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Requested move 17 November 2024

[edit]

I think "Provinces" may be more appropriate, but still not sure. I moved all the other Korea prefecture pages from "-dō" to " Prefecture" following the category name, but @robertsky pointed out " Province" may be more appropriate.

"Prefecture" has kind of a loose definition, per Prefecture and Prefectures of Japan. The nature of prefectures in various countries differs; it's not really clear to me how these differ from provinces, esp given that colonial Korea was governed differently from Japan.

Both "prefecture" and "province" seem to be variously attested to for Korean provinces (as well as the use of transliterations of Korean names for Korean places during the colonial period). English terminology for Korean history is notoriously inconsistent.

Reading Prefectures of Japan, it seems like "道" is also used for prefectures, but that doesn't necessarily guarantee that it would extend to Korea. Provinces of Japan seems to suggest that Japan itself adopted the prefecture system in the late 19th century, but that doesn't necessarily cover Korea.

However, recent RS on the colonial period seem to use "province" for this period (although these all seem to write from Korea-centric perspectives; using Korean-language terms for concepts during the colonial period).

Edit: more sources (see below for my analysis of the situation)

In short, I think there's a WP:COMMONNAME argument to use "Province" instead of "Prefecture". Either of the two is certainly better than the previous "-dō". seefooddiet (talk) 05:25, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@RachelTensions commented on the contested speedy move at WP:RM; feel free to weigh in here if you'd like. seefooddiet (talk) 05:26, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If the intention is for this to result in changes to the other pages, it should be formatted as a multimove request. (Probably the other moves should be undone for the time being under WP:RMUM since they have effectively been objected to now.) On the merits, in contemporary Japan "Prefecture" is used for -dō in the case of Hokkaido, but the Korean regions were never treated as integral parts of the "Japanese homeland", so I would probably avoid using "Prefecture" here. There isn't too much problem with "Province", but if there is no common name in English, I don't see a problem with using -dō as in the current title. The name is already based on the Japanese reading of the region, and "-dō" is also "do" in Korean. Dekimasuよ! 05:53, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I just (attempted to) convert to multimove request; lmk if I did it wrong (edited this post and added templates to pages e.g. [10]).
I retract my argument about "Province" or "Prefecture" being preferrable to "-dō"; I misremembered WP:NC; thought there was a preference for the use of translating terms like "-dō" but was wrong.
However, I think my point on WP:COMMONNAME still stands. We have more than enough sources to establish some kind of name, and the vast majority of them seem to use English for the admin district type. In my experience, the use of "-dō" for these is rare.
Actually doing more thinking, the Japanese names of these places may be rarer than the Korean names. Hmphg. seefooddiet (talk) 23:31, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support the mass-move from "dō" to "province". I trust seefooddiet's assessment of the common name in sources, most of which I cannot verify myself. Circuit (administrative division) also covers this term and suggests that we should translate it as "province". Hokkaido seems like an exception, where "dō" was created as a special category of prefecture just to fit this one longstanding use, so I would not use it as evidence that "dō" should be translation as "prefecture" (see Prefectures_of_Japan#Dō).
There's no reason to revert the moves at other pages, since there's no urgency and repeated moving back-and-forth is a waste of time and clutters the logs. If this closes as no-consensus or not moved, we can move them back to the status quo titles. Toadspike [Talk] 12:59, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Mild oppose: When I worked on these articles a few years ago, it was not immediately clear whether there were common names for these formerly Japanese sub-national polities. Ken (縣/県) was and is typically translated as "prefecture", but the kanji for dō (道) can refer to various kinds of sub-national administrative divisions. Rather than arbitrarily choose an English term that may not be commonly used, I settled for dō. However, if there is indeed a common term by which these administrative divisions are now referred to in English, I'll be happy to support. It may interest fellow editors to note that this 1945 National Geographic map neither mentions dō nor "province", etc. —CurryTime7-24 (talk) 23:34, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Dekimasu @Toadspike @CurryTime7-24 Sorry, changing direction of the discussion a bit. I've edited my main post with more literature review.
    In every source I've seen, if they mention provinces/prefectures of Korea during the colonial period at all, they use Korean transliterations of the province names with "Province". Some of these academic works are considered authoritative in the field, and this seems to be a consistent practice across several decades. This is my bad; I should have done the additional reading up front and proposed a different action for these page names.
    I think there's a case for either:
    1. Moving all these pages to match the formatting of Kangwon Province (pre-1910) (move discussion). E.g. Gyeonggi Province (1910–1945) (note this is slightly imprecise due to the colonial period beginning and ending in the middle of each of those years) or Gyeonggi Province (Japanese colonial period) (more precise but verbose)
    2. Merging these pages to parent articles, as they're often mostly unsourced. Unfortunately Kōgen Prefecture doesn't fit neatly into this; there's the Kangwon Province (pre-1910) and the split Gangwon Province, South Korea and Kangwon Province, North Korea articles. Nothing to account for 1910-1945.
    seefooddiet (talk) 23:56, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Before I respond to all of this, there must be a shorter disambiguator than (Japanese colonial period)". What about just "(colonial period)" or "(colonial)"? Toadspike [Talk] 00:04, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Okay, I've now read and understood the above. tldr; you still think "Province" is the commonname, but want to use the Korean instead of Japanese names. I am okay with that and reaffirm my support for the mass-move of these articles. Toadspike [Talk] 00:15, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I may be ok with "colonial period"; I was initially thinking that maybe some people argue that the Soviet/US occupations were a type of colonialism, but flipping through my sources I think that would be a fringe argument. I think just "colonial" is maybe too vague? seefooddiet (talk) 00:12, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I haven't looked at all the sources you listed, but it seems most are about the period after Japanese control. I'm reaffirming my very mild opposition to the use of "province", unless sources beyond Korea studies establish that the term is used generally for the colonial period, but I'm strongly opposed to the new proposed renaming of Japanese place names to Korean ones. I'm also not convinced that such usage is universal. The first book I found on my shelf for a cursory look is Imperial Japan at its Zenith: The Wartime Celebration of the Empire's 2,600th Anniversary by Kenneth Ruoff; colonial Korean cities and sub-national divisions are all referred therein by their Japanese names. Presumably there may be similar usage in literature from a Japan perspective, but this discussion seems to be heading towards settling nationalist grievances and I don't want to have any further part in it. —CurryTime7-24 (talk) 00:33, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Your assuming that nationalism has any part of my editing has been an issue a number of times, and each time I talked you down from it. Nationalism is literally 0% of my motivation for this. I even tried to maintain the original Japanese-language titles until I reviewed the literature and realized that the common name was possibly different. Heck, I even actively edited Wikipedia to use the Japanese-language province names instead of the Korean-language ones. It's a part of my AWB script to do so, and I've performed that edit on hundreds of pages.
    I don't care what name we settle on, I just want it to align with Wikipedia policy. This was purely a dry administrative process to me.
    This must be the last time you accuse me of being an excessive nationalist, this is breaching WP:TENDENTIOUS behavior. Assume good faith, I've been willing to forgive each accusation from you and blank the slate between us over and over, and you keep failing to extend that courtesy to me (although once was because you didn't know I had a new username; regardless you're too eager to throw around that accusation).
    On your other arguments, you've provided a single source for that claim. Most books I've given were written by non-Korean historians, with some coming from historians whose primary backgrounds are in Japan studies. seefooddiet (talk) 00:57, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    [11][12] proof; I've made hundreds of these edits across Category:20th-century South Korean people. If I was really such a petty nationalist I would have at least done [[Chūseihoku-dō|North Chungcheong Province]] or something. Side note, I wrote WP:SEAOFJAPAN to even more explicitly reaffirm the use of "Sea of Japan". Some nationalist I am.
    I'm not saying excessive nationalists don't exist on Wikipedia, I'm saying your radar for them has been demonstrably off base. Until you fix it, hold back these heavy accusations. seefooddiet (talk) 01:11, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Forgot to address this point: but it seems most are about the period after Japanese control the books are primarily about that, yes, but they have chapters that cover the colonial period and all consistently use the Korean-language transliterations.
    The books I looked at were just the books I have lying around from previous readings, although some of these are pretty authoritative. If others have more books that'd be appreciated. I don't have a large Japan studies library. There's no coordinated nationalism here, I'm just hasty and using the books I have quick access to. seefooddiet (talk) 10:47, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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