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Talk:Honnō-ji Incident

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Suicide is Uncertain

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It is my understanding that the exact cause of the death of Oda Nobunaga is uncertain. Some claim he committed seppuku; others claim that he died in the fire. One artist painted him leaping from the fire. At any rate, this article should reflect this uncertainty. See also the discussion over at the main page for Oda Nobunaga. RNavigator (talk) 23:31, 20 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Move

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I'm moving this page. The word-order "Honnō-ji Incident" is apparently more common in reliable sources. The search is complicated by the number of different ways in which "Honnō-ji" can be spelled in English, but it seems to break down as follows:

  • Incident at Honnō-ji -- 1 hit on Google Scholar[1], 0 hits on Google books[2]
  • Incident at Honnōji -- 1 hit on Google Scholar[3], 0 hits on Google Books[4]
  • Incident at Honno-ji -- 0 hits on Google Scholar[5], 5 hits on Google Books[6]
  • Incident at Honnoji -- 1 hit on Google Scholar[7], 6 hits on Google Books[8]
  • Honnō-ji Incident -- 1 hit on Google Scholar[9], 0 hits on Google Books[10]
  • Honnōji Incident -- 4 hits on Google Scholar[11], 2 hits on Google Books[12]
  • Honno-ji Incident -- 2 hits on Google Scholar[13], 8 hits on Google Books[14]
  • Honnoji Incident -- 12 hits on Google Scholar[15], 136 hits on Google Books[16]

For variant spellings of "Honnō-ji" in both instances, we get 146 hits for "Honnō-ji Incident" on Google Books, 19 for "Honnō-ji Incident" on Google Scholar, 11 for "Incident at Honnō-ji" on Google Books, and 3 for "Honnō-ji" at Google Scholar. This suggests that the most common name for the event in English-language reliable sources is "Honnoji Incident". I and many others have dropped the macron and the hyphen when writing/translating, for convenience as well as for ease of reading for English-speakers, and this seems like a possible cause for the commonality of the spelling "Honnoji"; but this spelling would violate the Manual of Style on Temples. Therefore, I shall move the page to Honnō-ji Incident. This move will also bring this article title more in line with other no Hen articles such as Isshi Incident and Sakuradamon Incident (1860). elvenscout742 (talk) 00:42, 27 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@Elevenscout742:, this is a bit late but I suggest requesting this page to be moved back. Honnoji Incident sounds less professional than Incident at Honnoji (or however you wish to spell it) but that's just my opinion. Plus, 200 or less hits isn't that much to weigh anyways but I guess it does override the name of Incident at Honnoji. Just an opinion. Eric - Contact me please. I prefer conversations started on my talk page if the subject is changed 03:31, 29 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Dekimasu: You might want to move the article back to Honnō-ji incident, as this appears to be a WP:TITLE issue rather than a "talk-page consensus" issue—"incident" is not an official part of the name of the subject or anything. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 22:31, 6 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
In what sense is it not an official part of the name of the subject? Honnō-ji is the name of the temple; the whole title is a proper noun as in February 26 Incident or Boston Massacre (this is not an incident referred to as "Honnō-ji" but rather an incident referred to as "the Honnō-ji Incident;" "Honnō-ji" alone would not be intelligible) and "Incident" represents the standard translation of 変. The data above supports the idea that this is the WP:COMMONNAME. At any rate, the purpose of bringing the discussion to the talk page is that this was moved again after the previous move was objected to. Consensus application of WP:TITLE is something that is discussed on the talk page, and restoring the status quo beforehand is standard in such cases. I continue to object to the move, so if it is to be done again, I suggest starting a move request. Dekimasuよ! 00:13, 7 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Dekimasu. I'd go with the current title as it reflects the English common usage better, but I can understand the rationale for not capitalizing "incident" to reflect the original Japanese title, which I assume is what Curly Turkey is referring to. In any case, let's have a move request discussion if there are any concerns. Alex Shih (talk) 04:27, 7 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Dekimasu, Alex Shih, DagosNavy, Elvenscout742, Kamek98: I'm not going to bother with an RM, but I do want to point out that WP:COMMONNAME does not apply to this sort of thing—this is purely a matter of styling, not a "Richard Starkey" vs "Ringo Starr"-type thing, which is what COMMONNAME deals with. If the majority of sources happened to style the title "Honnô-ji", because it just happened to be discussed more often in journals that require that style, we would still style it "Honnō-ji" per our own MoS. Remember, regardless of whether a book title were officially styled Seize The Day (and styled so in RSes), our own style guidelines require it to be styled Seize the Day.
The most obvious fallout of this sort of thing is that certain "incident" articles will be "XXX incident" and others "YYY Incident" based on nothing more than XXX happened to appear more often in sources with one style required, and YYY more often in sources requiring another style. Other sources' styling is irrelevant to our own—all that's relevant from the stats above is that "Honnō-ji incident" should be preferred over "Incident at Honnō-ji". Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 07:52, 8 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I don't much care about capitalization and these things any more (although the "Honnō-ji isn't English; it must be Honnoji" crowd are just plain wrong), but for what it's worth CT is right that the differences in "common-ness" are so minute as not to matter, and all forms are equally recognizeable to anyone who knows about it; the reason I implicitly cited COMMONNAME is that the people who were most likely to oppose the move in 2012 would cite COMMONNAME, similarly to how even now AFDs live or die based on GNG regardless of which criteria actually apply and are cited by the nominator. I don't understand the "Incident at X sounds more professional than X Incident" argument, and I think the current title looks more like the name of a specific historical event than just a euphemism for something that happened at some place, but I don't really think it's worth fighting over like I might have in 2012. Also, echo was not a thing when I made the above comment, and was not widely understood (at least by me) when I changed my username a few months later. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:27, 8 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Hijiri 88: I think the echo didn't work because it was spelt "eleven" rather than "elven". Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 08:35, 8 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict)Scratch that: I still don't understand pings, and I just noticed Eric misspelled my old username: for all I know it would have worked if he had correctly pinged my previous username. Maybe. I also forget when unified login officially declared "Elvenscout742" to be a ja.wiki account operated by a different person from my "Hijiri88" account. Or something. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:39, 8 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't mind throwing out COMMONNAME (nor am I particularly concerned with Honnō-ji vs Honnoji, or Incident at X). My main assertion was that this is a proper noun: as Hijiri said, "the name of a specific historical event [rather] than just a euphemism for something that happened at some place." The capitalization of "incidents" is mixed, as your link shows. However, the ones that reach the level of proper nouns rather than descriptors generally appear to be capitalized, and for better or for worse these seem to correlate to some extent with the use of Xの変 or X事変 as opposed to X事件. My secondary assertion was that it shouldn't be moved again without first establishing consensus, as it has already garnered objections in the past. Clearly, the problem is not just here; I definitely would have opposed the move without discussion to Jōwa incident that happened in October last year, for example. But I don't think I have the energy to find and object to all of the unilateral moves that I might have disagreed with. This one was on my watchlist. Dekimasuよ! 17:29, 8 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Well, this gets even more problematic. What makes a "XXX Incident" a "proper noun" but a "YYY period" not? The "period" in every Japanese "YYY period" article is lowercased without exception. This is particluarly so when there doesn't seem to be any agreement on what to call it in English (Hijiri's search leaves out translations that don't use "incident", such as "upheaval at Honnō-ji"[17] or "Honnoji Temple Upheaval"[18], or, say, "Honnō-ji rebellion"[19][20]; an awful lof of sources call it simply "Honnō-ji no hen"—or even "Honnō-ji no hen incident"[21][22]).
      I'm not arguing to move it to any of those names, obviously—just that it's far from clear that "Honnō-ji Incident" is a "proper noun" when there isn't even any agreement on how to translate it. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 22:33, 8 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW, I'm pretty sure this wasn't the only "incident" article I unilaterally moved back in 2012; Curly Turkey and I have in the past discussed (off-wiki) the long-term fallout of my move of Battle of Shigisan to Teibi Incident (which was clumsy, but better than the previous title, and the article that had been there was nothing but OR). But I think I was mainly moving to "Incident" from non-"I(i)ncident"-type titles (as happened there), rather than adding capitalization. I just assumed everyone agreed that these are proper names of specific events. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:32, 9 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
If everyone agrees they're proper nouns, fine—move them all. I don't see much of an argument for that when sources can't even agree on what to call their subjects, nor do I see much to an argument that 事変 = "Incident" but 事件 = "incident", especially when 事変 is translated so many ways: for instance, 第一次上海事変 is the Shanghai Incident, while the 第二次上海事変 is the Battle of Shanghai. Also: if readers ask why 本能寺の変 is Honnō-ji Incident but 生麦事件 is Namamugi incident, do we respond: "Because—learn Japanese!!1!!"? Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 01:45, 10 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Dekimasu: given that you're using "proper name" as a rationale for these moves, I think you really do need to address this. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 22:15, 10 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
WP:UE aside, do you think whether or not something is a proper noun is language specific? Dekimasuよ! 06:35, 11 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Dekimasu: I don't care. Do you think that 本能寺の変 is a proper noun but 生麦事件 is not? Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 08:30, 11 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I believe all are likely proper nouns, and as I said above, "for better or for worse" they seem less likely to be capitalized on Wikipedia now when they are 事件. It's possible that this is because の変 or 事変 is more likely to result in a standardized English-language translation than events called 事件. As I mentioned, I don't think I have the energy to find and object to all of the unilateral moves that I might have disagreed with, and の変 seemed like a bite that I could chew.
Most of the I/incidents that are at lowercase titles seem to have been at uppercase titles at some point in the past. Whether these moves were based upon a consensus reading of a guideline or were done by fiat, I do not know. I did not expect my reversion to end up such a point of contention, but this brings me back to the advantages of WP:RM, or maybe asking at WP:MOS-JP: I did not expect my singular perspective to be of much import and I'd be happy to rely upon community consensus. Dekimasuよ! 19:35, 11 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Re: my "the ones that reach the level of proper nouns rather than descriptors generally appear to be capitalized" above, I can imagine things titled X事件 that are not proper nouns (e.g. when this is actually indicating a plural), but I haven't seen any examples of it here. Dekimasuよ! 19:38, 11 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Dekimasu: RM would be the wrong place to do it, as it would inevitably end up with every article with a different choice of capitalization, which does nobody any good. WP:MOS-JP would be not much better, as we may end up with a guideline that conflicts with the rest of Wikipedia and thus could get overturned. I'm going to bring this up at WP:MOS. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 21:45, 11 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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