Talk:Emperor Jimmu/Archive 3

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Earhart-sourced sentence

Per the above section, particularly Curtis' and my last two comments, the current problem is not edit-warring but disagreement over this one sentence, and so I'm opening a new section. Curtis has suggested removing the sentence (originally added by an anti-Japanese POV-pusher who doesn't read Japanese) and replacing it with a direct quotation from Earhart. This would be COMPLETELY inappropriate as Earhart's book is not about our present subject, nor does it give significant coverage to the subject. It is a book about World War II, a subject peripherally related to Emperor Jimmu. Books and articles about Emperor Jimmu (that have his name in their titles) don't generally discuss World War II either. 182.249.240.29 (talk) 06:25, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

When asked for the relevant quote on Monday Curtis ignored the request. When challenged on the indisputable facts about the neologism hakko ichiu's etymology, he quoted Earhart as saying

After all, it was Emperor Jinmu, the founder of the nation, who was said to have used the phrase, 'Hakko Ichiu' ('the eight corners [of the world] under one roof') to describe his unification of the known world under his sacred rule.

I asked him if this is actually Earhart's claim. He responded by dodging the question. He was called out by both Nishidani and myself for either (a) misreading the source or (b) abusing a source that happens to contain a mistake. I'd like to see how the other two users who have been involved here think of this? 182.249.240.1 (talk) 07:05, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that's what Earhart says, but there's nothing incorrect about it. Jimmu was indeed said to have used the phrase in that manner, a fact still noted in the article. The older version of the article said the same thing as the current version, but with less specifics and clarifications. The current version is more detailed and more specific, but neither was factually wrong.CurtisNaito (talk) 07:10, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

(EDIT CONFLICT) No. "Jimmu used this phrase" is incorrect. The Nihon Shoki attributes a quotation whose Chinese composition shares several letters with the phrase to Jimmu. The traditional Japanese reading (漢文訓読 kanbun-kundoku) of the quotation is also different. The phrase is neologism (造語 zougo) coined in 1903. (Britannica Kokusai) If you have a source that says "the phrase was supposedly used by Emperor Jimmu" and neglects these facts, then you need to throw that source out, not quote it when the article contains no other quotations! 182.249.240.34 (talk) 07:24, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Earhart naturally focuses primarily on uses of Jimmu's name around World War II. By that period the leaders and citizenry of Japan who constantly bandied about Jimmu's slogan of hakko ichiu obviously cared a lot more about the year 660 BC than the year 1903. Earhart just points out that Jimmu "was said to have used the phrase" and that is true.CurtisNaito (talk) 07:31, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Missed this: Earhart naturally focuses primarily on uses of Jimmu's name around World War II. No. No he doesn't. Earhart doesn't "focus" on Jimmu at all. I do not own his book, and while his PhD thesis may have been in a field I am interested in, this book is not. The Google Books preview shows my his chapter titles, not a single one of which implies its accompanying chapter focuses on Emperor Jimmu. The bibliography is also not in the preview, but I would like you to tell me (assuming you have access to it) whether it contains any primary or secondary sources relating to our subject. Or whether such sources are cited in the one chapter (one page?) that apparently use Emperor Jimmu's name. 126.0.96.220 (talk) 13:11, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Find me a Japanese source from the 1940s that claims "Jimmu used the phrase hakkou ichiu". If Earhart claims what you say he does, he must cite a source. 182.249.240.18 (talk) 07:45, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

I think you're really splitting hairs in trying to discredit Earhart. Just because he didn't delve into all the pre-World War II details of hakko ichiu doesn't mean he made a mistake. Kodansha's article on Hakko Ichiu says "The phrase was adapted from a quotation in the 8th century chronicle Nihon shoki, where it was attributed to the legendary first emperor, Jimmu." Like Earhart, it only says that that the phrase was attributed to Jimmu, not that he specifically said it.CurtisNaito (talk) 08:07, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Nonsense. I'm not trying to "discredit" anyone. Earhart is a fine source for our articles on "propaganda" and "World War II". But he does not appear to be a specialist on ancient Japanese history, Japanese classical literature, Japanese mythology, Shinto or archaeology. You appear to have access to his book. Check his bibliography. Did he read the Kojiki or Nihon-Shoki? If yes, did he read them in English or Japanese/kanbun? If no, where did he get his information on Emperor Jimmu? Did any of his sources read the Kojiki or Nihon-Shoki? Or were they themselves tertiary sources? I'm pretty sure the last of those wikilinks is a redlink, because no sensible good-faith Wikipedia editor considers quaternary sources to be valid sources of information. The reason I'm worried about using sources from completely unrelated fields that barely mention Jimmu, is that even the most thorough scholar can't be relied on to check primary or even secondary sources for every little tidbit in their books. This means these tidbits likely came from sources that were themselves reliant on other sources. If a claim appears in either a tertiary or quaternary source, and is contradicted by a careful reading of the secondary source they themselves used, then we throw out the tertiary or quaternary source as containing inaccurate data. We don't say "Source X says this but Source Y disagrees".

But all this nitpicking over Earhart is pointless. Because the statement in the article to which his name is attached is not supported by the quotation you provided. I asked you for a quotation that matched the claim in the article on Monday. You ignored me. You finally provided Nishidani with a quote yesterday in relation to the etymology of the phrase hakkou ichiu. This quote dealt (misleadingly, at best) with the etymology of the phrase, but has almost no connection to the relevant article text. Please give me a quotation that actually says "Hakkō ichiu was thus employed in a way that envisioned the unification of the world (the "eight corners of the world") under the Japanese Emperor's "sacred rule"". (Now, the word "thus" here is problematic as well because the previous sentence is cited to a different source. If both the "cause" and "result" are given in the same source, then they should both be attributed to that source. If the "result" source doesn't actually give a "cause", or gives a different "cause", then the article is violating WP:SYNTH by attributing one source's "result" to another source's "cause".)

126.0.96.220 (talk) 12:55, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

I still don't see why we should delete Earhart. None of the sources cited in this whole article are exclusively about Jimmu (though he is a major subject of "Japanese Historians and the National Myths, 1600–1945"). Furthermore, it's not anti-Japanese to associate Jimmu with World War II, it's just a part of history. Many Japanese leaders in the 1930's and 1940's went out of their way to associate Jimmu with all Japanese nationalist discourse. Hakko Ichiu and the Kigensetsu of 1940 were just the tip of the iceberg. Earhart's book on World War II mentions Jimmu on twelve different pages in relation not only to Hakko Ichiu and Kigensetsu but also for other ways that Jimmu's name was evoked during the war. Hopefully we'll have another article one day to go deeper into those parts. You say that, "Books and articles about Emperor Jimmu (that have his name in their titles) don't generally discuss World War II either" but that's not the case. Of the two sources we have that mention Jimmu's name in the title, one of them deals very substantially with events occurring during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II (the book "Japanese Historians and the National Myths"). The other one is just a short article on a very specific topic relating to the author's own theory on from which sources the Jimmu myth originated. From the beginning you obviously had a strong objection to discussing the modern veneration of Jimmu in this article, but I don't think that anyone concurred with that position because the uses of Jimmu's name directly before and during the war were aspects of his legend that are consistently deemed noteworthy by scholars of Japanese history.CurtisNaito (talk) 07:13, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Flying tiger (talk · contribs) is an anti-Japanese POV-pusher. Virtually all of his/her edits have been to this effect. As to Earhart, see my above remarks. And don't put words in my mouth. I'm the one who added the image of Kashihara Shrine, an actual contemporary Shinto shrine where our subject is literally worshiped as a deity, to this article. I'm all for covering modern veneration of Jimmu. What I'm "opposed" to is inaccurate, misleading and/or FALSE material being included in the article. 182.249.240.33 (talk) 07:32, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

One more thing, can I get confirmation that we are now down only to "disagreement over this one sentence". If this is the very last issue that needs to be discussed then we are making progress.CurtisNaito (talk) 07:19, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Experience has taught me that on Wikipedia if I say "compromise with me on this and we're done" and then propose a compromise, the opposing party will "accept" my compromise but "interpret" it "differently", creating new problems down the line and making me look like the belligerent one. So I'm not going to respond to this request until either (a) you give in or (b) you (miraculously) convince a third party with your arguments. 182.249.240.27 (talk) 07:53, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Actually, I am willing to give in on this one issue provided that you don't delete any more sourced material. What concerns me is that what you seem to want as criteria for this article is that the source be largely or entirely about Jimmu to qualify. But if we use that criteria, we would actually have to delete every single source in the whole article except for "The Sumu-Sanu Myth" and "Japanese Historians and the National Myths", the latter of which you tried to delete anyway. However, if you agree to only delete this source and not try to delete all the others on the same grounds then I suppose the article can make do without this one sentence.CurtisNaito (talk) 08:12, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Wait, what are you willing to give in on? I want the entire sentence to be deleted because it is WP:SYNTH that, even if it is objectively WP:TRUE it still belongs in another article, not here.

As to your concern about my sourcing standards: nonsense. I think we should use our brains when determining which sources to use in which context. Your standards (Emperor Jimmu's "keeps cropping up" in books about World War II) are much more concerning: we are obliged to indiscriminately include information about the World War II because a very small number (I'd estimate less than 0.01%[4][5]) of books on World War II happen to use Jimmu's name, and those only mention the name once or twice, and are invariably written by World War II specialists who have never read the Kojiki, Nihon-Shoki, or even a reliable secondary source. If a book is written by an author who has never read either a primary or secondary source on this topic, then that book is probably not a reliable source. And if the book barely mentions this topic, then it's a good bet the author didn't see it as necessary to consult a primary or secondary source. You can use the book's bibliography to play this game. I played the game last autumn and found out that Louis Frederic probably did not speak Japanese. Per WP:OFFLINE and WP:PAYWALL, you are of course free to use sources that I don't have direct access to without paying. However, given your history, I'm entitled to be skeptical, and when I ask you directly for quotations and you constantly dodge the question, that can only be interpreted as a misrepresentation of sources. Per WP:BURDEN, the burden to cite sources and gain consenseus is always on the party wishing to add information. Even if the material "has been here for a long time". I provided clear evidence that the reason the material had been here for a long time was that on one occasion an aggressively anti-Japanese POV-pusher and no one had bothered to remove it since.

126.0.96.220 (talk) 12:55, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm more in favor of rewording it. So from what I've read so far, we've agreed to remove quotation marks and the word "sacred":

• Hakkō ichiu was thus employed in a way that envisioned the unification of the world (the "eight corners of the world") under the Japanese Emperor's rule.

What else do we change to remove any POV, SYNTH, UNDUE, OR, or anything else that could be wrong with it? ミーラー強斗武 (talk) 10:18, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

That wording sounds good to me. Unless a new concern is raised we should go with that.CurtisNaito (talk) 13:15, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Neither Curtis nor anyone else has addressed my concerns about granting UNDUE weight to Tokutake's (out-of-context?) claims in the final sentence yet. I don't find the claim personally offensive (it's probably "true" and it's at least peripherally related to this article's subject), but if Tokutake doesn't specifically talk about the JIMMU narrative (as opposed to, say, "the mythical narrative found in the Kojiki") then the sentence belongs in another article. I wanted to remove it pending verification that it isn't SYNTH like everything else that was in the section until this week. Since I can't prove it to be SYNTH without paying money for the source, and since it isn't offensive, I didn't remove it in my last few edits, and so Curtis didn't re-add it when he reverted me. Now that consensus has been established that just about everything else was SYNTH, we need to take the last sentence with a grain of salt: just because its source is in Japanese (and therefore wasn't SYNTHesized by User:Flying tiger, who doesn't appear to speak Japanese), it doesn't mean it gets off the hook. 126.0.96.220 (talk) 12:55, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Nothing was ever demonstrated to be synthesis and there was no consensus of that, so these accusations are unwarranted. It's troubling that with both Tokutake and Brownlee you wanted to remove sources from the article which you yourself have admitted that you haven't actually read. As for Tokutake, he does note that the legendary aspects of Jimmu's reign continued to reappear in textbooks well after the end of the war, as well as discussing the treatment of the Nihon Shoki in general. If you run a search on the Hathitrust version of the book you can at least see that Jimmu's name is mentioned in, among other places, the pages which are cited.CurtisNaito (talk) 13:15, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

It's not troubling at all. You have misrepresented sources almost every time I have interacted with you. In fact, every single source I challenged in this article was being misrepresented. Nishidani agreed. Sturmgewehr just above here admitted that there were problems. You have not even countered my arguments about misrepresenting sources. I asked for quotes what seems like dozens of times and you ignored me. Therefore, there's a high probability that the sources I can't see also don't say what you claim they do. I have followed your Hathitrust suggestion and found that this source at least mentions our subject extensively. Congratulations. But that was never my concern with this sentence. It does not address my earlier concern that "unbroken imperial line" is actually the historical consensus. The closest thing to a historical document that implies a non-kōzoku was able to usurp the throne and "break" the imperial line is the fictional Tale of Genji, and even in that work the commoner in question was born an imperial prince and made a commoner artificially by his father. I want the quote from Tokutake that backs up "promote the story of Japan's divine origins and Jimmu's founding of an unbroken imperial line". And, again, if it's just one pedagogy scholar complaining about the Japanese history curricula blurring the lines between myth and history in the recent past, then per WP:NPOV and WP:WEIGHT we would need to add a similar claim to our George Washington article.[6] If he says the problem was endemic and mentions other scholars who agree with him that's another matter, though. 126.0.96.220 (talk) 13:59, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

User Sturmgewehr just said that he wanted to include the Earhart source, and so do I. None of the changes you made to the article in the past were specifically supported by anyone. When you asked Curly Turkey if he supported your deletions he did not say yes, he explicitly said that sourced material can be added without consensus, and he also modified his earlier statement about trimming the article. By contrast, it appears that both Sturmgewehr and I have said that the Earhart source can stay. I already provided you with a direct quote of the relevant portion. As for Tokutake, I can't provide a direct quote since I don't have the source on me right now. I read it a few years ago and took notes. I do recall that the mention of Jimmu was brief, but it was in the context of how Japanese textbooks continued for a long time to take seriously the entire narrative of the Nihon Shoki. For instance, Ienaga Saburo's textbook was met with strong reservations from the Education Ministry precisely because it didn't include information on the first emperor Jimmu.CurtisNaito (talk) 14:09, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

None of the changes you made to the article in the past were specifically supported by anyone. Do not speak to me like that. I have been editing this article since before you registered an account.[7][8] You suddenly appeared here for the first time to revert me. When you say "none of the changes you made to the article in the past" you are in fact referring to edits I made in the recent past that you disputed. No one has "specifically" agreed with any of your proposed versions of this article. My initial removal of the controversial material received the tacit support of every user who was watching this page during the open and very lively RM. You waited until two weeks after the RM closed to revert me. You have been thoroughly and repeatedly called out for misreading and misrepresenting sources by both me and Nishidani. If you were to drill Nishidani on which of my edits he approves of and which he disapproves of, he would probably agree with at least 80%. And one of the ones he disagrees with is this, which has nothing whatsoever with this dispute. When you asked Curly Turkey if he supported your deletions he did not say yes, he explicitly said that sourced material can be added without consensus, and he also modified his earlier statement about trimming the article. You are misrepresenting User:Curly Turkey's words. He was talking about properly sourced material. Material whose source does not support it is WP:UNREFERENCED for all intents and purposes. Every single edit you made regarding the phrase hakkou ichiu before last night when Nishidani and I told you where the phrase actually came from was OR. I already provided you with a direct quote of the relevant portion. The only quote I can see is "After all, it was Emperor Jinmu, the founder of the nation, who was said to have used the phrase, 'Hakko Ichiu' ('the eight corners [of the world] under one roof') to describe his unification of the known world under his sacred rule."[9] This does not match the claim in the article about World War II use of the phrase. Show me a quote that backs up The Japan Times in 1940 asserted that Emperor Jimmu, finding five races in Japan, had made them all as "brothers of one family." Hakkō ichiu was thus [emphasis added] employed in a way that envisioned the unification of the world (the "eight corners of the world") under the Japanese Emperor's "sacred rule". Why is the "thus" there? Does Earhart say "thus"? If he does, what does he say in the previous sentence? Why does our previous sentence cite a separate source? As for Tokutake, I can't provide a direct quote since I don't have the source on me right now. I read it a few years ago and took notes. That doesn't really matter, given the concerns I expressed in my previous comment. Unless a second source can be found that says the same thing, the statement doesn't belong in our article. For instance, Ienaga Saburo's textbook was met with strong reservations from the Education Ministry precisely because it didn't include information on the first emperor Jimmu. THANK YOU! That's at least a solid factual statement we can test. And a cursory Googling indicates that you are correct.[10] However, I would still prefer my proposed wording from earlier in the week.[11] Are you averse to "Pedagogical historian Toshio Tokutake has criticized Japanese history textbooks for continuing to promulgate the Nihon Shoki narrative of Emperor Jimmu several decades after World War II"? 126.0.96.220 (talk) 15:23, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

By the way, are Earhart and Tokutake the only two sources we are still discussing? It's hard to keep this conversation focused. We are down to two issues, right?CurtisNaito (talk) 14:46, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Sure. But bear in mind that I intend to continue editing this page in the future, as I have done over the past decade in a manner you callously dismissed a little above. You may not agree with said edits. The current discussion is limited to these two. 126.0.96.220 (talk) 15:23, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

I didn't put the word "thus" in there, Nishidani did. I'm sure it was nothing sinister. Nishidani probably just put it there to make the sentences flow smoothly. For Earhart, I already provided you with the relevant quote, but here it is once again "After all, it was Emperor Jinmu, the founder of the nation, who was said to have used the phrase, 'Hakko Ichiu' ('the eight corners [of the world] under one roof') to describe his unification of the known world under his sacred rule. The ancient phrase was an imperative to all Japanese subjects to bring the world together under imperial rule, a goal requiring the undivided energy and devotion of all members of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere." Before "After all" is "National unity was a common theme of these celebrations." This is referring to Kigensetsu. I already provided you with most of the Dower quote, but here is more of it, "When Emperor Jimmu founded the Japanese state 2,600 years earlier, the Japan Times and Mail explained, the land was inhabited by at least five different races. Jimmu declared that they should unite under 'one roof', and in obedience to that command the races became 'as brothers of one family'. Although the newspaper did not press the point, it was the same account of Jimmu extending his sway over the diverse peoples of ancient Japan, based on a passage in the earliest written chronicles of Japan, dating from the eighth century, which inspired Japan's World War Two slogan about the country's divine mission to bring all races and nations of the world under 'one roof'."CurtisNaito (talk) 15:47, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Also, I'm fine with writing into the article, "The historian Toshio Tokutake has criticized Japanese history textbooks for continuing to promulgate the Nihon Shoki narrative of Emperor Jimmu several decades after World War II."CurtisNaito (talk) 15:47, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but why does this have to be in this article, again? The basic gist of your above comment is that both Dower and Earhart, and all the material cited to them, are only peripherally related to Emperor Jimmu, by way of National Foundation Day and hakkō ichiu. Why can't you add this material to one or both of those articles and leave sentences linking to them here? And if both Dower and Earhart say basically the same thing, why do we even need both of them in any article? Why not pick one and roll with it? 126.0.96.220 (talk) 16:10, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Everyone agrees that there needs to be coverage of hakko ichiu in the article. Both sources contain information on Hakko Ichiu which specifically mentions Jimmu and the ways his memory was used. They both provide complementary information explaining how the term was used. I don't see any reason to delete either of them.CurtisNaito (talk) 16:17, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Everyone agrees that there needs to be coverage of hakko ichiu in the article. Define "coverage". For me, a one-sentence description of the topic's (peripheral) link this article, with a link to the relevant article, is enough. I like the etymological note Nishidani added (otherwise I wouldn't have expanded it), but I still think it would be more at home there than here. How about "Before and during World War II, expansionist propaganda made frequent use of the phrase hakkō ichiu, a neologism coined by Tanaka Chigaku based on a passage in Nihon Shoki attributed to Emperor Jimmu."? I would also be open to "Some media incorrectly attributed the exact phrase to Emperor Jimmu." on top of that. 126.0.96.220 (talk) 16:33, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

(EDIT CONFLICT) Also, when you asked me why I was calling this material anti-Japanese (or at least anti-Imperial family), I pointed out to you who it was that originally added the material, and why they did. You just kind of left that hanging. The fact is that most, if not all, of this material was originally meant as a POV WP:COATRACK to attack Japan and/or the Japanese imperial family, by a user with a history of such.[12][13] You also haven't qualified your recurring claims that "Emperor Jimmu's name keeps cropping up" in books about World War II. I provided evidence that this is in fact not the case, and you again just ignored me. 126.0.96.220 (talk) 16:33, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

There are only four sentences here explaining Hakko Ichiu. I don't think that it's particularly excessive. One would almost certainly not be enough. I didn't leave the other issue hanging, what I said was that it's wrong to assume that the linking of Jimmu with World War II is anti-Japanese. It's just a part of history mentioned by Dower, Earhart, Brownlee, Ruoff, and many others who aren't noted for being anti-Japanese. Saying that User:Flying Tiger was trying to push an agenda is just assuming bad faith. Frankly, you need to be careful about that because accusing me of misrepresenting sources due to what was in fact a very minor difference in our choice of words was also assuming bad faith.CurtisNaito (talk) 17:21, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

it's wrong to assume that the linking of Jimmu with World War II is anti-Japanese That's why I didn't. My use of the word "anti-Japanese" was with reference to the Wikipedia activity of a particular user. Scholars are free to say whatever they want about Emperor Jimmu, and associate him with World War II as much as they want. I'm not accusing them or their work of being "anti-Japanese". But on Wikipedia we summarize the scholarly consensus, and we don't go off on tangents about peripherally-related topics. In this case we have violated this policy. The reason we did this is because one Wikipedia user is (was, really -- he/she is barely active now) openly biased against Japan and Japanese sources of information. Dower, Earhart, Brownlee, Ruoff, and many others Again, less, than 0.01% of all books on World War II, and also a minority of works on Emperor Jimmu...[14][15][16] Saying that User:Flying Tiger was trying to push an agenda is just assuming bad faith. "Japanese sources are inherently biased and unreliable. We should not use Japanese sources when discussing the Emperor of Japan." ... accusing me of misrepresenting sources due to what was in fact a very minor difference in our choice of words was also assuming bad faith ""Emperor Jimmu's name keeps cropping up in so many books about World War II" ... "hakkō ichiu, an ancient phrase attributed to Jimmu" ... "Sansom and the other sources did not consult the Nihon Shoki, and we should totally SYNTHesize a bunch of peripheral material to this article to expand it". I have only interacted with you three times. I don't want to go back to the Taminato incident in detail for personal reasons, but you were promoting SYNTH in that case too. That's 100% of the articles you and I have conflicted on. I don't know if it's 100% of all the articles you have ever worked on, and frankly I don't care. "Frankly", to use your wording, this means that if you are being called out for misrepresentation of sources, you are the one who "needs to be careful", because the one accusing you is probably right. 126.0.96.220 (talk) 17:56, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Could we please keep the discussion more focused. Saying that Hakko Ichiu was attributed to Jimmu is no longer in the article, but it is not wrong. Ruoff also says that Hakko Ichiu "was a saying attributed to Emperor Jimmu that by 1940 was pervasively invoked in support of Japan's expansionism." Therefore, you can stop making this unfounded accusation against me. If you just search google books for hakko ichiu+jimmu you will see that the number of works cited in this article are only a small fraction of those that mention Jimmu in relation to wartime Japan.CurtisNaito (talk) 18:14, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Another break

Hijiri, you and Curtis have been discussing your past behavior more than finding a solution to this. I understand that you're frustrated, but this would go faster without it. Curtis asked me on my talk page what I would like to add, change, or remove from the section, but this is a question for you Hijiri, as you're the one challenging it. So to make this go more smoothly, I want you to take any sentence in the section that you don't agree with, reword it to your liking, and post it here. Then we'll discuss the wording. After we find consensus, we'll insert the agreed upon sentences when the page protection expires. Is this agreeable? ミーラー強斗武 (talk) 20:49, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Discussion of Flying tiger's past behaviour is not only acceptable, but required. The material in question is Flying tiger's past behaviour. The reason no paper encyclopedia article on Emperor Jimmu contains this information, is that completely ignorant anti-Japanese POV-pushers didn't have editorial power over those. It all goes back to my original request. No books or articles about Emperor Jimmu go into detail about Japanese conspiracies to conquer the world in the 1940s. The relationship between Emperor Jimmu (as opposed to the Nihon Shoki itself) and the phrase hakkō ichiu is extremely weak, but I am willing to compromise and allow a sentence or two to explain the phrase's extremely tenuous link to our subject and link to the relevant article. 1 in 20 books discussing hakkō ichiu mention Emperor Jimmu.[17][18] 1 in 15 books discussing Emperor Jimmu mention hakkō ichiu.[19][20] Curtis is arguing to maintain a portion of this article accounting for roughly 1/4 of the article's word count devoted exclusively discussing this 1903 neologism that is hardly ever discussed in relation to our subject. I have spent over two weeks trying convince Curtis to drop it and to just accept it when other users call him out on his WP:SYNTH rather than continuing to argue. But I am beginning to get tired of it. 126.0.96.220 (talk) 03:52, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

However, you could use the same argument to delete almost everything in the article because many encyclopedias include a description of Jimmu so short it doesn't even cover things like the origins of his name and title and the issue of his historicity. In regards to the consensus of Wikipedia editors, and I'm not referring to Flying Tiger, when Nishidani proposed that in the long run we discuss all aspects of Jimmu's memory from start to finish, including medieval and Tokugawa times, historiography, and popular culture, most users who commented agreed with that even though it's safe to say that no encyclopedias cover these last three things. It's certain that people in Japan made a clear link between Hakko Ichiu and Jimmu and if you had done a less restrictive book search, you would still have found no fewer than 430 English language sources noting this connection, including the reliable sources this article cites like Edwards, Dower, Earhart, Ruoff, and Brownlee. For instance, Emperor Hirohito evidently referred to Jimmu when he said "It has been the great instruction bequeathed by Our Imperial Foundress (the Sun Goddess) and other Imperial Ancestors that our grand moral obligation should be extended to all directions and the world be unified under one roof." As historian James McClain notes "As every Japanese schoolchild who had read Kokutai no Hongi knew by heart, hakko ichiu meant 'eight cords, one roof' and first appeared in the eighth-century chronicle Nihon Shoki." The association between Jimmu and Hakko Ichiu was extensively cultivated in wartime Japan, most scholars are aware of that, and it is highly relevant for Wikipedia purposes. Concerning our four sentences on Hakko Ichiu (which is not one quarter of the article), for now I'd say we can shorten it to three if necessary, possibly deleting the sentence cited to Bix, but otherwise I see no reason or consensus to trim it back further than that. Frankly, as the article gradually expands there is even more that can be eventually noted here such as perhaps uchiteshi yamamu, the other wartime phrase attributed to Jimmu, or possibly Okawa Shumei's establishment of the Jimmu Society. The resurrection of the Jimmu propaganda machine in modern times does not need to be downplayed for fear of "completely ignorant anti-Japanese POV-pushers". Actually, I think we should try to contact Flying Tiger and let him speak here if we're going to keep on talking about him in those kind of terms.CurtisNaito (talk) 08:16, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

(EDIT CONFLICT) Nope. You could not use this argument for anything other than the hakkō ichiu portion, because (1) almost everything else is covered in at least the more detailed encyclopedia articles and books on Jimmu, and (2) no other single point (unless you include the entire summary of the legends recorded in the Kiki) accounts by itself for 25% of this article's text. As for contacting Flying tiger, I've already pinged him several times. But he is an inactive user (4 edits in 2014, and 23 edits since 2011), and even when active he never contributed anything substantial to this article or any other article in this area. Therefore, if you attempt to contact him to support your point of view on this article you would be violating WP:CANVAS, especially considering that given his inactivity the only effective way would be by e-mail. As for 大川周明 and his 神武会: sure, add a sentence or two on that. But if you try to overload this article with material that implies Emperor Jimmu was some sort of proto-fascist, or that any professional scholars believes such, because a fascist once used his name, you will be reported on ANI. 126.0.96.220 (talk) 10:18, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Most of these accusation are vague and are not related to the text of the article. No where does the current article say that Jimmu was a proto-fascist and previous versions didn't say that either. No one has successfully discredited Ruoff, Dower, or Earhart who are well versed in Japanese history and whose writings are correctly cited in the current version of the article. Another thing you have been continuously saying is that Hakko Ichiu takes up one quarter of the text. This is not the case. Hakko Ichiu is only four sentences in a section that deals with many aspects of the modern-day veneration of Jimmu. If Hakko Ichiu is the only part you disagree with, then it is just these four sentences we are dealing with and not the rest.CurtisNaito (talk) 10:36, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

LISTEN TO ME! I'm not trying to "discredit" anyone here. The fact is those authors were not writing about Jimmu, and if you check their bibliographies I'm sure they don't cite either (a) any primary sources on Emperor Jimmu or (b) any secondary sources that discuss Jimmu or the Kiki in any detail. The fact is that the material cited to them does not belong in this article because it creates the (false and utterly ridiculous) impression that that the figure of Emperor Jimmu is in some way associated with early-Showa Japanese fascism. Jumping all over the place in order to list describe in detail all the material random Wikipedia junkies decided one afternoon was loosely related to the topic at hand is the kind of stuff people make fun of Wikipedia for. And in this case we know exactly why the lone POV-pusher who added the material saw fit to do so, and it wasn't just because he came across the name "Emperor Jimmu" one day in a peripherally related book, and decided to add that book's contents to the Emperor Jimmu article; it's because he went out of his way to attack Japan's mythical first emperor in the same way he has gone out of his way to attack anything Japanese that can be remotely related to World War II. By playing dumb and pretending that Flying tiger was a good-faith Wikipedian who just wanted to add this material to the relevant article to be "balanced", and attacking me for "not assuming good faith", you are aiding and abetting the writer of aggressively anti-Japanese, POV, OR. STOP IT NOW, OR I'LL BE FORCED TO TAKE THIS SOMEWHERE NONE OF US WANT IT TO GO. 126.0.96.220 (talk) 11:20, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

And regarding the length of your hakkō ichiu discussion: If we count the words in the whole article, not including "See also", bibliography, templates, and inline citations, but including the two footnotes that contain substantial English, prose, the article is roughly 1,435 words long. If we take only the paragraph beginning A grandiose kigensetsu..., including the attached footnote about the etymology of hakkō ichiu, it comes out to 362 words. That's almost exactly 25%. You might say that the footnote accounts for roughly half of that, and that it was Nishidani and myself who were pushing for the footnote's inclusion, but the reality is that a detailed explanation of the etymology is only necessary because without it, your paragraph (which you have been bitterly defending for over two weeks) does in fact give the impression that Jimmu was in some way a proto-fascist. We must always remember that Wikipedia articles are not written for specialists. Most of our readers have either never heard of Emperor Jimmu, or read his name somewhere and know nothing about him. This Wikipedia article is not meant to be an essay presenting a proposed connection between Emperor Jimmu and Japanese fascism; it is supposed to be a general introduction outlining the scholarly consensus on Emperor Jimmu himself, not on peripherally related topics in relation to which some (less than 1%) published works choose to mention Emperor Jimmu. 126.0.96.220 (talk) 11:30, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

That paragraph in question, not including footnotes which are not relevant to body of the article, also informs the reader of Kigensetsu, sacred historical sites, and National Foundation Day. Recently you've mainly been talking about your opposition to the Hakko Ichiu part, but that paragraph includes a number of issues. Even if we were to cut two sentences on Hakko Ichiu the bulk of the paragraph would remain. The paragraph, however, does not include the word "fascism". If someone reads it and immediately thinks of fascism it's surely only in their own minds. Emperor Jimmu's alleged mission of Hakko Ichiu was evoked by many different individuals, like Emperor Hirohito, who were not really fascists.CurtisNaito (talk) 11:49, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

The "explanation of Kigensetsu" to which you are referring is explicitly not an explanation of the yearly Kigensetsu, but a description of the origin of the so-called "Hakko Tower" in February 1940. You have stopped arguing that roughly 1/3 of the image space in this article should be devoted to said tower, but given that you still haven't admitted you were wrong I'm terrified that if I leave this article for you to run roughshod you will come back and reinsert it. The last two sentences are a direct continuation of the hakkō ichiu description and would need to be shortened if the preceding sentences were removed, but if we give you the benefit of the doubt they account for 38 words. If we take them out of the above 362-word estimate, we're left with 334 words. So now the section is "only" 23% of the article as opposed to 25%. Woop-de-doo. Talk about nitpicking. 126.0.96.220 (talk) 12:02, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

As for "fascism", say what you want, but the fact is that when the average reader of English Wikipedia thinks of Japan, they think of video games, cars, and World War II. If such a reader stumbles upon a Japan-related article that has nothing to do with any of these three, but refers constantly to World War II and how the subject of the article is indisputably linked with Japanese fascists, what is going to be their conclusion? 126.0.96.220 (talk) 12:06, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

As every Japanese schoolchild who had read Kokutai no Hongi knew by heart, hakko ichiu meant 'eight cords, one roof' and first appeared in the eighth-century chronicle Nihon Shoki."

(a) Japanese schoolchildren didn't read the 国体の本義, it was expounded to them. Had they read it they would have struggled with the pronunciation of much of the text (b) 八紘一宇 does not occur in the Kokutai no hongi. James McClain dropped a clanging blooper, and you, not knowing the facts, fish it up as if it were significant. All it, like many other otherwise good sources that are faulty, attests to, is McClain is out of his depth on this particular point.

What you get in the Kokutai no hongi' is the Nihon Shoki context: 然して後に六合を兼ねて以て都を開き、八紘を掩ひて字と為むこと、亦可からずや, where 八紘 is glossed ame no shita and 字 is read ie. Note in particular that that same text cites the pre-modern Yamaga Sokō's use of 八紘 (中国の水土は万邦に卓爾し、人物は八紘に清秀なり) with no allusion to the phrasing introduced in 1903 by Tanaka Chigaku (text reproduced in Hijikata Kazuo, Nihon bunkaron to tennōsei ideorogii, Shin Nihon Shuppansha 1983 pp.185,203,212). This stubbornness in refusing to acknowledge what both the actual scholarly world knows, and what editors familiar with its details repeatedly tell you, is a sign of problematical behaviour, if it is not sheer unfamiliarity with the subject. Please desist, because you evidently do not know how to evaluate the quality of sources. Googling can get you anything, as at Shigisen. You have to know with a fair degree of knowledge the state of the research to evaluate whether to use something in a source or not, something you consistently do not do. Nishidani (talk) 10:08, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Does this comment have anything to do with the text of the article?CurtisNaito (talk) 10:13, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Well, most of your comments have nothing to do with the subject of the article, and it's logically impossible to respond to off-topic remarks with on-topic remarks. 126.0.96.220 (talk) 10:18, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

And on a closer reading of Nishidani's comment, I see that the answer to your question is actually "Yes". 126.0.96.220 (talk) 10:20, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Curtis, don't waste time asking for ABC answers. It has to do with the text of the article, because you edit the article, and we are commenting on the article here, and here you adduced a dumb quote in support of your position.Nishidani (talk) 10:34, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

It looks like no one read past the first sentence of my last post, as again you're just arguing instead of offering a solution. So what if a POV-pusher added the information? That's the point of rewording it. The section doesn't and shouldn't say anything about Japanese "Fascism", as the Japanese Empire was an absolute monarchy and not a Fascist state. Hijiri, please stop making WP:ANI threats; Curtis never "attacked" you for calling out Flying tiger's POV-pushing, Curtis isn't "aiding and abetting" Flying tiger's anti-Japanese view, and he said "we" should contact him because you've mentioned him so many times. And who were you talking about when you said "because a fascist once used his name"? Again, please offer a solution in the form of revised sentences, posting them here so that they can be refined. And please don't respond with a lengthy argument without the above defined solution included, as you did after my last post. ミーラー強斗武 (talk) 20:49, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

I offered a solution. I even gave the exact wording.[21] Curtis responded with a series of personal accusations.[22] And technically your first sentence was the one that asked to find a solution. :P 126.0.96.220 (talk) 23:19, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

No, I mean like, rewrite the section and post your version here so we can make it so good that we copy and paste it into the article without any argument afterward. And I don't see how you can take my observation as a request, but ok haha. I want to see how you want the section to look, and maybe change your wording a bit. I just think arguing like that isn't getting us anywhere. ミーラー強斗武 (talk) 00:14, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

One issue that lacks clarity is how much of the text is under dispute. I believe that only the parts relating to Hakko Ichiu are under dispute though it's not clear what parts of the text do relate to Hakko Ichiu. It seems to me that Hakko Ichiu is discussed in the second paragraph's second, third, fourth, and fifth sentences for four sentences in total. However, in one post it was indicated that the Hakko Ichiu section is the entire second paragraph.CurtisNaito (talk) 01:20, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Okay Curtis, I redrafted the entire section. On close examination of the text (above I only really focused on the references and whether they back up the content) I noticed the biases of FT and possibly whichever other anti-Japanese redactors were at it in constantly emphasizing "Jimmu is a fictionally character" and "why are those silly Japanese still worshiping a fictional character" and "did you know how silly those Japanese are, in Japan?" So basically the entire text was under dispute. I think my new draft (see below) has worked out most of the WP:TONE problems, though. What do you think? I note that you basically just admitted above that all specific reference to the 1940 Kigensetsu and the Peace Tower (as is its current official name -- it was never known as the "Hakko Tower", though) could be removed and you wouldn't argue with it since it has nothing to do with the hakko ichiu point you have been arguing throughout is so critical. It would seem to make my inclusion of a full sentence on the subject a bit pointless, but hey, compromise is compromise, right? 126.0.96.220 (talk) 14:10, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Proposed section rewrite

What do you all think of this?

Proposed revision

Modern veneration of Emperor Jimmu The inner prayer hall of Kashihara Shrine in Kashihara, Nara, the principal shrine devoted to Emperor Jimmu Veneration of Emperor Jimmu was a central component of the imperial cult that formed following the Meiji restoration. 1872 saw the establishment of a new holiday called Kigensetsu ("Era Day") commemorating the anniversary of Jimmu's ascension to the throne 2,532 years earlier. Between 1873 and 1945 an imperial envoy sent offerings every year to Mount Unebi, the supposed site of Jimmu's tomb. In 1890 Kashihara Shrine was established nearby on the spot where Jimmu was said to have ascended to the throne. Before and during World War II, expansionist propaganda made frequent use of the phrase hakkō ichiu, a neologism coined by Tanaka Chigaku based on a passage in the Nihon Shoki discussing Emperor Jimmu. Some media incorrectly attributed the exact phrase to Emperor Jimmu. For the 1940 Kigensetsu celebration, marking the supposed 2,600th anniversary of Jimmu's enthronement, the Peace Tower (平和の塔, Heiwa no Tō, originally called the "Hakkō Ichiu Tower" 八紘一宇の塔 Hakkō Ichiu no Tō or the "Pillar of Heaven and Earth" 八紘之基柱 Ametsuchi no Motohashira) was constructed in Miyazaki. The same year numerous stone monuments relating to key events in Jimmu's life were erected around Japan. The sites at which these monuments were erected are known as "Emperor Jimmu Sacred Historical Sites". Kigensetsu was suspended in 1948 during the occupation of Japan, but was reinstated in 1966 as Kenkoku Kinen no hi, which continues to be celebrated as a national holiday. References

While maintaining virtually all of the information, this removes almost all of the problematic sourcing issues. I also noticed while putting together this draft that the current version -- including the first paragraph -- has this tonal problem in its constantly emphasizing "Emperor Jimmu is a fictional character, he never existed, and aren't the Japanese silly for propping up such a silly legend". I have tried to remove all or most of that per WP:NPOV: the earlier sections already emphasize that historians reject the existence of Emperor Jimmu. Historians also reject the existence of Abraham and several other biblical characters whose Wikipedia articles don't specify every second sentence "by the way, did you know he's not real?".

I also don't know how to fit Tokutake in here. Can't he be put somewhere else? We have a whole article about the Japanese history textbook controversies, and I'm pretty sure the current sentence is basically the author's (outdated?) criticism of Japanese history books for doing what other history textbooks around the world also do. The problem with using Japanese sources is that oftentimes they're meant for a Japanese audience. Japanese liberals can criticize the Japanese status quo all they want (and I usually support them, by the way), but when we quote them out of context on English Wikipedia it has a no-doubt inadvertent negative effect.

126.0.96.220 (talk) 13:54, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

126.0.96.220 (talk) 13:54, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

I do have one problem: the hyperlink to Peace Tower goes to an article about a French Canadian clock tower, and looking through the disambiguation page for Peace Tower (disambiguation), the Peace Tower you meant to link to doesn't have an article. I think the hyperlink should be removed for now, but otherwise I'm in agreement with this revision. ミーラー強斗武 (talk) 16:36, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Okay, we can go with that in general, but here is a list of changes I recommend. (1.)We can cite Ruoff from "The People's Emperor" for discussing many aspects of the imperial cult but since he doesn't explicitly use the phrase "imperial cult" we can also cite Ruoff from "Imperial Japan at its Zenith" (page 1) where he does use the word. (2.)Ruoff is a better citation for the Kashihara Shrine information for two reasons. Firstly, Ruoff is an academic who specializes in the imperial family, and secondly, his source is in English. The website is a non-academic source in Japanese. However, we could cite both. (3.)We shouldn't say that Hakko Ichiu was "incorrectly" attributed to Jimmu. We have many sources, including Ruoff and Kodansha's Encyclopedia, which say it was attributed to Jimmu, but none which say it was "incorrectly attributed". The fact is that Hakko Ichiu is a just a short-form way of quoting Jimmu so whether it was wrongly attributed all depends on what Jimmu's original intention in saying it truly was. Since this is unknown, it's anyone's guess whether the statement is wrongly or correctly attributed. For explanatory purposes I also think we should add back "Hakkō ichiu was employed in a way that envisioned the unification of the world (the "eight corners of the world") under the Japanese Emperor's rule." (4.)We should mention that the Hakko Tower was constructed on the site of Jimmu's former palace. It wasn't built in Miyazaki for no reason. The citation would be Edwards. (5.)Add back the source "Japanese Historians and the National Myths" for information on the Emperor Jimmu Sacred Historical Sites. It provides more details and benefits from being the only book cited in this entire article which is specifically about Jimmu. (6.)I think we should add back the one sentence on textbooks because this is actually a reoccurring controversy in Japan so one sentence on it here is appropriate. There was a widely publicized attempt in 1986 by a conservative group to re-insert Jimmu into textbooks and the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform is still actively involved in promoting Jimmu in textbooks. This part also had a sentence about how "the propaganda narrative surrounding Jimmu's life was officially abandoned" which should be included as well since the official Jimmu cult did largely come to an end in 1945.CurtisNaito (talk) 17:45, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

• (2) Ist para

In 1873 as part of a policy of anchoring the new state’ in a new imperial ideology, the Japanese government declared Jimmu to have been the first ‘earthly sovereign’, specifying on the basis of an analysis of ancient chronologies, that the enthronement took place on 11 February 660 BCE (Peter Martin, The Chrysanthemum Throne: A History of the Emperors of Japan, University of Hawai’i Press 1997 p.18.) The date for his ascension had probably been chosen originally because in the Chinese calendrical system that year boded well for revolutionary change,( Stephen M Ryan ‘Japan’s National Foundation Day,’ in Linda K. Fuller (ed.) 0CDYQ6AewBjgU National Days/National Ways: Historical, Political, and Religious Celebrations around the World, Greenwood Publishing Group 2004 pp.117-124 p.118.) and its adoption by the Meiji oligarchs suggested Japan’s imperial line and national foundations long preceded both contact with Chinese civilization, and the birth of Christianity.( Kenneth James Ruoff, Imperial Japan at Its Zenith: The Wartime Celebration of the Empire's 2,600th Anniversary, Cornell University Press,2010 p.3 )From 1873 to 1945 an imperial envoy was dispatched on an annual journal recurrent for April 3 to a point north-east of Mount Unebi, ostensibly Jimmu’s tomb, bearing offerings of products representing the produce of mountains, rivers and sea.(Martin, p.20.)

• (3)

We shouldn't say that Hakko Ichiu was "incorrectly" attributed to Jimmu. We have many sources, including Ruoff and Kodansha's Encyclopedia, which say it was attributed to Jimmu, but none which say it was "incorrectly attributed". The fact is that Hakko Ichiu is a just a short-form way of quoting Jimmu so whether it was wrongly attributed all depends on what Jimmu's original intention in saying it truly was. Since this is unknown, it's anyone's guess whether the statement is wrongly or correctly attributed.

This is utterly wrong. We know in grerat detail, as noted earlier, the precise origins of the phrase, the way it twisted the Nihon Shoki text, that Tanaka was confused by that text and invented the phrase as his incorrect gloss on its meaning. We know the attribution is incorrect. You have evidently not read the sources cited earlier, which state that the phrase was invented by Tanaka Chigaku, and what he invented might be attributed to Jimmu, but the attribution is ipso facto incorrect:

(a)'The saying was popularized by the Nichiren Buddhist ultranationalist Tanaka Chigaku. He claimed that Jimmu, the human descendant of Japan's chief diety, the Sun Goddess Amaterasu-no-mi-kami, had uttered the phrase as he ascended to become Japan's first emperor.' (B) 'He popularized the phrase Hakkō Ichiu , which can be translated "the whole world under one roof" . . .The phrase, quoted in the Nihon shoki, is literally "eight cords, one roof"-to Tanaka, it meant that Japan was divinely destined to rule the entire world.' Louis G. Perez, 'Hakkō Ichiu'/'Tanaka Chigaku', in Louis G. Perez (ed.) Japan at War: An Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2013 pp.108,425

Tanaka coined the notorious phrase(Ishii Kōsei below) (he also for that matter thought that Jimmu came from India and that the Imperial Family was descended from the Chakravarti-rājās or Vedic Śākya clan (Ishii Kōsei, 'Kegon Philosophy and Nationalism in Modern Japan,' in Imre Hamar (ed.) Reflecting Mirrors: Perspectives on Huayan Buddhism, Otto Harrassowitz Verlag (Asiatiosche Forschungen 151) 2007 pp.325-336 p.331), a point that should be in the article.Nishidani (talk) 21:08, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

So do us a favour and stop prevaricating at least on this point.Nishidani (talk) 21:08, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Well, if we have two sentences on Hakko Ichiu, maybe we could just delete the sentence "Some media incorrectly attributed the exact phrase to Emperor Jimmu" and replace it with "Hakkō ichiu was employed in a way that envisioned the unification of the world (the "eight corners of the world") under the Japanese Emperor's rule." We can let the reader decide for himself whether it is correctly or incorrectly attributed based on the information provided in the previous sentence and the footnote. Since many of our sources say it was attributed to Jimmu without adding a value-based judgment, and since none of our sources say it was "incorrectly" attributed to him, then using the word "incorrectly" might even fall under the dreaded category of original research.CurtisNaito (talk) 21:25, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Sources are not required to be "academic" nore "in English", just "reliable". Government sources are generally reliable, and government sources about shrines are inherently more reliable for the construction dates of those shrines than are books written on unrelated topics (the title of Ruoff's book emphasizes that its focus is on a period beginning more than half a century later). Also, I'm suspicious about what else is on the concerned pages in Ruoff, given the history of this page.

As for whether Jimmu actually said "hakkou ichiu", the scholarly consensus since the 18th century has been that the Chinese quotations attributed by the Nihon Shoki to Jimmu are bs; a more recent consensus is that Jimmu probably never existed at all; "hakkou ichiu" is a neologism coined in 1903 based very loosely on one of the quotations no one has taken seriously since the 18th century; Earhart makes what appears to be a sarcastic comment (Curtis's quote above) in which he himself apparently says that Emperor Jimmu did not say this but Japanese media misattributed the word to him. Of course, using a sarcastic comment as a source is extremely problematic. Curtis apparently has misinterpreted it as supporting the claim that Sturmgewehr (I think) and I read as rejecting. @User:Nishidani: Does Dower or another source you cited support my proposed sentence? I think Curtis wants us to use a source that directly (not sarcastically like Earhart) says "incorrectly"...

182.249.240.11 (talk) 03:50, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

(Nishidani's comment hidden as a WP:COMMENT because of weird things it was doing to the formatting of all following comments. I honestly can't see what happened, but hopefully this will cut our losses. 126.0.96.220 (talk) 02:56, 15 June 2014 (UTC) )

Nishidani, the problem with your proposed wording, while it is properly sourced and almost certainly accurate, but the problem is that it belongs in the hakko ichiu article, not here. I think we should limit ourselves to a brief description, preferably covering why it is associated with our subject and why it isn't actually related. 126.0.96.220 (talk) 02:56, 15 June 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 126.0.96.220 (talk) 23:20, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Just letting you guys know, the protection expired. Sturmgewehr88 (talk) 02:56, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Okay, I'm implementing my wording (with your proposed amendment) pending discussion with Nishidani. I may be willing to compromise on the length of the hakko ichiu discussion, depending on how much we are able to expand the rest of the article. And by the way, I've been trying to figure out why the last part of Nishidani's comment, and everything since, has been hidden. I actually did sign my comment in spite of what SineBot claims. I have no idea what's wrong here... 126.0.96.220 (talk) 02:56, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Oh you noticed it too? I though it was just because I'm not using a computer (which is why I collapsed the proposals but to no avail). Sturmgewehr88 (talk) 02:56, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

I gave it a less-than-optimal fix (see the bolded comment above). I think if Nishidani wants his comment to appear on the page we're gonna have to leave it to him to figure out how to do it without hiding all of our comments. 126.0.96.220 (talk) 03:04, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Above proposals implemented

I changed the SciencePortal China source, because they cite a dictionary entry for the (non-controversial) claim in question, and when I checked a dictionary entry of my own I found the same information. But then I figured an encyclopedia entry similar to the one I already cited below was probably better still. But there it specified that while the idea of a holiday commemorating Jimmu's enthronement originated in 1872, the original date was different (January 29, to be precise) and both the name "Kigen-setsu" and the February 11 date originated in 1873. It doesn't specify whether this was in January 1873 or not, and so it doesn't specify whether the holiday called "Kigen" was ever actually celebrated on January 29. This basic narrative, though, does not contradict the other sources, but is just more specific and therefore probably more accurate.

So I changed "1872" to "1872-73".

Other than that, I didn't change any of the text itself or the sources from my original proposal, except to change the bad link to "Peace Tower" (I redlinked to "Peace Tower (Miyazaki)" to accommodate Sturmgewehr's suggestion. There are at least two Peace Towers in Japan, and the ja.wiki article on the relevant topic is here (Japanese Wikipedia has some pretty disastrous disambig standards, it seems; the tower's official name now is the same as it has been for almost its entire history, and that is 平和の塔). I think the topic probably meets GNG and will get its own article eventually, but until at least then the discussion of the tower's various names in Japanese is probably necessary to keep here in order to establish context.

I'm now open to discuss Nishidani's proposed amendments. Just as soon as whatever technical glitches are causing the last part of the proposed amendments (and probably this entire section) to not appear on this page.

126.0.96.220 (talk) 02:56, 15 June 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 126.0.96.220 (talk) 02:38, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Whatever glitch happened even broke my signature... But anyway, the article for National Foundation Day also points out that the date for Jinmu's enthronement was changed in 1873 because the original date coincided with the lunar New Year and the Meiji government wanted the holiday to be celebrated for Jinmu and not for New Years. ミーラー強斗武 (talk) 03:44, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

It broke my signature too (check the time stamps), but just left the links to my contribs and talk page intact by accident as a result of me being the one who fixed it and all the previously unwikied ~~~~s magically turning into my signature even if you were the one who wrote them... 126.0.96.220 (talk) 09:35, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

National Foundation Day discussion in lede

I reverted the good faith edit by User:Curly Turkey. I've been making logged out edits on my phone while outside for a while. Technical problems and all.

As for the content, discussion on National Foundation Day in this article was part of a massive dispute on the talk page, and out-of-context claims such as that the holiday is "controversial" should not be re-inserted into the lede without consensus. As an example of the problem with "controversial": what does it even mean? Are there calls from the Japanese left to abolish the holiday entirely? If so, how often is Emperor Jimmu, and the fact that he probably never existed, mentioned in these discussions? I haven't actually heard a lot of my Japanese leftist friends argue that the holiday should be abolished: most of them are just happy to get a day off work, and Emperor Jimmu is never mentioned.

Including reference to Jimmu in the National Foundation Day article's lede is of course open to discussion on that article's talk page, but I think it's pretty peripheral to this article.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 16:09, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

If you're going to make logged-off efits with smart-assed edit comnents, you should be surprised if it doesn't get reverted. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 20:59, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Umm... isn't that exactly what the Satanic Sheik did? I've edited this article numerous times from the same IP range, and I made it clear in my "smart-assed" edit summary that I was the same person as the static IP (which has been established as "me" since its very first edit) that posted on that user's talk page. I don't see how using an edit summary to clarify my own identity when making a logged-out edit could be in any way controversial. You know that the information in question was the subject of debate on this talk page, and consensus was against Sheik's proposed wording.

The phrase "IP vandal", anyway, implies that I am some kind of random person who has never edited Wikipedia before, does not intend to edit Wikipedia constructively, and just wants to have a laugh by posting graffiti on a Wikipedia article because I just found out that I'm allowed to edit it. This was clearly not the case, and when one knows I am a respected editor with a 9-year edit history one really, really should avoid using that wording, even if one thinks my edit in this particular case was inappropriate. And restoring a consensus version by removing a passage that was the subject of extensive debate and was ultimately decided did not belong in the article cannot be considered inappropriate.

Also, User:Curly Turkey: check your e-mail. This is extremely fishy.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:52, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

When I googled for "National Foundation Day" Japan, this was first thing that came up. It's extremely brief essay on the holiday that mentions "Jimmu" no less than three times. Can we get past this idiotic time-wasting nonsense already? The Satanic Sheik (talk) 10:43, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

So, what you're saying is that our National Foundation Day article should mention Jimmu? Great. It already does. Rather than Googling terms and picking out random, probably WP:USERG pages that probably take their information from English Wikipedia, how about going and reading the discussion that already took place over this topic here. But, I get the feeling you already have read that discussion, because you appeared suddenly and thus far nearly your only contribution to Wikipedia has been to reinflame a recently concluded content dispute.

Would you mind telling me who you are, what other accounts you have edited under, how you came across this page, and why you chose to contact a user who had never actually edited this page about?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:04, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

What happened now, dog ate your phone? Be that as it may, I take it that your new line of attack is that Jimmu is so much bigger than the holiday that the holiday doesn't rate a mention here. I don't know if you're serious, but we can look at this issue scientifically. On the Japan Times site, Jimmu is mentioned in connection with "Foundation Day" four times (Jimmu "Foundation Day" site:www.japantimes.co.jp). He gets two more mentions in connection with "Founding Day", and another in which the holiday is mentioned indirectly ("anniversary of the accession"). In short, seven out of the 18 times he's mentioned (Jimmu site:www.japantimes.co.jp) it's in connection with the holiday. If I was a countin' man, I would call that a statistically significant correlation. I have an idea. Why don't you tell us some more stories about your Japanese friends, especially all things they never told you about? The Satanic Sheik (talk) 11:45, 20 July 2014 (UTC

Please read WP:WEIGHT. We don't generally base our articles on ancient history/mythology/literature on newspapers, because newspapers tend to (1) give negligible coverage to the subject and (2) only give said negligible coverage while discussing peripherally related topics. We also don't base our articles on anecdotes about our real-world friends. Find me a print encyclopedia that has an article on Emperor Jinmu (there are a lot, and I've read most of the recent ones) and also prominently discusses the "controversial" holiday National Foundation Day. Also, please tell me how you came across this page and why you decided to contact CurtisNaito about it. Hijiri88 (talk) 06:36, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Also, if you were to spell Jinmu's name with an n your result would not have been 7/18 but 1/11! Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:27, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Columbia, Encarta, and Encyclopedia of Modern Asia don't even have entries on Jimmu. Britannica's entry is too short to help us on this issue. The entry in Japan Encyclopedia is only slightly longer. The entry might had space to mention the holiday if it wasn't filled with the author's pet theories. So as far as encyclopedias go, the relevant database is extremely thin. I don't see anything in WP:WEIGHT to support your case. There is a caution against overreliance on news sources because they tend to emphasize recent events. But that's not really an issue here. Balence can be determined by referring to "secondary or teritary sources." The Satanic Sheik (talk) 12:57, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

So, what you're trying to say is that you don't read Japanese, and are therefore unable to check 99% of the reliable sources discussing Emperor Jinmu? I think we're just about done here. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 14:50, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

My oh my. Someone certainly has a high opinion of himself. So, what you trying to say is that you are a troll with nothing but ad hominems to contribute? Thanks for clarifying. You talk about your Japanese friends, how insulted you feel, and how other people's contributions aren't up to your standard. I don't see anything resembling a positive contribution from you, either to the discussion or to the actual article. Stop filibustering, get out of the way, and let the people who can write, write. If your Japanese is so great, go write on Japanese Wiki. The Satanic Sheik (talk) 09:52, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

You said "I checked a bunch of English language sources that, because they are not Japanese, have no information on this topic." I said "Virtually all the reliable sources on this topic are in Japanese. Do you not speak Japanese? Then I think you will be unable to analyze the dozens of encyclopedias with detailed articles on this topic, because they are in Japanese." I did not mention my own Japanese proficiency, or anything else about myself, so where you are getting that I have a "high opinion of myself" is confusing. Could it be that you are the one relying on ad hominem remarks? I'm not interested in editing Japanese Wikipedia. Their sourcing standards are ridiculous, and the place is even more overrun with trolls than English Wikipedia (in Japan, Wikipedia is apparently viewed as a 2-chan-like social networking site rather than an encyclopedia). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 15:18, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

You are kvetching because I accused you of knowing Japanese? This is nothing but filibustering. The article does have five Japanese references, but they all used to make very simple points. No one has been straining their Japanese to write the article, least of all you. There are plenty of English-language sources on Jimmu. You specified "print encyclopedias," although this is an arbitrary category with no special status under our guidelines. The Satanic Sheik (talk) 10:52, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Your first point doesn't make any sense, since you didn't accuse me of knowing Japanese. Your gibberish comment on SPI clearly indicates you don't know Japanese, but perhaps have a friend who knows a little. It doesn't matter how many Japanese-language references the article surrently has. I asked you to check any of the numerous encyclopedias that have full, detailed articles on this subject, and tell me which ones contained the "information" you want to add. You admitted that you are unable to read these articles. I specified "print encyclopedias" because you and other anonymous POV-pushers with no knowledge of the subject can write whatever you want on Wikipedia, or Conservapedia or wherever. Our guidelines specifically reject the use of such sources. Until you find a non-USERG encyclopedia with an article on Emperor Jinmu that specifically says what you want it to, we're done here. 126.0.96.220 (talk) 02:52, 26 July 2014

This is total nonsense. Our guidelines do not recommend the use of print encyclopedias as sources. I have already quoted them above. You are just making up rules as go along. Now you trying to out me? You have the ethics of a pig. It's good you don't actually know anything. Otherwise you might hurt yourself. The Satanic Sheik (talk) 16:24, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Our guidelines distinctly recommend the use of reliable tertiary sources to determine WEIGHT. Online wikis are not reliable sources. The other non-print encyclopedias you mentioned are not reliable sources for this topic since they don't mention this topic. I know a whole lot more about this subject than you do, so it's not clear what you're talking about. 126.0.96.220 (talk) 03:13, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

The guideline says, "Neutrality assigns weight...drawing on secondary or tertiary sources." So when tertiary sources are sparse, we can certain base it on secondary sources. I don't see reason that Japanese-language print encyclopedias should have a special status in this discussion. I do see that the good folks on Japanese Wiki have already | figured out that you are not here to the improve the encyclopedia. As long as that's true, it doesn't what you know or many languages you can speak. The Satanic Sheik (talk) 04:38, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Tertiary sources are not sparse. You just couldn't be bothered checking any of the dozens of well-regarded encyclopedias that have articles on this topic, and are cherry-picking sources on different topics. Your personal opinions of why my account was briefly blocked on Japanese Wikipedia are irrelevant. Please refrain from making personal remarks on this article talk page. 182.249.18.113 (talk) 09:00, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Where is the Human part of his Ancestry?

Everything I've noted so far in his genealogy goes back to Kami and mythical creatures.--JaredMithrandir (talk) 07:44, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

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Japanese name?

I've seen かむやまといわれびこ,[23] かんやまといわれびこ,[24] かんやまといわれひこ,[25] かむやまといわれひこ,[26] and, perhaps most revealingly, かむやまといはれびこ.[27] I suspect all of these merit mention somewhere in the article, but which should we give as the "main" one inline? Some IPs have been edit-warring over this, presumably based on the fact that Nussbaum (an unreliable source written by someone who probably didn't read modern Japanese and translated by someone who almost certainly didn't read modern Japanese, let alone classical Japanese) uses one spelling in the cited article.

As far as I can tell "かんやまといわれびこ", and "かむやまといはれびこ" is just an archaic spelling that most educated Japanese readers would know to read as though it said "かんやまといわれびこ", is the most common pronunciation in modern Japanese (and so is the pronunciation most likely used by Japanese scholars of the Kojiki when talking about the topic), and, as User:Nishidani's footnote makes clear, it's kind of anachronistic to use modern Hepburn orthography in an attempt to reflect pre-modern Japanese pronunciation anyway.

What to do?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:17, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

there is a lot of controversy in the private academia

What is the "private academia"? I appreciate Japanese scholars contributing their wisdom, and would like to help them with their English, but I cannot make sense of this. 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:C5B8:3BEE:2B63:DDBD (talk) 14:15, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Age

The age in the infobox is probably not real, and this age is nowhere else mentioned. In 3.1 Migration and in 1. Name and title, according to the Kojiki, he died at 126 years of age, but in the infobox, it says it's 333. Also, it's BC, SO IT'S GOING BACKWARDS. IT SHOULD BE 585 BC, AS IN 1. NAME AND TITLE.

Thank you, recent vandalism, now reverted, well spotted, thanks. IdreamofJeanie (talk) 21:14, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Where is the source of "Jinmu lost his dynasty to Ojin, and Ojin lost his dynasty to Keitai"?

I am a Ryukyuan Japanese. I'm using a translator. "The Jinmu Dynasty was taken over by the Ojin Dynasty, and that dynasty was taken over by the Keitai Dynasty." As far as I know, there was no such description in the history books before that, but I would be happy if you could point me to the source. If not, could you please correct me? Nao957 (talk) 19:13, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Why "Jimmu" and not "Jinmu"?

Jimmu is indeed the unmodified Hepburn romanization of 神武. However, unmodified Hepburn started falling out of favor decades ago and is now virtually obsolete. The modified Hepburn romanization, Jinmu, would bring the spelling in line with what would be used in any scholarly publication today. Using "Jimmu" instead of "Jinmu" reeks of amateurism. It's almost as embarrassing as using "Hindoo" instead of "Hindu." 2603:7081:6E40:5700:E810:E488:FFF4:DA2C (talk) 21:19, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Why 2 family trees

I honestly don’t understand the purpose of two family trees here.

Also it just straight up looks bad.CycoMa1 (talk) 04:25, 4 May 2024 (UTC)