou being used for separately pronounced おう. The goal i'm setting is consistency and distinction between different types of long vowels: えい, which is always written ei regardless of it being a long vowel or vowel hiatus is written one way, while いい is always ī despite the other vowels not officially using macrons. Moreover, ええ is distinct from both pronunciations of えい romanizations despite the functioning similarly to the ou/oo contrast. Should option "a" be selected, i would go for using double letters for all (other) long vowels and apostrophe to mark hiatuses. Should yall decide on using the "b" option, i'd also recommend using macrons for all long vowels; except non-separate えい which becomes ê to mirror ô.

2. I suggest using dzu for づ and dji for ぢ, with the corresponding yōon for dji following suit, and the long consonant forms simply adding another "d" in front. I'm aware modern Japanese almost entirely uses them in rendaku or for dialectal pronunciations, but i want to try and maintain any written distinction for the sake of disambiguity. At least in just the rendaku forms, or words/name specific to a dialect distinguishing the letters.

Thank you for reading and if there's any clarification needed, i am happy to oblige. Starbeam2 (talk) 16:28, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I think Wikipedia should stick to the standardised romanisation methods like ANSI Z39.11-1972 (Modified Hepburn) or ISO 3602 (Kunrei) and not try to create its own. --Thibaut (talk) 16:03, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm aware more official systems exist, but they're IMO, a bit inadequate for marking the nuances of modern Standard Japanese orthography/ phonology- short of marking the different scripts- which no latinization can do. If being precise means inventing something new, so be it. That said, I'll follow consensus ofc. Starbeam2 (talk) 16:36, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I think we need to stick to formal official systems and not try and come up with our own romanization system. For a start, we would not be able to source and reference it. Everything, and all romanizations, should be capable of being sourced and referenced to reliable third party sources. Doing our own thing would fall afoul of that and be a non-started out of the gate as a result. <b style="color: Blue;">Canterbury Tail</b> <i style="color: Blue;">talk</i> 17:00, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I understand your POV, tho i'm not 100% cetain on what you mean by the articles not being able to be sourced/ referenced? Isn't Wikimedia NOT a source?Starbeam2 (talk) 18:35, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
 * See WP:RS, no Wikimedia is not a valid source as its user generated. Ultimately there's no point us coming up with our own romanization system, as if no one else uses it it's not helpful to the reader. Plus as mentioned we can't source it. We cannot translate things into romanized transliterations, we need to rely on other sources to tell us how to do that otherwise we fall afoul of Original research Ultimate we cannot be our own source on how things are romanized, only reliable third partys and third party accepted methods of romanization can be used. <b style="color: Blue;">Canterbury Tail</b> <i style="color: Blue;">talk</i> 19:12, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree that romanization (in Japanese templates) should use standardized systems. WhisperToMe (talk) 18:58, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't understand how romanization is original research; Japanese romanization isn't 100% consistent across the internet and it's not a change in the information itself, but how said information is presented. Additionally, it being unintuitive to most readers is irrelevant, the consonants follow English rules but the vowels are almost a match for continental European language values; the purpose is to be as faithful as possible. That said, if more people show up and whatnot, i'll concede.Starbeam2 (talk) 23:39, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
 * We should use whichever romanization is most common in reliable sources, regardless of what romanization version that is. If there is no most common version, then we use modified Hepburn here. That's MOS:JA in a nutshell. ··· 日本穣 ·  投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 20:01, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't disagree with the first clause at all, or if the specific person/group demands a certain spelling. Starbeam2 (talk) 18:13, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

There's also the fact that if anyone understands Japanese enough that they want to know whether something romanized in Hepburn as ō is formed from おう or おお, they can generally find that out by switching to the Japanese version of the article or by looking the term up in Wiktionary. For the majority of English speakers, knowing that is not of very much help to understanding the pronunciation, and romanising an ō sound as ou or oo would lead to them thinking the sound is pronounced like the ou in you or the oo in boo – which are u sounds, respectively, not ō. Tempjrds (talk) 03:36, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I am not interested in perfect matches to English phonology, this is another language after all. I mostly find it frustrating long e is <ei> (and sometimes <ee>), long i is <ii>, but long o and u are much more inconsistent. I can get behind おう and おお being romanized alike, so long as it applies to long e (えい and ええ) too, tho. Starbeam2 (talk) 18:13, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Date formats
It might be a good idea to add something to MOS:JAPAN about date formats to be used for dates written in English. Both the "mdy" and "dmy" formats are widely used throughout the country and often the only difference in usage seems to be one of individual preference. There doesn't seem to be one format that's preferred per MOS:DATETIES and even official government websites seem to use both (sometimes even within the same website). Unless there's clearly a consensus established to use one format over the other for articles about Japanese subjects, it seems that MOS:DATEVAR should be the guiding principle that MOS:JAPAN follows. I'm only bringing this up because various script-users seem to be under the impression that articles need to be formatted in the "dmy" date format. Twice articles about Japanese subjects for which I've created and intentionally selected the "mdy" format have be unilaterally changed by someone using a script without any explanation being given or any attempt made to discuss such a change until after the fact. Perhaps, it more of a script being set up that way than an editor knowingly making such a change, but it's kind of annoying mainly because it's not being discussed. Discussions like Talk:Keiji Nishikawa, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Japan/Archive/March 2014, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Japan/Archive/March 2018 and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Japan/Archive/April 2022 might be avoidable if there was something about date format in MOS:JAPAN. The issue seems to be people using things like (an older version of that file), or Wikipedia articles like Date format by country and Date and time notation in Japan in their assessments, but those can be changed at anytime for any reason by anyone. Unless there are studies that can be cited to clearly show that one format is statistically preferred over the other by a wide margin, it seems that they should be being treated by Wikipedia as equally acceptable to use. -- Marchjuly (talk) 23:01, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Sub-Municipality
The manual of style mentions how to write ward names, but I was wondering what to put for other sub municipalities for cities that haven't been official designated yet Places like Sasebo Nagasaki prefecture which has several defined areas listed on the japanese site but they are not wards. 地区 is the kanji i found used when these places were listed TheHaloVeteran2 (talk) 04:22, 3 January 2023 (UTC)


 * I just added some missing info on Japanese addressing system 5th paragraph #2 in "Below this level" on. Hope it clarifies what it is.  In terms of "what to put", my choice as a person familiar with American expressions would be 'area' or 'block', but translation is not science, with heavy dependence on what country/area/dialect version of English the Japanese address is translated to.  If your article is about some British concept and its effect on specific parts of Japan, then 'area' or 'block' might not be appropriate, though I don't see much problem in translating 佐世保市世知原町赤木場１７−２ to Akakoba 17-2, Sechibaru-Chō, Sasebo.   Yiba  (talk | contribs) 05:10, 21 February 2023 (UTC)