Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Japan/Archive/March 2014

expertise needed at Kancho
Some cultural experts are needed.

Is the "prank" the common usage of the term? its not coming up as such in Japanese-English dictionaries - its been enema, ministerial/governmental office, and occasionally spy or museum curator or tide going out. But the article does seem to have 2 valid sources.

If it is a common usage, is there likely enough reliable sourced content to create an article or is it just going to be a WP:DICDEF?

Thank you! -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  16:31, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
 * It depends on who you ask. If you ask a group of kindergarten students, then that's exactly the meaning they will give you because that's pretty much the only context that they know the word. Same goes for similar words like chinchin and shikko, which also have other meanings. As for sourcing it, you might find stuff in online dictionaries or books on Japanese slang and other popular media such as manga or anime. I am sort of surprised to see that this term has it's own English Wikipedia page. There is a Japanese Wikipedia page for it, however, which is not as surprising. That article does make a better attempt at establishing notability, but even it has only one source. I've been kanchō-ed many times as a joke, and if you asked pretty much any Japanese person, they'd probably say the same. Some might even admit to being on the giving end. So, I say yes this is sort of a common usage in that sense, but is that good enough for Wikipedia. I personally don't see this as a stand-alone article, but it maybe worth mentioning as a part of another article; However, there do appear to be quite a few stand-alone articles for Japanese slang words, etc. which may be due to the popularity or anime and manga. Maybe that's part of the reason why this article was also created. - Marchjuly (talk) 22:23, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Do Susumu Nakanishi and Donald Keene count as "historians"?
This is about Talk:Yamanoue no Okura again. One of the two users who are insisting on removing the main historical theory from the article has been arguing that "historians don't accept it", but the only historians he can name are political historians who don't specialize in literary history, and he has been making some rather odd claims that Donald Keene (who wrote a 4,000+page history of Japanese literature) is not a "real" historian. Can someone shed some light on this? Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 23:15, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Where should this redirect go?
Kaguya-hime no Monogatari

かぐや姫の物語 is an informal Japanese name for the Taketori Monogatari when it is used as a children's fairy tale, but I'd be willing to bet no English speaker has ever searched this term and meant to find the article on the classical text. There is however a very popular animated film from Studio Ghibli whose official Japanese name is this, and the direct English translation is already the title of the film article.

Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 10:14, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Notability?
Dean Rogers ... are there any other sources? In ictu oculi (talk) 17:40, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
 * The source already there (an interview with the subject in an online-only newspaper/blog) is not the best, and it seems the article on his company is not much better. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 10:18, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Additionally, both articles are the work of SPAs ( and respectively) active at around the same time in February/March 2011, so I'm inclined to think there is a bit of COI/SPAM/MEAT going on here. And the article on the company contains a weird mistake in its title (if it also teaches French the disambiguator "eikaiwa" is inappropriate). Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 10:38, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
 * How does something like that get approved as an article? Isn't there some kind of vetting process that new articles must go through before being added? Kind of surprised that it has not been deleted yet. It was proposed for deletion 20 minutes after it was created, then somebody added a single source which made it apparantly good enough to last essentially as is up until now (over 3 years). - Marchjuly (talk) 12:24, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
 * New articles by new editors can be speedied but this is often rejected if a single source can be found. There's also proposed deletion (which happened here) but if this is opposed by anyone (even the article's creator) that user doesn't even need to cite a source for the deletion to be denied. Then there's WP:AFD, which is what I might try on these articles unless you or In ictu oculi beat me to it... Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 13:23, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for shedding some light on that for me. I'm all for trying to save articles whenever possible, but this one does seem like some form of self-promotion and I'm not sure how notable this person is. He could really be a prominent member of the Eikaiwa/Language School industry in Japan. If that's the case, there should sufficient reliable sources out there to use. As is, I could see this possibly being a part of another article or maybe even a stub, but there doesn't seem to be enough there in my opinion for stand-alone status.- Marchjuly (talk) 01:39, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
 * As for the article on his company, The same JT source is cited three times which seems like padding because that whole paragraph really only needed to be cited once. The GP mentions are just job listings which don't seem very reliable to me because the are typically written by the company itself, right? All the other stuff are blogs, etc. from the either company itself or from affiliated companies which might not be considered neutral enough to be considered a reliable source. The "Instructor employment system" seems more like a job advertisement than an encyclopedic entry. The only really notable thing I noticed was perhaps the information about the patent. - Marchjuly (talk) 01:48, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

AfC submission - 06/03
Articles for creation/Ryusai Shigeharu. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 17:26, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Japanese film remake?
Hi everybody!

I have a question that was left at the Horror Wikiproject by a newcomer: "Hi, I am new here and would like to suggest an edit for the page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigappu_Rojakkal Under the Remakes section it was stated that "Sigappu Rojakkal was remade in Japanese as Red Roses (1979)" - There are no results from Google search regarding a Japanese movie titled Red Rose in reference to Sigappu Rojakkal - are there any references to this? However I have found a Japanese movie from 1979 titled "Beautiful Girl Hunter" which seems to have a similar plot to Sigappu Rojakkal and could be the Japanese movie in question."

Thank you, Rapunzel-bellflower (talk) 18:12, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Discussion on the MOS talk page
There is a somewhat contentious ongoing discussion over changes to the MOS for Japan-related topics taking place at WT:MOS-JP. These generally relate to romanization standards. If you are interested, please join the discussion. Dekimasu よ! 18:30, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Disruption with Ryulong
The editor has put the nihongo foot template. Now he's claiming it goes against the MOS (specifically MOS-JA, which is a bit of stretch considering it doesn't really say it can't be done that way, and even so its not like the MOS can be updated.

What i find this disruptive is the fact how misleading his edits are, by labeling this as "minor" and not even being clear onto what exactly he's doing. He claims Javascript marks it as minor when he's replacing text, but he's not replacing it, he's removing it. And even then, its not exactly clear because the description says ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ghost_in_the_Shell:_Stand_Alone_Complex&diff=598862888&oldid=598632888 JS: Replacing "hongo foot" with "hongo". JS: Replacing "|group=Jp" with "".]'' And of course, refusing to inform respected wikiprojects that use this template.

Now i understand the MOS doesn't explicitly say it allows japanese kanji and hepburn/translation to be in footnotes acceptable, but i do genuinely believe this can be allowed at least for media-related articles. For example: Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex if you look at that article specifically in the media section, you can see how much kanji/hepburn/translation affects sentence flow, but if you look at this example shown here (aside from the TfD notices) you can see that it cleanly moves all the japanese names down in footnotes so that it doesn't affect sentence flow and makes it easier to read. ALSO, since it acts as a footnote, its easy to navigate through. Lucia Black (talk) 18:37, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Why the fuck did you make a thread at WT:ANIME and here? This is the textbook definition of WP:FORUMSHOP. The template is used on less than 50 pages and it was created by one person with no discussion that I can tell years ago. Stop complaining about Twinkle's formatting as well. There's no point in moving the whole god damn title of a book or an album down into the footnotes. If these strings of Japanese text are that disruptive to reading that you don't want them inline with the rest of the article, maybe they shouldn't be on the article in the first place. Now, again, stop forum shopping. If I see you post a thread about this issue anywhere else I will begin a thread at ANI about your behavior.— Ryūlóng ( 琉竜 ) 18:53, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
 * The TfD affects WP:JAPAN as much as WP:ANIME as the Template is under WP:JAPAN and you are claiming this is going against the MOS of WP:JAPAN. Forum Shopping? not really. Lucia Black (talk) 19:11, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
 * The TfD link is here: Templates for discussion/Log/2014 March 9. Lucia Black (talk) 19:30, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
 * You could have just linked to the TFD instead of accused me of disruption.— Ryūlóng ( 琉竜 ) 20:38, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
 * You should've done that from the beginning, so the fact that you refused is disruption. Next time, do the right thing and inform the relevant wikiprojects yourself. That aside, this is still based on actually allowing it in the MOS, for people to not go on a TfD spree. Lucia Black (talk) 22:27, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

RFC: Template:Nihongo foot usage in articles
An RFC discussion about the nihongo foot template can be found here. DragonZero ( Talk  ·  Contribs ) 06:02, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Miori Ichikawa
Hello Japan experts. The above submission at Afc has references in Japanese and may need someone from this project to check them out. Thanks! &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 03:24, 9 March 2014 (UTC)


 * The article looks trustworthy from here upon first glance. There are enough third-party references to demonstrate notability and reliability; obviously, a number of sources used are blog URLs, which may pose a RS issue, however then again the blog in question is the official AKB48 blog (i.e. a primary source directly related to the topic) and hence would probably be reliable for use here. The question relating the AKB48 ameblo.jp references can be decided on, but otherwise this article seems fine. Reference list will have to be properly formatted using Cite web, but that's just housekeeping. -- benlisquare T•C•E 03:37, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Ahh shit, I screwed up with the drop-down menu whilst attempting to move the article to mainspace; it's now currently (and temporarily) at Articles for creation/Miori Ichikawa. I've nominated the old mainspace redirect for CSD, as well as the redirects I made accidentally with the page moves. -- benlisquare T•C•E 03:46, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, it seems that everything is all fixed up now. Thanks for taking the time to help out with the Afc backlog.  Only 1187 more submissions to go.... &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 16:02, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Should a immigration article be created?
Immigration to Japan should such an article be created or do you think it not needed? Dwanyewest (talk) 06:42, 10 March 2014 (UTC)


 * The new article could also be merged with the articles Illegal immigration in Japan and Alien registration in Japan. None of them are very large, and have overlapping subject areas. - Boneyard90 (talk) 12:31, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

I started a talk page for debate on the subject if anyone is interested. Dwanyewest (talk) 21:24, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

New Japanese IPA template: Template:IPAc-ja
user:Kotniski had started an IPA template that took romaji input, but never quite finished. I think I've completed it. If no-one finds any problems, maybe we can start using it in our articles; that way if we decide to change our IPA conventions, we can change the template rather than all of our articles.

I didn't expand kana support, so that's still quite basic. If we don't need it, we should probably remove it altogether; it's wasted if only half supported.

The template supports various romaji conventions (ti, tya or chi, cha; soo, sou, sō but not soh – can add if you want) and outputs the allophones at WP:IPA for Japanese. It does not support IPA input, "N" or "Q". Again, can add if you want, but we should actually use it if we do. It has downstep but not syllable breaks, which I didn't think was worth the extra coding. (I can add it if needed, but it's a bit of a pain.) Ping me if anything needs my attention, or just off with it. — kwami (talk) 03:36, 12 March 2014 (UTC)


 * It would be nice if it were reversible. And if it supported katakana and hiragana (kana) input/output as well. -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 06:44, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Magiri
Does anyone know where to find a map of Ryūkyūan Magiri (間切) on Okinawa Island?  ミーラー強斗武  (talk) 06:42, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
 * How about these?, the explanation in en and . Oda Mari (talk) 09:33, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I found what I was looking for in the last link.  ミーラー強斗武  (talk) 14:34, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

To experienced Wikipedians related to Japanese things; Please proofread the article "Funassyi".
Hello, project members. I am Akiko718atWiki. I translated and made a new English article from a Japanese article ふなっしー(04:47, March 17, 2014 UTC). I am a native speaker of Japanese. I would like you to proofread Funassyi, if you have a time. I would appreciate it if you could correct any mistakes. Thank you for your cooperation.--Akiko718atWiki (talk) 09:37, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Welcome to English Wikipedia. I went through your article, corrected grammar and punctuation, and reorganized it. There are still a few sentences that are oddly placed in Funassyi, but I couldn't see what to do with them for now.  ミーラー強斗武  (talk) 14:56, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Requesting assistance with getting in touch with a Japanese copyright owner
Hello, I was hoping that someone fluent in Japanese would be willing to assist me in getting in contact with a japanese speaking copyright owner. My hope is that they allow for the release an image of theirs to a free license, preferably through the OTRS system so it can be used across all language Wikipedias. It's for this file right here on the english Wikipedia; File:Natalia_Poklonskaya_fanart.png, currently used via fair-use on the article Natalia Poklonskaya, the Japanese article is w:jp:ナタリア・ポクロンスカヤ would benefit from the author releasing the file under a free license as well :). The original author is 紅茶味覺 and they can be reached at this japanese fan-art website. I appreciate any assistance that could be rendered. Thank you, —  dain  omite   03:39, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * According to his Pixiv profile self-introductory biography, it reads "中國廣東小青年一名" (I am a youth from Guangdong Province, China). Do you want me to write you a letter in Chinese instead? -- benlisquare T•C•E 03:48, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Holy smokes, yes, if you could that would be awesome. —  dain  omite   04:30, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Here you go:

 您好！我的名字是Dainomite，一名英文維基百科編輯者. 我的維基百科用戶頁面在.

我非常喜歡您畫的娜塔莉亞·波克隆斯卡婭圖片（Pixiv ID: 42268115），也希望能在維基百科上用您所畫的圖片. 您可不可以把這個畫放在一個CC-BY-SA版權許可上？這樣，我們可以把您的畫放在維基百科上，讓全世界看. CC-BY-SA版權（詳細文：）尊重您的權利——所有使用圖片的人必須把您的名字寫成原創者. 更多信息在這裡：——這頁面提供版權信息和許可函格式.

如果您感興趣的話，請隨時通知我. 謝謝你考慮這個請求.

祝好，Dainomite

Hello! My name is Dainomite, an editor from the English Wikipedia. My Wikipedia user page can be found at .

I believe that your artwork of Natalia Poklonskaya (Pixiv ID: 42268115) is very good, and would really like to use your image on Wikipedia. Would it be possible if you release the aformentioned artwork under a CC-BY-SA license? This way, we are able to use your artwork on Wikipedia for the whole world to see. The CC-BY-SA license (detailed text: ) respects your rights; anyone who would like to use your image must attribute your name as the original creator. More information can be found here:  — this page provides information on copyright licenses and the format for sending permission letters.

If you are interested, feel free to contact me at any time. Thank you for taking my request into consideration.

Regards, Dainomite
 * If you need any adjustments, just ping me again. -- benlisquare T•C•E 05:08, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * That looks perfect. Thank you very much for all your help Benlisquare! Cheers, —  dain  omite   05:47, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Maybe it would be better if you asked the authors to register on Wikipedia and upload their works themselves (instead of asking them for permission). (Point them to the upload guide in Chinese: 1, 2 (link for uploading "my own work" to Commons)). It would be simpler, no confirmation letter would be required. --Moscow Connection (talk) 15:40, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * It would help if Wikipedia wasn't, you know, blocked in China. Furthermore, I prefer OTRS as it provides additional accountability; anyone can create a Commons account with any username and start uploading files, and that is precisely the problem. I can't prove that I'm Michael Jackson, and the files that I'm uploading using my "User:Michael Jackson" Commons account belong to me; OTRS on the other hand is much more reliable. Having the art creator create a Commons account and uploading it themselves increases the risk of the file being deleted in bad faith (because nobody ever trusts a user with 3 edits and a red username on Commons). -- benlisquare T•C•E 01:49, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Even though nowadays most articles aren't blocked in China, there's always a chance that a new block can be added so it's good to take precautions when dealing with those in Mainland China. WhisperToMe (talk) 09:15, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

"Eikaiwa" as a countable noun?
I've noticed this a lot on internet forums such as the Japan Times comments sections. Personally it bugs the hell out of me that people seem to think it's technically correct to use the word "eikaiwa" as a countable noun referring to the schools themselves. I can accept that it's a habit that the English-speaking (non-Japanese-speaking?) community in Japan has developed, but it is at the very best informal, in-house language that doesn't appear in any mainstream English dictionary. I recently discovered, thanks to In ictu oculi's posting above, that use of the word is also fairly common on English Wikipedia. I moved the pages Dean Morgan (eikaiwa) and Aeon (eikaiwa), but I think discussion here would probably be best before going with more moves. The following pages use the word "eikaiwa" as a countable noun referring to English conversation schools in Japan (as opposed to just the Japanese word for "English conversation"). (These are only the ones that I found on Special: WhatLinksHere/Eikaiwa school - there are probably other examples.)
 * Yoko Narahashi
 * Epion
 * ITTTi
 * Peppy Kids Club
 * Berlitz Japan
 * Coco Juku
 * Dela Cruz English Club
 * Seiha English Academy
 * Fortress Japan
 * English-language education in Japan
 * GEOS (eikaiwa)
 * American Club (eikaiwa)
 * Nova (eikaiwa)
 * ECC (eikaiwa)
 * Gaba Corporation
 * G.Communication
 * General Union
 * Tachiarai, Fukuoka
 * Teaching English as a foreign language
 * Shane
 * Index of Japan-related articles (E)
 * Nozomu Sahashi
 * Tsuneo Kusunoki
 * Masaki Inayoshi
 * Nichii Gakkan
 * Kozmoz International
 * Kiyoshi Aki
 * (Note that some of these have piped links along the lines of "English conversation school" that imply they were written with this intent although they do not have the word "eikaiwa" in their prose.)
 * Other articles, such as Ayaka Kimura and Social education in Japan actually use the word in the correct sense, but are not referring to schools so linking to the article "Eikaiwa school" seems inappropriate. I don't include these in the list, but I do include "Index of Japan-related articles (E)" and "Category:English conversation schools in Japan", in which "Eikaiwa" is the name of an article even though the article was moved to the more correct title "Eikaiwa school" six years ago.

In my opinion this word is unrecognizeable to the majority of English-speakers outside of Japan, and even inside of Japan it is only used as a form of slang, apparently by people who by-and-large don't know that it's incorrect. (My American co-worker, whose Japanese is better than mine, has told me that she uses it in conversation, but not in writing.) It is therefore inappropriate for use in encyclopedia articles per WP:SLANG. Also concerning is that fact that several of these articles are not specifically about Japan, so the use of in-house lingo like this also violates WP:UE (I personally am in favour of violating UE in cases where it is technically incorrect to "use English", but in this case the opposite is true). What does everyone else think?

Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 09:23, 7 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I agree with you. I would think that in the case of schools (where appropriate, with the distinction you note) all of the links should at least be piped, and that it might even be best to move the article on Eikaiwa school to something like English conversation schools in Japan. If "company" isn't sufficient for articles on individual companies, it seems like "language school" should be fine, as you did with Aeon (language school). Any reason not to list those together on WP:RM? Dekimasu よ! 19:19, 8 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, absolutely. One of the things WP can do that traditional media couldn't is to provide all foreign language names for relevant things -- this is a very positive thing. But the entries should be written in English, and the titles should be the best English description available (so, for example, Tanabata is that because there is no English name for it). But "An eikaiwa" is just slang at best, and an error at worst. (Actually it's 英製和語!) Can we go ahead and move, or is it better to do a "Propose" or whateveritis? Imaginatorium (talk) 17:49, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Invitation to Participate in a User Study - Final Reminder
Would you be interested in participating in a user study of a new tool to support editor involvement in WikiProjects? We are a team at the University of Washington studying methods for finding collaborators within WikiProjects, and we are looking for volunteers to evaluate a new visual exploration tool for Wikipedia. Given your interest in this Wikiproject, we would welcome your participation in our study. To participate, you will be given access to our new visualization tool and will interact with us via Google Hangout so that we can solicit your thoughts about the tool. To use Google Hangout, you will need a laptop/desktop, a web camera, and a speaker for video communication during the study. We will provide you with an Amazon gift card in appreciation of your time and participation. For more information about this study, please visit our wiki page (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Finding_a_Collaborator). If you would like to participate in our user study, please send me a message at Wkmaster (talk) 00:57, 27 March 2014 (UTC).

Date format
Nahoko Uehashi of Japan won the sometimes-called Nobel Prize of children's literature this week, the Hans Christian Andersen Award. We currently mix the date formats DMY and MDY.

Japan evidently uses YMD --see File:Date format by country.svg; such as 1962 7 15 at jp:Nahoko Uehashi-- a format that we permit only in references and tables. The main article for this project, Japan, mixes DMY and MDY in its infobox.

Is there a strong national tie regarding the alternatives DMY and MDY?

--P64 (talk) 15:01, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
 * We don't have MoS on the date format. I follow Manual of Style/Dates and numbers. English newspapers in Japan use mdy., , and . Mdy is the date format taught in school when students learn English, and I personally feel comfortable with mdy and BC/AD. Oda Mari (talk) 16:05, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Ryōji Arai
Ryōji Arai, a Japanese creator of children's picture books, won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA) in 2005. Except for its growing footer and my own brief 2012 coverage of that award, our biography has been little but 7-year-old "cut and paste" from the entire body of the ALMA citation. Discovering that by accident as I expected to depart, I chose to undo it almost entirely by "cut". (More information: Children's lit talk; Talk:Ryōji Arai.)

Considering the stature this award implies, JA.wiki coverage of Arai is exceptionally short. ja:荒井良二

Good night. --P64 (talk) 20:30, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

List size and potential solutions
Hi All, can someone have a look at Talk:List_of_jōyō kanji and just give me some general advice or direct my query to the part of the Japan group that would be looking after this. Thank you.The Original Filfi (talk) 21:19, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Help with verifying additions to a biography article
Please could someone who can read Japanese help with this edit (that I've reverted for the time-being), actually states what the IP editor added? Many thanks.  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 18:59, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
 * It's not accurate and the link is dead. The name of the disease is hypertrophic inferior rectus muscle and not on the left side of the face, but on his right eye. According to this source, the disease might be the cause of the accident. Oda Mari (talk) 18:09, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you.  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 11:10, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Question about Japanese Hoshū jugyō kō classification
I found a MEXT page about Hoshū jugyō kō but http://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/shotou/clarinet/002/006/001/002/002.htm http://www.webcitation.org/6OSTGZpwz indicates that some, according to Google translate, "sent teachers" (does this mean receive teachers?) and some do not

Should all of them be listed at Hoshū jugyō kō or a subpage, or just the ones who "sent teachers"? WhisperToMe (talk) 10:54, 30 March 2014 (UTC)