Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Japan/Districts and municipalities task force/Archive 1

Proposal re: type of gappei
I see a lot of people filling in gappei information in this style:
 * A and B merged to form the new town of A.

Clearly this must be a translation from Japanese where the towns have undergone 新設合併 (where the former municipalities are dissolved and a new one is created) as opposed to 編入合併 (where one municipality is dissolved and becomes a part of an existing municipality). See ja:日本の市町村の廃置分合 for details.

I think that this distinction is unnecessary in English and only leads to confusion and awkward prose. Even in Japanese the difference is mostly semantic, as the choice to do 新設 or 編入 apparently has mostly to do with whether they want to re-elect municipality officials.

I propose that if a "newly" merged municipality A retains the (English) name of one of the former municipalities, that the English prose describe it as "B merged into A", not "A and B merged to form A". And I say English name because sometimes municipalities will change their name from kanji to hiragana when merging, but again that distinction is irrelevant to the average English reader.

-Amake 00:56, 5 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I've avoided writing "A and B merged to form the new town of A", but I think I usually write "B was incorporated into A." Merge, to me, seems to imply an equal conglomeration, while incorporate seems more appropriate for smaller towns becoming part of bigger ones. Thoughts? BilabialBoxing 02:54, 5 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't necessarily think "merge" has that implication, but "incorporate" also works just fine. I don't have an opinion on the exact wording as long as it's clear.  -Amake 05:02, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree that "A and B merged to form A" is awkward. I wonder if the distinction can be preserved in un-awkward English, like "A and B merged together" as opposed to "A merged into B," for example. I say this because I've been trying to decide what to do with Ikaho, Gunma and its neighbors who merged with Shibukawa, Gunma. (Although I don't know for sure which kind of merge it was, my hunch is that it was the 新設 kind.)

It's just that although the name "Shibukawa" was retained (indicating to the English reader that Shibukawa is the one being merged into), and although all the merging took place on one day, the combined population of the other 5 was roughly the same as the old Shibukawa (making the use of "incorporate" seem not quite right to me; also, the combined geographical area of the 5 was about 3 1/2 times that of the old Shibukawa.

For the Ikaho article, I ended up saying "2006: Ikaho joins Kitatachibana village, Komochi village, Onogami village, and Akagi village in merging with Shibukawa city." What do you guys think? RNavigator (talk) 15:05, 11 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Honestly, the wording probably doesn't matter too much in the end, so long as it's relatively clear. But in any case, I would probably write "The villages of Ikaho, Kitatachibana, Komochi, Onogami, and Akagi are incorporated into Shibukawa." Or "merged" if you like, but I think that "into" is really the only way to imply that the name remains Shibukawa without just outright stating it. BilabialBoxing (talk) 04:26, 12 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree with BilabialBoxing. The relative sizes of the populations doesn't matter.  What matters is the political clout that allowed Shibukawa to retain its name.  Beyond that, it's all minutiae that just isn't necessary.  -Amake (talk) 22:40, 12 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Okay, good points. Thanks for the quick replies! RNavigator (talk) 01:51, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Coord/Coords problem in Template:Infobox City Japan
See Template_talk:Infobox_City_Japan. Arthena(talk) 18:08, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

City and town in same name
In cases that a city and a town shares one name, the naming convention has been, in my understanding, that the article for the city should be named without concern about the town and the article for the town should be named with the note "(town)". For example:
 * Kushiro, Hokkaidō and Kushiro, Hokkaidō (town)
 * Fuchū, Hiroshima and Fuchū, Hiroshima (town).

Recently, one editor moved Misato, Saitama and Shimanto, Kōchi to Misato, Saitama (city) and Shimanto, Kōchi (city), respectively. Should we revert these moves in accordance with the convention? --Sushiya (talk) 12:01, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I say yes, return the city articles to the original names (without "(city)"). -Amake (talk) 03:18, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Removal of geodata (disolved municipalities)
The section on #Dissolved_municipalities_and_districts suggests to remove geodata. As even a former municipality has a location, I don't see why coordinates shouldn't remain. The type for coordinates (WP:GEO) will probably need updating though. I'd suggest to update the section accordingly. -- User:Docu


 * I agree. I don't see any reason to remove the coordinates as they are still valid (they point to a specific location). ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjoe 02:04, 23 June 2008 (UTC)


 * They point to entities that no longer exist and in general are of extremely little interest or importance. This causes problems with visualization technologies like Google Earth where, taken to the extreme, one will find that current municipalities are buried under a mountain of useless historical items.  Yes, one can make the argument that this is, say, Google's problem, but I think from a purely pragmatic standpoint this is something that can and should be taken care of on the wiki side.  -Amake (talk) 14:20, 23 June 2008 (UTC)


 * It actually is Google's problem. The coordinates are there for people reading the articles, and only secondarily for those using Google Earth and other related programs. Providing the information in the article is important. ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjoe 00:15, 24 June 2008 (UTC)


 * The location of dissolved entities is often of considerable historical importance, so I strongly disagree that geodata should be deleted simply to make Google Earth less cluttered. The coordinate data needs to be preserved, perhaps in a format that will not link to Google Earth. Can we change the WP:MOS-JA to reflect this? --MChew (talk) 03:00, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't think we need to change anything unless someone can figure out some way to mark them specifically as dissolved municipalities (for the way they appear on Google) in order to somehow distinguish them from other tags on Google Maps. ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjoe 05:14, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The consensus appears to be that the geodata is to remain. I will update the page accordingly. If the entities were of extremely little interest or importance, they wouldn't have entries in the first place. -- User:Docu

Article Title for Districts within Special wards of Tokyo
Hi. From this March through May, I created many articles for districts within Chiyoda, Tokyo as I thought they are necessary. And then I noticed that there seems to be no rule for titles of such district articles. I preferred and chose the format:
 *  District Name, Tokyo 

but considering that several districts in different wards are spelled the same (e.g., Sarugakuchō, Chiyoda, Tokyo and Sarugakuchō, Shibuya, Tokyo), I think that the format:
 *  District Name, Ward Name, Tokyo 

is better and systematic but may be a little redundant. Otherwise, like Hitotsubashi, Chiyoda, the format:
 *  District Name, Ward Name 

might be another good idea, but readers who are not familiar with Tokyo may not be able to recognize that it's in Tokyo by just looking at the title. Some articles has only the district name in their title such as Marunouchi; in other words:
 *  District Name 

Which format shoule we adopt? I'd love to hear your opinions. Thanks. --Occhanikov (talk) 05:54, 27 July 2008 (UTC)


 * District Name, Ward Name, Tokyo or District Name, Ward Name seem good as systematic. District / neighborhood names may need disambiguation someday, while they are mostly the most notable ones in Japan, so it is an idea to have a systematic way from the beginning. --Aphaia (talk) 11:52, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
 * P.S. And in Japanese administrative system, in English wards of Tokyo is considered to be equivalent with cities. District Name, Ward Name may be confusable with Municipal Name, Prefecture Name but I am not sure at that point. --Aphaia (talk) 11:55, 29 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your reply. I totally agree. District Name, Ward Name, Tokyo might be the best one for its clearness. I personally don't like the District Name, Ward Name format so much because of the risk of confusion that you pointed and because people outside of Tokyo or Japan may not be so familiar with the ward names of Tokyo, and adding "Tokyo" in the title may contribute to its readability. --Occhanikov (talk) 19:43, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I think that District Name, Ward/Town/City Name should be sufficient to disambiguate various districts/neighborhoods from one another. Only in cases where it is not can the prefecture name be added, but even on the Japanese Wikipedia these cases are few and far between. Also, adding the prefecture name in every case is unnecessary per WP:PRECISION: "Be precise but only as precise as is needed." --armagebedar (talk) 03:05, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
 * District Name, Ward Name is enough, as the wards are independent municipalities in and of themselves. Actually the term "district" is problematic, as in Japan the word is already used to refer to 郡 (see: Districts of Japan).  Really these are not districts, but are rather "neighborhoods". --Amake (talk) 14:12, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Tomiai, Kumamoto merged into Kumamoto City on October 6
So far, I've only updated the Tomiai article as well as the list of mergers in Kumamoto Prefecture article. However, a major stumbling block to updating certain associated articles(i.e., the article of its former parent district as well as the Kumamoto city one)is updating the population density figures as I don't remember how to calcuate population density even though updating population and area stats involve simple addition and/or subtraction...Ranma9617 (talk) 02:40, 28 October 2008 (UTC)