Talk:List of emperors of Japan/Archive 1
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Alright, let's try again:
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Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
Why Hirohito and Akihito, but Meiji and Taisho? The latter two ought to be Mutsuhito and Yoshihito (or the former Showa and Heisei, but that would just be bad). Obviously, there should be references between the two ways of referring to emperors, but why such a discrepancy? At the very least, both names should be listed for all four on this page. john 10:02 17 May 2003 (UTC)
- To be honest, I am not sure there is such an inconsistency but the truth is Hirohito and Akihito are hardly referred as showa and heisei while the meiji emperor is usually referred as the era name of his time. Your question is perfectly good and absolutely covered by the article either empeor of Japan or this one. -- Taku 20:15 18 May 2003 (UTC)
Well, backing down a bit, I note that my "World History" dictionary does it exactly the same way as Wikipedia. "Hirohito" succeeds "Taisho". But...what were the Meiji and Taisho Emperors called in the west during their lifetimes? What was Hirohito called in the west before 1945? Was there really a change in 1926 in the way Emperors were called in the west (because I'm fairly sure "Hirohito" was already mostly called "Hirohito" in the west even before WWII)? I'm rather confused by the whole thing. john 07:07 19 May 2003 (UTC)
- I AM confused either. Please don't expect me to know a lot about emperors of japan or history of japan. I really don't know how the Meiji emperor was called in his time. Maybe simply mikado of Japan or something like that? There are also a lot of troubles. For example, the several first emperors are never called emperors in their time. The Japanese government during WWII just decided to regard them as emperor. So they probably should be named different one. I know I never answer your question. It is simply because I don't know. I need more time to do research. -- Taku 15:02 20 May 2003 (UTC)
Why not both? I think we should offer both names so the gajin and the Nihonjin can both recognize the emperor...
Real Name (Era) (dates)
Emperorbma 05:08 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)
- I put both up there, so it now reads "Mutsuhito (Meiji emperor)" Emperorbma
I'm confused? I'm not attacking you over the naming. I actually wished you the best of luck. But I do think what is being done is seriously unwise. I am a passionate believer in having as much accuracy as possible on wikipedia. But 100% accuracy is no use if it also leads to 100% confusion. We have been having this debate over on the page Sophie, the Countess of Wessex. That name is 100% wrong. The correct name should either be [[The Princess Edward, the Countess of Wessex]] or [[The Countess of Wessex]]. Those are her correct titles. But they are utterly unusable on wiki. The first, The Princess Edward is unknown to most people (even royal watchers) while the second is unworkable because for clarity we need to use a first name. Similarly, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother should be in as [[Queen Elizabeth]] as that was her highest title. But instead she is in as either Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon or Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother because Queen Elizabeth is unworkable. Similarly it is wrong to have an article on King Constantine II of Greece or King Albert II of Belgium. Constantine like his predecessors was actually called King of the Hellenes, Albert's title is actually King of the Belgians. But if we called a page [[Constantine II of the Hellenes]] or [[Albert II of the Belgians]] no-one outside Greece or Belgium would a clue what it means.
There is no point in using a form of title that is 100% accurate if it cannot be followed. That, my friend is the problem. You are trying to do the impossible on wiki, have a title 100% accurate when in doing so you make it into a form that no-one other than those who are (a) Japanese, or (b) already know the information will be able to follow. I would dearly love to have 100% accuracy in titles. I am always demanding accuracy of people. But if it produces a version which is impossible to understand and so not user-friendly it is not workable. You instinctively because of your cultural heritage and knowledge of Japanese can tell for example if a word is Japanese and not from any other East Asian nation. 80% of the world can't do that. So how will they know that a strange sounding name is a Japanese emperor? It could be a car, a planet, a type of mouse, a computer game or anything else. How is someone in Harare in Zimbabwe who has english perhaps as a second language, has had no contact with Japanese culture and so cannot recognise Japanese from Chinese, going to know what Go-Sakuramachi means? Is it a word? A person? A type of shoe? A computer game? How will a person in Lille in France, who has english as a second language and has not had direct experience with the Japanese language meant to know what the word Ogimachi means? It could mean just about anything and you are not giving enough information for him or her to know what it is. Will someone in London who has english as their first language, lives in a cosmopolitican city that has a Japanese community, who may (though it is unlikely) be able to tell Japanese from any other East Asian language, know what Nakamikado means? '"Even if they know it is Japanese, the odds are they still won't ahve a clue what it is. They'll end up wondering do they drink it, smoke it, drive it, go on holiday to it, use it to relax, etc
What you are doing is providing a form of name that is absolutely meaningless to anyone who doesn't already possess information about Japanese culture not to need to consult the list in the first place. If you don't know Japanese history you won't be in any way helped by your naming to find pages on Japanese history. And before you say it, people don't instinctively recognise Japanese from Chinese, any more than they recognise Norwegian from Swedish, Irish gaelic from Scottish gaelic, etc. Like all these cases and many many more, it just looks incomprehensible. Saying the word 'Japan' immediately lets them know where exactly the page is from. Saying 'Ogimachi of Japan' immediately tells them it is something to do with monarchs in Japan and if they are looking for that information they then have some idea of a page to begin their search. Yes it isn't 100% correct, but neither is Sophie, the Countess of Wessex. Constantine II of Greece, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother but if we did use the 100% correct form, only a tiny minority would have a clue what we were talking about. With Japanese emperors, the less information you give in the title, the more difficult you make it for people. It is difficult if they are english and don't speak japanese. it is more difficult again if not incomprehensible if their english is poor and unlike in somewhere like the US they haven't met a Japanese person, don't know what Japanese is like, how the language is written. All you are achieving is making your pages on Japanese emperors useless to the vast majority of wiki users who won't have the elementary amount of information required to know what these mysterious 'one word' named pages are. If people do not have more information than you are giving them, they will simply ignore the pages, and all your hard work will be useless if the article titles you use are such that no-one ever reads them. And what will happen is that at some stage in the future, it could be tomorrow, next week, next month or next year, a user will come on, stumble upon these mysterously unclearly named articles, think "what the hell????" and start renaming them by adding in the words "of Japan" to make it clear to people what the pages are all about.
But as I said above and to Mintguy, I am not getting involved. I know you are doing is what you think is right. I understand the desire to get things 100% right. But if getting things 100% right means making it 100% obscure to users, then you are wasting your time, because in the interests of accuracy, the more obscure you make the titles, the less people are going to use them, so the less information they will have about Japanese emperors, which is exactly what you don't want. Because you understandably want people to know about Japan and its emperors. The tragedy is that the way you are doing it will make it harder, not easier, for people to learn about the information you would like them to learn.
All I would ask you to do is think very very carefully and ask yourself, will what you are doing make it easier or harder for non-japanese people, who don't already know about Japanese emperors, to find information about them and recognise what pages there are about Japanese emperors on wiki? lol. FearÉÍREANN 05:05 19 May 2003 (UTC)
BTW: Please don't take offence at my use of Japanese imperial names. I was not in any way attacking the emperors and empresses in question, just illustrating the problems caused by using their name in isolation to people not already knowledgeable in Japanese culture, language and/or history. Is there any new yet on Emperor Akihito's battle with cancer? I hope his Majesty survives it. My own father died of cancer last July so I know what a dreadful illness it is. FearÉÍREANN 05:05 19 May 2003 (UTC)
- I don't mean to insult you at all really, but as I said before, you completely keep missing the whole point about the title of an article in wikipedia. The title of articles here are not the same as what you see in ordinary dictionary. The title is rather mere label. We need a label otherwise, there is no way to make a link. In other words, it really doesn't matter the title is informative or not. Your point is always simply, that is, the title should be informative and that is not the convension here. -- Taku 15:02 20 May 2003 (UTC)