User:Ansei/Sandbox-Chichijima

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Himorogi (神籬) in Japan are sometimes seen at construction sites. The boundary ropes mark a sacred space. The symbolic fenced area stands for a while before actual work begins. The zigzag-shaped paper streamers ropes are called shide (紙垂).

迷惑です。

• Louis Cullen. "Tokugawa Population: The Archival Issues," Japan Review, 2006, 18:129-180

... a yield of rice of every village from Matsumae (Hokkaido) to Ryukyu (Okinawa).

及び松前島から琉球まで国ごとに各村の石高を記した

Ryūkyū Province

Ryūkyū Province (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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See WP talk:WikiProject Japan#Ryūkyū province and domain in which some argue that the article about the province should not exist. In other words, some argue in effect that Ryūkyū Province should not be in Template:Japan Old Province and Category:Provinces of Japan despite cited sources in the article here Maybe this venue can generate a wider discussion which leads to consensus? --Ansei (talk) 16:50, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Japan-related deletion discussions. Ansei (talk) 16:53, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. Ansei (talk) 16:53, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

• Keep -- I think the page should not be deleted, but this AfD venue may be needed in order to parse the relevant issues.

  In a conventional AfD discussion, it would not be off-topic to cite US Department of State. (1906). A digest of international law as embodied in diplomatic discussions, treaties and other international agreements (John Bassett Moore, ed.), Vol. 5, p. 759. --Ansei (talk) 16:50, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

This is a good article subject. The fact that Ryūkyū Province is in an 1899 revision to 1894 Japan-US and Japan-UK treaties shows a need for this article. In other words, the article is needed to answer the questions "What and where is Ryukyu Province?"

Cited sources show that noteworthy scholars have written about this subject. For example,

• George H. Kerr thought the subject was important enough to include it in the title of his 1953 book Ryukyu Kingdom and Province before 1945.
• Ronald Toby thought the subject was important enough to mention it in his 1991 book State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan: Asia and the development of the Tokugawa bakufu (citing research at the Historiographical Institute of the University of Tokyo); excerpt, "Ieyasu granted the Shimazu clan the right to "rule" over Ryukyu ... [and] contemporary Japanese even referred to the Shimazu clan as 'lords of four provinces', which could only mean that they were including the Ryukyuan kingdom in their calculations"; accord Steve Rabson. (1997). "Assimilation Policy in Okinawa: Promotion, Resistance, and "Reconstruction," New directions in the study of Meiji Japan: Proceedings of the Conference on Meiji Studies, held at Harvard University from May 4-6, 1994 (Helen Hardacre, ed.), p. 639.

The notability of this small subject and the need for an article about Ryūkyū Province is proven by these cited sources. The fact that this also the subject of a current dispute among scholars here is another reason for keeping and improving this article -- not deleting it or marginalizing the subject in a merge.

If I am mistaken in this, I hope this AfD thread will help me understand. Unless this AfD thread shows me how to reason through this problem differently, I can't know why or how this cite-based reasoning process is flawed. --Ansei (talk) 18:47, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Please consider: the National Archives of Japan (NAJ) includes maps which have been digitized. The NAJ explains that there were four times that the Tokugawa ordered cadastral maps of every "kuni" in Japan -- including Ryūkyū-no-kuni. The maps were created in Keicho (1596–1615), Shoho (1644–1648), Genroku (1688-1704) and Tenpō (1830–1844) -- see "Genroku Kuniezu" and related pages which are in English.

Is this not graphic and documentary support for the existence of an article about Ryūkyū-no kuni (琉球国) (Ryūkyū Province)? --Ansei (talk) 02:52, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

@ JunKayama --Yes, thank you for helping to sharpen the focus. Your bullet points are clear, but there are problems in the summary conclusions of the first sentence and the last paragraph.

Yes, according to The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law, "[t]he status of Ryukyu is ambiguous when looked at from the perspective of modern European international law, although there appears to have been no serious issues concerning the status of Ryukyu at that time." Please notice that the word "ambiguous" plus cite support has been added in the opening sentence here. Also please notice that the cited excerpt from Ernest Satow in the Geography section highlights the ambiguity by naming specific islands and also explaining that "[t]he ordinary maps of Japan do not include any of the islands south of Yaku no Shima".

Yes, because of its fuzzy logic, this subject and this article are difficult to parse using a pigeonholing process . --Ansei (talk) 14:40, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

@ JunKayama -- Yes, it is very much on-point to highlight the "Ming or Qing Chinese perspective". I would guess that the post-Qing Chinese perspective is also implied by what you write.

The understandable attention given to the term "de facto" is not wrong. This distracting word has been removed from the article here.

It is helpful to me that you continue to focus on what the cited sources support. It may be constructive to highlight the sentence which follows the excerpt you cite from the Oxford handbook above,

" [C]oncepts of modern European international law such as the sovereign State, territorial sovereignty, the sovereign States system, or the State boundary cannot be directly applied to East Asia in early modern times. That is definitely one reason why Ryukyu's status seems to be puzzling.

The word "puzzling" is useful in the context of this AfD thread. In part, this article needs to exist precisely because the subject is puzzling. It is the subject of likely questions. In part, the article needs to exist because it is a subject of dispute as mentioned in the Oxford handbook,

"This issue is still now under much heated discussion. In the report of the Joint Japan-China History Committee (31 January 2010), the Japanese insisted that Ryukyu was under effective control of the Satsuma domain from the 17th century and that this fact was known to China, while the Chinese persevered that Ryukyu was an independent state until 1879, when Ryukyu was annexed by Japan."

The purpose of our encyclopedia article is not to resolve anything, but instead, can we agree that the purpose of Ryūkyū Province is to provide an overview of a verifiable subject which is ambiguous and puzzling and disputed? --Ansei (talk) 15:13, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry to learn that you think the article is misleading. Please edit any sentence which is written in a misleading way. I hope to learn how to write better as I think carefully about any changes you make. If there is no specific problem with any specific sentence, then I'm a uncertain about the point you're trying to make. --Ansei (talk) 17:10, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

@ Jun Kayama -- Please consider Kanenori Matsuo. (2005). The Secret Royal Martial Arts of Ryūkyū, p. 40., p. 40, at Google Books; excerpt, "In 1872, Ryukyu Province was formed, and in 1874, ties were broken with Qing China. Due to this, Japanese and Chinese tensions continued. In 1879, the Meiji government occupied the royal castle by force, and abolished the province, simultaneously establishing Ryukyu Prefecture" (bold added)? This brief excerpt seems to go along with your diff above. As I evaluate the available information, a modest basis for an article about Ryūkyū Province is explained, in part, by your diff and by this cite ... in addition to the other cite support which has been listed above. --Ansei (talk) 20:41, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

• Comment: It may be helpful to highlight a constructive fact -- that this thread adduced new support for the verifiability of Ryūkyū Province as an article according to the conventional standards and procedures of our en:Wikipedia project:

• 1609-1872 "province" verified by book written for scholarly readership + National Archives of Japan (in Japanese); (in English)
• 1872-1879 "province" verified by book written for general readership
• 1879-1947 "province" verified by US Dept. of State + National Archives of Japan (in Japanese)
• 1609-1947 "province" verified by book written for US Pacific Science Board, National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council

Sources in English and in Japanese are complementary. Also, please notice that the cites which link to the work of scholars are enhanced by links to brief articles about them, e.g., George H. Kerr, Ronald Toby, Gregory Smits.

The intensity of preference expressed by some suggests that there is no real question of notability.

Taken together, verifiability and notability are good reasons for this article to exist. No one disputes that the content of the article may be edited in ways that reflect the opinions expressed by participants in this discussion; however, this AfD is only about whether our article about Ryūkyū Province will continue to exist, isn't it? --Ansei (talk) 14:43, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Strategy

In our unique Wikipedia context, a dispute raises a couple of questions:

• What is to be done next?
• What is to be learned from this?

I reviewed Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. --Ansei (talk) 02:28, 20 May 2013 (UTC)