Talk:Chichi to Ran

Reprioritising 2019 novel as the subject of this article

I'd like to propose this page be rewritten to be about Breasts and Eggs, the bestselling 2019/2020 work the author is best known for. Content about the 2008 novella should be condensed into the 'publication history' section. My reasoning is as follows:

• The 2019 novel is more disserving of Wikipedia article than the 2008 novella; it's a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and one of TIME's Best 10 Books of 2020. The 2008 novella is still notable as it won the Akutagawa Prize but this is the English-language Wikipedia: the 2019 edition is currently massive in the Anglosphere while the 2008 novella is little more than a curiosity.
• The intro to the Mieko Kawakami article refers prominently to the 2019/2020 novel yet links only to this article about the 2008 edition, which is very confusing.
• The Google knowledge graph pulls content from Wikipedia, and so it describes the book as "a 2008 short novel," while everything else in the top Google results refer to the 2019/2020 novel.
• The 2019/2020 edition is the latest and most definitive incarnation of this work; the original 2008 novella is just a moment on the road between the book's beginning as a blog and the current bestselling novel; as such the information about the 2008 novella should be moved to 'publication history'.

(I seek guidance and discussion with all editors but especially @Οἶδα.) Angry Candy (talk) 10:21, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Well I don't think we are going to agree which novel is more "deserving" of a Wiki article, because they both are. Whether they are split, or this article divided, I don't know. Especially considering the second book is sheerly an expansion/revision of the first one.

As for my response to your reasoning(s).

• NYT/TIME puffery lists aren't to be regarded as our guiding light when crafting an encylopedic article. And this being English-language Wikipedia has no relevance. We are not to tailor every non-English novel/film/etc article to its English edition or popularity in English territories. There are plenty of Japanese novels popular in the West that are of only moderate popularity back home. And vice versa. Our presentation of the available information should not be arbitrarily structured proportionally.
• You mentioned the intro of the author's article earlier in your edits. The intro section of that article was overhauled[1] in February 2021 by the user Miwakon, who also similarly tried to mass delete content off this article in favor of the 2019 version [2]. I'm not sure why you think the changes made by a random single-issue account on a separate article must dictate this article. I didn't write that article. But I have now restored the intro section so this discussion no longer even matters.
• Yes, because the English translation of Natsu Monogatari takes the first novel's original name (i.e. not 'Summer Stories')? Also see my first point again.
• This argument is simply not true and frankly hamfisting your opinion as truth. Dismissing the 2008 novel as "just a moment on the road between" shows a glaring disregard for the available information in both Japanese in English.

Again, I welcome changes to the article to perhaps divide the content, but not removing such content altogether as in your edit in some arbitrary push to elevate one publication over the other.

Οἶδα (talk) 04:48, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Then I suggest a split. It just seems to me that the novel everyone's talking about -- that has been widely discussed in English-language media and that you can get in practically any bookshop and library in the English-speaking world -- should have its own article. An article about the 2019 novel could contain some text from this current article in a section on the publication history. Angry Candy (talk) 12:57, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

@Angry candy: Apologies for the belated response. I have now split the articles. Οἶδα (talk) 14:11, 6 January 2024 (UTC)