Talk:History of Japan/Archive 16

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If we're really serious about an RFC...

There's been a lot of talk by several users on this page over the last few days about starting an RFC, but with no clear indication as to what the question would be. It seems to be about the "chronological vs. thematic" organization of the article, but the question we should be asking the community is not "should this article be organized chronologically or thematically" (of course it should be basically chronological), but rather "if this article is to be organized in a purely chronological fashion, with the only section titles being the names of historical periods, then how should we deal with the subject-matter that is already, and probably needs to be, told in an unchronological fashion, such as literary trends that continued uninterrupted throughout the late-Heian and early-Kamakura periods". No one here is arguing that the article should not be "chronological" -- that is a strawman set up by CurtisNaito and propagated by my wikistalker TH1980. The question is how we can make the chronological format work, because at present the article is very clearly not written in chronological order. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:19, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Well, we've got a number of issues tied up in that:

One is that through poor research and writing, the article isn't truly chronological. That's something that can be fixed only through proper research and careful writing, which an RfC will not magically give us.

Another is dealing with chronologies in areas such as the arts or social conditions that don't fall cleanly (or sometimes at all) within the political divisions that delineate the main narrative. It's those areas that I proposed breaking off into separate sections, so they can be handled most readably and succinctly, and be given proper context. That could be the subject of an RfC, but I don't see the point in holding one until the very problematic research and writing issues are adequately cleaned up. As the owners of the article disallow this cleanup, what's the point? As long as the article insists, for example, that Shōwa-period literature is best represented by the sci-fi works of Haruki Murakami (!!!) then the chronology issues can only be obscure to those who show up to participate in the RfC.

Such an RfC would be a time-sink, and even if it turned out in favour of separate sections, those sections would only end up filled with unreadable nonsense—just look at the "Social conditions" section (particularly look at diffs of it from before I attempted to clean it up).

Let's solve the real issues and deal with organization when we have some properly researched content to organize. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 05:40, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Post-occupation Japanese authors

I originally tried to include this:

"Japanese authors came to the forefront after the occupation, such as Haruki Murakami, whose magical realism novels gained a devoted following among Japanese youth."

I invited other users to add to and expand on this list, but it was rejected out of hand. Why? What is wrong with simply editing and expanding this in a cooperative manner?TH1980 (talk) 03:26, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

• We've already discussed this and all the ways this is hugely problematic ad nauseam, as you are well aware, so stop playing innocent. Every aspect of that sentence is problematic right down to the period you placed it in. "Japanese authors came to the forefront after the occupation" is pure gibberish. There is nothing salvageable. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 03:47, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Never mind. I am withdrawing my suggestion and stepping away from this page due to how needlessly contentious this and other matters has been here.TH1980 (talk) 03:50, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Revisiting

@CurtisNaito, Curly Turkey, Hijiri88, and TH1980: Curtis invited me here about the possibility of an RfC on the horizon, something that would be a step in the right direction here. Disappointingly, after perusing through the above discussions, I see that there is exactly zero agreement on what form that RfC might take. I have some background with Japanese history, but I don't have any genius solutions to the structural issues here other than some new perspectives are sorely needed.

TH1980 suggested we find a way to break the deadlock. An RfC clearly isn't going to happen. Here's my suggestion: Accept that you have tried to work together on this, that you have made some improvements, and that continuing to work together on it will be a net loss for all of you and for Wikipedia generally. This is the kind of discourse that drives people away from editing, period. All of you have done important research and work in this article, but your time is not at all spent well working together here. I'd recommend all of you collectively walk away from this article and find something else to work on; in addition, I'd recommend that both Curly and Hijiri avoid working with Curtis and vice versa, and do not monitor or follow each other. I don't think an interaction ban is necessary, but take this as a recommendation for your own sanity that you find another article or topic to spend time on. I, JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 07:16, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you.TH1980 (talk) 07:20, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

What must be recognized is the problem is not a "content dispute", nor is it an unwillingness to "work together". It is one incompetent and disruptive editor who blocks all efforts to correct his egregious and widespread errors and has already driven several editors away in exasperation. It is irresponsible simply to avoid CurtisNaito and allow him to continue to poison this article with misinformation.

Here's an exercise—attempt it in earnest and you'll quickly see how and real and serious the CurtisNaito problem is:

The exercise: Tasked with summing up Japanese literature since the war, what can you come up with? Stick with online sources, even, or even stick with no more than Britannica's article on J-lit. Even doing an rushed, offhand job, how likely is it you would come up with anything remotely resembling the following?

In literature, science fiction emerged as a major genre. Leading authors of this period such as Sakyo Komatsu and Haruki Murakami used science fiction to explore complex ideas such as social alienation, excessive materialism, the dangers of technology, and environmental destruction.<ref>Totman, 658–659.</ref>

Limit yourself even to the source CurtisNaito's limited himself to, and you'll find it's objectively impossible to sum up J-lit since WWII in such a bizarre way. Now scroll up and look at how exhaustingly many bytes CurtisNaito wasted defending this travesty of un-research. This is but one example of two sentences—such travesties infest virtually every corner of this 64kB article. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 09:28, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Calling this a refusal to work together would be a gross misunderstanding of the problem. The CurtisNaito-TH1980 tag team's opponents on this page (principally Curly Turkey, Sturmgewehr88, Nishidani and myself) disagree on content more often than not, but we rarely fail to work together constructively. The problem here is user behaviour, and if it wasn't for a currently-open ArbCom case said problem could have been solved (most likely with one indefinite block and one broad TBAN) months ago. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:45, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia has plenty of built-in mechanisms to deal with content disputes, such as request for comment and mediation, and eventually recourse to one or another might have to be seriously considered. I'm sure everyone thinks that every other user has some sort of "behavioral issues", but talking about them on this talk page so far hasn't solved anything. Unless we take IJethroBT's advice, the only remaining solution is to actually follow the rules of Wikipedia, which require that article talk pages include only content discussions and that users seek resolution of content disputes through normal mechanisms including request for comment.CurtisNaito (talk) 16:40, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

to deal with content disputes—I just finished demonstrating this is unambiguously not a content dispute. And you've just demonstrated what an enormous disruption you are by trying once again to bury the point. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 20:16, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

I JethroBT—can you seriously not see the game CurtisNaito is playing here? That he's deflecting fromt the actual issues of the article (egregiously poor research, disruptive editing, and OWNership behaviour) by painting it as a content or structural dispute? Seriously, try the excercise I set out above and just how serious things are will be crystal clear. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 20:22, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

In my opinion, if anything goes to AN/I, other users will come off a lot worse than CurtisNaito and myself. I still favor request for comment, barring an actual better idea.TH1980 (talk) 21:48, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Luckily the evidence trumps your opinion. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 22:00, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Although a RFC is not an option, I still feel a modest section that mentions post-occupation Japanese authors would be a good addition to the page. I invite others to add an author or two of note, rather than reject it out of hand.TH1980 (talk) 02:40, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

The door is wide open to any competent, conscientious editor who is willing to do the research to sum up developments in J-lit since WWII. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 03:52, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Apologies

I was trying to restore some deleted text from a year ago and I accidentally erased a big chunk. My apolog1es and I've tried to restore it. :( Rjensen (talk) 20:24, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Don't worry. That kind of thing, speaking personally, happens to the worst of us.Nishidani (talk) 20:27, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Or even the best of us. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 16:19, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

A break from editing (humor)

I know this is not a forum for the article's subject, but I thought you hardworking editors deserve to take a break from editing to enjoy a little humor: History of Japan. Prhartcom (talk) 03:12, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

• Ha! I saw that recently. I could nitpick, but that would be missing the point. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 03:47, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
• I've recently just seen this and was actually going to ask if there was anything to said for including a link to it. It's humourous, yes, but it's quite concise.

And if you don't agree, "how about I do, anyway!"

2.27.16.189 (talk) 15:38, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Jōmon period

The Overview table indicates that the Jōmon period was 10,000 BC to 300 BC. From the Wikipedia entry for the Jomon period:

The Jōmon is the time in Prehistoric Japan from about 16,500 years ago to about 2,300 years ago...

However, the text in the section Paleolithic and Jōmon period in this entry is:

The Jōmon period of prehistoric Japan spans from about 12,000 BC (in some cases dates as early as
14,500 BC are given) to about 800 BC...

☺ Dick Kimball (talk) 14:52, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Japan

this was very helpful for my project about japan (I was the only one in my year 7 class) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.100.46.107 (talk) 09:07, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

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Npov

To avoid mentioning Japanese facism in the introduction seems disingenuous at best.. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 106.133.178.59 (talk • contribs) 19:18, 4 May 2017‎ (UTC)

Why? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 19:18, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Probably because it doesn't exist. ミーラー強斗武 (StG88ぬ会話) 02:53, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Syntax

This sentence is from the final lines of the introduction: "The Allies occupied Japan until 1952, during which a new constitution was enacted in 1947 that transformed Japan into a constitutional monarchy." --- IMO, "during which" does not make much sense syntax-wise and is difficult to read; rather, it should be something like "during which period/time", etc.

But in general, I would suggest splitting this into two simple sentences, vaguely like this: "The Allies occupied Japan until 1952. During the period of occupation, a new constitution was enacted in 1947 that transformed Japan into a constitutional monarchy." (I am open to suggestions for improvement.) Simplicity avoids syntax problems and probably also benefits readers whose first language isn't English. Otto von B. (talk) 21:26, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

"had been close to the imperial family for centuries [before 784]"

Does Henshall support this claim? If so, I guess it's possible that he's right, in a manner of speaking, if one assumes that the Nakatomi clan were the same as the Fujiwara clan, but the Nakatomi clan were not that powerful before Kamatari's time, and according to this article the Fujiwara clan as such was established in 669, scarcely 115 years before the date under discussion. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:40, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Turkic peoples

Today someone added the following:

It is believed that also people of Turkish descent have migrated to Japan but when this hike took place is unknown. So in japan, old Turkish tombstones were also called "balbal".

First, the linked PDF talks about 'turkic' peoples, so this has me worried. Second, the PDF includes the footnote:

7 Caveat: the present author follows convention in speaking of balbal generically as “Turkic.” But, as shown below, balbal have an origin in pre-history that long antedates the appearance of Turkish peoples on the historical stage, and the people who created the balbal of Houjou-chou, Japan, were not necessarily Turkic — they may have been Scythian, Sogdian, Khotanese, or some other “Iranian” people of Central Asian provenance. The author is indebted to Prof. Victor H. Mair for this insight.

Third, I would not know whether this occasional journal, Sino-Platonic Papers, is a reputable source. I'm going to revert with explanation that this needs to be discussed before inclusion. Shenme (talk) 03:39, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

References

Recent reverts

User:Davide palladini, how about you discuss here instead of continuing to revert? You previously changed already-sourced content without adding any new ones and also added unsourced content, and bad grammar such as "issuing apologizes". I now see that it was done in good faith, but that wasn't the way to address concerns. The popular culture sentence was also a minor part of the article and you are only removing it on an emotional basis. I don't see why something that is a significant part of the country shouldn't be mentioned at all, especially when it is only in passing. Fortunatestars (talk) 12:39, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

@Davide palladini: Using "and" to combine a noun phrase using a possessive "'s" with a present participle so that the same "'s" is also an abbreviation of "is" is, indisputably, horrendous, and adding a "most" before "nationalist politics" is not much better. As for the content, this edit completely changed the meaning of the sentence, so it was hardly "minor" like you claimed, and it is really inappropriate for you to be changing a sourced statement like that unless the original statement misrepresented the source and you are fixing that. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 12:47, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Farris

William Wayn Farris is cited in several references but in the section "Books cited" there are two sources by that author, one from 1995 and other from 2009. So clarification is needed into which sepecific book is being referred in those references. Rupert Loup (talk) 01:19, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Fixed this. Thanks! Hadassah16 (talk) 02:21, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Who wrote this?

• (1)

  A 2017 study on ancient Jōmon aDNA from the Sanganji shell mound in Tōhoku estimated that the modern mainland Japanese inherited less than 20% of Jōmon peoples' genomes, and their genetic admixture resulted of the indigenous Jōmon people, the Yayoi people, and later migrants during and after the Yayoi period

Atrocious, but not generating pop up talk page editor blow-in protestors, as in the preceding section. Nishidani (talk) 08:02, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

Note also that the genius who flummed this, took out the link to the paper cited (Kanzawa-Kiriyama, Hideaki et al. (2016). "A partial nuclear genome of the Jomons who lived 3000 years ago in Fukushima, Japan". Journal of Human Genetics. 62 (2)), thus making WP:V once more an uphill grind, perhaps because if one actually reads the source, the picture is far more complex. Nishidani (talk) 10:03, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

• (2)Who added Kobayashi, Seiji (2014). "Eastern Japanese Pottery During the Jomon-Yayoi Transition: A Study in Forager-Farmer Interaction". In Bellwood, P. et al. (eds.). Indo-Pacific Prehistory: The Melaka Papers. Canberra: Australian National University.

Note the date is incorrect. Note no page numbers are given. The date is out by 13 years (2014=2001). Again whoever does this did not consult the source, but clipped it from some book- Kobayashi’s paper was printed in P.Bellwood, D.Bowdery, I. Glover et.al (eds.) Indo-Pacific Prehistory: The Melaka Papers 5 pp.37-42, Canberra: Australian National University, Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association 21.2001 Nishidani (talk) 12:10, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

Editwarring

User:Homemade Pencils As far as I can see you have never edited this article in the past, and have never appeared on its talk page. You have barged into an article with a very complex history, just to revert. One of the major problems here consists in the practice of systematically using a citational mode that replaces linked sources, which existed in the past, with delinked sourcing, while removing without any notable justification, multiple academic works cited by earlier editors. That, to me, is the central problem. The steady removal of links has made verification (WP:V) arduous to the point of impossible.

You object to the fact that I used a different citational form? Well, you know, all that needs to be done is to adapt it to the existing one (which however is highly defective) by making an addition to the bibliography that retains the page link.

I responded to your first revert complaint by rewriting the text, eliding the repetition you complained of, and improving the style. This is called compromise and consensus editing. No, with barely a glance you went ahead and removed the adjusted text, meaning you are not engaging on this page or in the article, in constructive editing.Nishidani (talk) 19:03, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

It is required on Wikipedia that references use a consistent style. Almost all of them do use a consistent style, except the ones you added. The rules state that we avoid "switching between major citation styles... or replacing the preferred style of one academic discipline with another's". As long as the page numbers are there, the text is verifiable. A good model to use is the featured article Ulysses Grant. It contains page numbers, but no Google Books links to individual pages, as that would be entirely superfluous. There are many other problems with the text. For example, there are no spaces between the citation numbers and the text that follows them. There are multiple sentence fragments like "as well as glassmaking and new styles of houses" (sentences require a subject and verb to be grammatical). There are words that make no sense like "aooears". There are sentences sourced to multiple sources where one would do the exact same. And you've filled the text with extra information unbefitting of a summary, etc... I don't agree with re-adding text that contains this many serious errors unless a clear majority back these changes. Homemade Pencils (talk) 19:14, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Consistency of reference style is a requirement of recognized content (GAs, FAs), which this article is not and will not be in the foreseeable future. The solution to reference style inconsistency is to reformat it, not delete it, as WP:V is a core policy; reference style is a WP:MOS issue, which takes less priority. Unless the text can be demonstrated to be unfixable or unreasonable to try to fix, reverting it is drastic and aggressively uncollaborative. "aooears" is not a "word that makes no sense", but an obvious typo for "appears". The problems with this article are mountain high—these are nothing. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 20:07, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that Nishidani's edits are awfully careless. It might be good to add in new details, but it should at least be done with some thought and logical citations. I don't agree with Nishidani's reverts. New information should be added to the current text, but only based on the good stuff we have, not slashing through the current text by inserting literally dozens of spelling and grammatical mistakes. Hadassah16 (talk) 20:22, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Hadassah16: Could you please clarify what you mean by "logical citations"?

Wikipedia is a collaborative website, and Wikipedians individual editors are not required to be good spellers, grammarians, or formatters—it has long been established that editors who are good at these things can come in after to clean them up (something that takes up a large amount of my own edit history). It is not acceptable to remove content over a lack of polish. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 00:39, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

Don't be silly. I only get reverted on pages where editors come fully forearmed with ideological obsessions, and zero competence in the topic. What I note below applies to you, who like Homemade Pencils, haven't even begun to look at what I actually did to fix an outstanding problem.

The problem is not consistency of formatting (something which I otherwise agree on, though you failed to note Arbcom says consistency in format is not mandatory ('It is required on wikipedia'), as you try to put over). That can be fixed in a jiffy. I'll give you just a snippet example of the damage your approach did.

We once had many sources linked, even to the precise page numbers. Whoever pushed for format uniformity of citational style, at the same time, destroyed many of the pre-existing source page links. So once we had_

"SchirokauerBrown2012">Conrad Schirokauer; Miranda Brown; David Lurie; Suzanne Gay (2012). A Brief History of Chinese and Japanese Civilizations. Cengage Learning. p. 138-143. ISBN 0-495-91322-7.

What do we have now? This is used five times as a reference, and if you click you end up down the page with this item in the bibliography

Schirokauer, Conrad (2013). A Brief History of Chinese and Japanese Civilizations. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

which is (a) delinked (b) flawed attribution since it leaves out three other contributors (c) gets the date wrong 2013 = 2012.

In your blind revert, and with Hadassah's truckling support, you didn't take trouble to notice these things, corrected by my edit. You simply restored errors that stand out like dogs' balls, just because of what was perceived to be a slight dissonance in formatting. What happened with this obsessive drive to GA, is uniformity of style was the priority, at the expense of WP:V. The result, as Curly Turkey noted, is that we have a motherlode of unverifiable text, which can't easily be fixed now because editors would have to go back, and laboriously, cite by cite, relink it to each source. As it stands it now looks 'cute', and is totally unverifiable. Why this was done is anyone's guess. Nishidani (talk) 20:35, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I share many of the concerns over the recent edits and favor the citation consistency and textual fixes of the rollbacks made by Homemade Pencils.TH1980 (talk) 00:05, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

Is it worth anything? I doubt it, not even as a 'vote' to give the appearance of an emerging 'consensus'. Someone with just over 700 edits, who barges into an article with a long history of atrocious editing, registering long after people were banned for engaging in appalling behavior, and showing zero knowledge of the archives, must show a minimal grasp of the content and formal issues if they expect their judgments to be treated seriously.

Now that you are here, could you explain why you erased so many links to pages, and why you decided to rid the page of so many valid sources in reformatting it, without the touted consensus, according to your preferred approach?Nishidani (talk) 07:25, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

I only deleted a small number of sources, and that was mostly just because I had to trim the article somewhat to meet article size standards, so I dropped the citations that were no longer in use. There were a few citations I had to drop because they were unreliable or didn't verify the text, but mostly it was just removing excess details from an outline article. Out of over 300 citations, only a half dozen citations contained page links, so it was easier to change the half dozen outliers than the 300 others. Of course, I did verify the accuracy of all the sources and modified all the text that didn't match. TH1980 (talk) 22:52, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

• Support Homemade Pencils version - Even if we leave aside the poor writing quality of the new text, we still don't have a reason to change the original. The new text cites Ann Kumar for something she never says, it has no citations at all for the first two sentences, and most of the text about new Yayoi innovations could indeed all go to A Brief History of Chinese and Japanese Civilizations... We could look at it from the perspective of writing, style, accuracy, brevity, or whatever, but by all standards the alternative to Homemade Pencils version is just garbage. Hko2333 (talk) 09:26, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

User:Krow750 I won't revert again, but I'm astonished that such problematic edits would be supported by other editors. Flowing text with accurate citations should be a requirement here, and of course we should aim for high quality. Even though this isn't a GA, we still should aim for a similar level of quality. Perhaps there will be a consensus for a combination of both versions. Homemade Pencils (talk) 18:04, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

Homemade Pencils: what text is unsourced? If you're implying that statements aren't followed by inline cites, that's not a requirement—a single inline is sufficient for all the preceding text (even the whole paragraph), which is the genereally preferred style as it is less disruptive to the reading experience. Are there are actual statements that are not supported by the most immediate following inline cite? Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 23:28, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

The comment just above mine did mention several problems with the accuracy of the citations in the text currently in the article. They may have been fixed in the revised draft below, but there's still the matter of what was the point in replacing a version that was good with citations (the previous one) with a version that was repeatedly added despite only now finally having a draft with accurate citations. Right now I might be willing to support most of the revised draft below, even though I still don't like the citation formatting inconsistency.Homemade Pencils (talk) 00:14, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Why is the revised edit below still problematic. Do I need to remind you all that, if you have no response to the revised text, your objections remain opinions, drive-by votes devoid of argumentative substance, and therefore of no weight in deciding what text goes up. Just repeating oneself is pointless.Nishidani (talk) 19:23, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

Okay, we are now witnessing the lockstep voting procedure in defiance of WP:CONSENSUS which says numbers don't count, the solidity of arguments do. Since three 'voters' say the following is 'garbage', characterized by 'poor writing', they are under an obligation to construe the English whose quality they detest, and say why it is poor writing, and garbage. This is the contested text I introduced:

The advent of the Yayoi people introduced radical changes to the Japanese archipelago as it replaced Jōmon culture. It spread out from northern Kyushu, introducing new technologies and modes of living. The date for the onset of this wave of change was until recently thought to be around 400 BCE,[11][12]but radio-carbon evidence suggests a date of around 500 years earlier,between 1,000-800 B.C.E.[13][14] The diffusion of the Yayoi throughout Honshu aooears to have brought about a fusion with elements of the indigenous Jōmon culture . . Unlike the Stone Age Jōmon, the Yayoi people used metal tools made of bronze and iron.[17] and also introduced weaving and silk production to Japan,[18]new styles of woodwork.[13] as well as glassmaking[13] and new styles of houses.[19] Bronze and iron weapons and tools were imported from China and Korea; such tools were later produced in Japan.

Since writing carefully has traditionally been rendered arduous by the succession of quick blind reverts, such as occurred here, now that we are discussing the passage calmly, I'll copy-edit the above text with minimal tweaks.

The advent of the Yayoi people introduced radical changes to the Japanese archipelago, compressing the millennial achievements of the Neolithic Revolution into a relatively short span of centuries, particularly with the development of rice cultivation. Spreading out from northern Kyūshū, the Yayoi gradually replaced Jōmon culture by introducing new technologies and modes of living. The onset of this wave of changes was, until recently, thought to have begun around 400 BCE. Radio-carbon evidence now suggests the new phase started some 500 years earlier, between 1,000-800 B.C.E.. The expansion of the Yayoi appears to have brought about a fusion with the indigenous Jōmon, resulting in a small admixture genetically. . . Unlike the Stone Age Jōmon, the Yayoi people used bronze and iron tools and weapons, initially imported from China and the Korean peninsula. They also introduced weaving and silk production,new styles of woodwork, glassmaking technology, and new architectural styles..

So please construe this tweak and show what is garbage about it, such that it cannot be accepted as a fluent summary of the earlier text, which, as shown above, screwed up the sourcing and linking.Nishidani (talk) 09:54, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

The complaint is quality sourcing, and 'high quality', shared by three editors whose editing history should illustrate the acclaimed principles. We have

• Hko2333-785 edits over 12 years, almost all comma tweaking
• Homemade Pencils-803 edits over 5 years, the majority comma tweaking
• Hadassah16-737 edits over 3 years, a substantial amount comma tweaks.
• Krow750 with 421 edits in 2 years is invoked by Homemade Pencils immediately after a remark by Hko2333, giving the mysterious impression that HP identifies the one with the other. though neither has edited this topic area. See here. So what's going on here?Nishidani (talk) 21:52, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

Can any of you point to edits you have made in which you have introduced academic sourcing to any of these articles? Can any of you show where you have improved, and thereby shown, knowledge of Japan and its history? All I can see is contributions consisting in a byte more or less of text. If that is your profile, where does your competence to judge edits on ancient Japanese history come from?Nishidani (talk) 19:46, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, I was viewing a different page just before this and got the user's name wrong. But thanks for pinging the correct editor. Concerning your other comment, we are all anonymous editors and none of us are experts, but ultimately we are indeed evaluating the strength of arguments, including the arguments that I made earlier. What I want to know is, what really is the weakness of the earlier version, apart from the citation consistency claims?Homemade Pencils (talk) 23:24, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

You shouldn't ping editors to draw them into a page where 'voting' occurs. In your lapse I'm sure it wasn't but it has the appearance of vote stacking to win a point.(b) You all share a punctuation interest, (c) and an exiguous record of contributions to Wikipedia ( To edit Wikipedia only occasionally is not objectionable: to the contrary. But it does undermine any implicit assertion that the infrequent editor has any major grasp of article history, wiki policy, and the practical problems of writing articles up to snuff in a hostile context). (d) More importantly, none of you have either budged from your initial response though (1) I redrafted the passage (written in extreme haste, though I won't go into the private background of why it was unusually careless, though facing successive automatic reverts gave my drafting even more urgency), and (2) this redraft has not been responded to. In addition, I thoroughly sourced, supplying several new, and page-linked academic specialist works, the revised text in order to ground the paragraph or two on scholarship that meets the highest RS criteria for Wikipedia articles. That is my normal, day to day, practice here for 14 years.

I wasn't offended by your initial response. I am disconcerted by the refusal to budge an inch from a collective judgment that is no longer relevant because the offered redraft meets your objections, apart from formatting. There is, finally, some 'don't teach-granny-to-suck-eggs' message in my analysis here. I have performed over 77,777 edits, half of them consist in adding recent or current scholarly references, and I have written several hundred articles from scratch, two at least to FA standard (one formally approved). I know what I am doing, in my senectutis intervalla, to adapt an expression from Lucretius.

The citation consistency claim is nugatory. I have a wikifriend who has developed software that can immediately reformat any text according to one citational format, making any page instantaneously uniform. The point I made concerns something far more damaging: TH1980, in my experience and perspective, has a long history (2015) of

• erroneous attribution
• failure to comprehend sources in paraphrase
• failure to understand what his editing interlocutors state about evidence and policy (WP:IDIDNOTHEARTHAT

(S)HeThey returned to Wikipedia and,

• without consensus adopted their preferred citational style to rewrite the page according to that format.
• The format was shown to be problematical years ago: when you have before you in an article, say,

Mark Hudson,Ruins of Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Japanese Islands, University of Hawaii Press, 1999 ISBN 978-0-824-82156-2 pp.79-81

There is absolutely nothing to be gained, and a huge amount to be lost, in transforming this mechanically into

Hudson 1999 pp.78-81, and relocating the main details to a bibliography where it reappears as

Mark Hudson, Ruins of Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Japanese Islands, University of Hawaii Press, 1999

Removing the page link and giving an impoverished citation, means the WP:V criteria met in the first form, have been dismantled. To what purpose? No one knows, other than that TH1980 continually does this, and does it after being repeatedly told that his practices of citing texts either garble the content, or cannot be verified, since he often resorts to very obscure sources of doubtable RS quality.

The only raison d'être I can find for what TH1980 did to these articles is that, regardless of the intrinsic quality of the content, 'they' want to secure some GA accreditation, after a long TBAN. I may be wrong, but that's what it looks like. The article needs a lot of work, and mere format unification can't camouflage its defects (Sansom's 3 volume history is limited to one book, 5 citations. The massive 6 volume Cambridge History of Japan gets just 4 citations, each from an author for just one remark. Henshall's snippy 240+page overview accounts for over 90 citations. Why the difference? Simple. To get a thorough grasp on a topic it's too much trouble to read up on it comprehensively for months. A few days with one popular book (with its merits), relieves one of the boredom of actually reading too much). As a result it errs by omission (it is, bar Greece, the shortest 'History of a country' article we have, less than half or a third than most other major countries.Nishidani (talk) 06:44, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

It's a massive improvement over what you actually added, but I won't withdraw my vote yet. I still think that the final list shouldn't have so many inline citations, because the majority of it can be summarized from two pages of the Schirokauer book. Also, there's no need to put so many periods after every sentence. And I still don't agree that we should use a non-standard citation format, which is not common across most well-developed Wikipedia articles and not fitting with the other citations in this article. It's strange to say that the previous text was unverifiable due to that. The page numbers were there, so it would have been easy to check just like in most Wikipedia articles that don't contain direct links. All the previous text was verified just fine.Hko2333 (talk) 07:09, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

(1) The passages in the Schirokauer book were written by David Lurie, and Suzanne Gay. I retained this popular high school/undergraduate level book out of respect for prior editors but much better comprehensive sources, with more detail exist. That whole section can be rewritten, expanded and finessed with just two linked sources of the highest quality, already used in the text, if far too sparsely. In fact I've already done that. But I won't add it. I'm sick and tired of doing the legwork, only to find someone messing with it, delinking and then claiming the credit at GA, for doing eff-all. I'll add it only when there is some assurance that this article is to undergo serious revision towards an article of quality, with area-competent editors.

(2) Too many inline citations? What is the policy objection, other than a subjective feel. The point is: before you settle on a text, get the fundamental scholarship in on each and every point which, being page-linked, enables participant editors and even readers to expand their knowledge of what a bare snippet paraphrase states or claims. Once everyone is duly informed, then, and only then should one pare things down, and look for general sources of high qualkity that summarize the items. This is what I did in rewriting Khazars from top to bottom, summarizing all of the best scholarship for each theme. No one has found that objectionable for several years. Indeed the text is closely monitored and guarded from intrusive manipulations and abuse. Unlike this, it actually tells you something about the economic pressures, ideological currents, and geopolitical forces at work. This article has zero coverage. It just adds nice touches, completely misleading, about geishas for example(the courtesan/entertainment world of Tokugawa was a key economic and cultural factor in the premodern Japanese state: not a hint here)

(3) This article is radically short in its coverage, and overwhelmingly biased towards WP:Recentism historically. The Yayoi period was the fundamental pivotal moment that set many of the enduring patterns of Japanese history, and the skimpy prior version runs:

The Yayoi people brought new technologies and modes of living to the Japanese archipelago. It took over from the Jōmon culture and spread from northern Kyushu. Yayoi culture quickly spread to the main island of Honshū, mixing with native Jōmon culture.[11] The date of the change was until recently thought to be around 400 BC, but radio-carbon evidence suggests a date of around 500 years earlier.[12] Though hunting and foraging continued, the Yayoi period brought a new reliance on agriculture.[12] Bronze and iron weapons and tools were imported from China and Korea; such tools were later produced in Japan.[14] The Yayoi period also saw the introduction of weaving, glassmaking, and new styles of woodwork

This is high school essay level prose, repetitive of key terms, the vocabularly is poor, and the text scarce on significant detail. Much that is important has been omitted.

It gives no one an inkling of the nature of the dramatic shifts, My version is incomplete since it is just an improvement on the vague text I had before me, but it sends you for each point to a relevant set of pages by an acknowledged authority.

I never spoke of providing an alternative citational format. The one that exists is intolerably dumb, as I have repeatedly noted.

It's strange to say that the previous text was unverifiable due to that. The page numbers were there, so it would have been easy to check just like in most Wikipedia articles that don't contain direct links

Why should a reader be deliberately deprived of direct access to a source, and its relevant pages, which is what TH1980 did. Where is the precedent for this, stripping texts of url links as if it were an improvement to deny readers and future editors an ability to instantly control the quality and authenticity of what they are reading? Sure, page numbers survive, but you are saying that if anyone doubts the text, they can get in their car, go to a university library( if there is one in their area) and look up each book. That is not a real world alternative, when the digital revolution makes immediate verification possible at a mere click. No one objecting seems to take this obvious point on board. perhaps it's lack of experience of what optimal editing on Wikipedia amounts to.

I don't care if people keep or change their 'votes'. What is evident is that so far (a) no objector has any significant experience of editing in detail wiki articles (b) no record of doing anything with the topic area (c) no apparent knowledge of ancient Japanese history (d) no ability to see that the distinction between linked text and delinked text destroys WP:V where it was available, and makes verification take hours or days, instead of an instant. If one can't see that, then the accompanying 'vote' is without substance, or rather, just digging one's heels in.Nishidani (talk) 11:48, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

And lastly, most conclusively for the pointlessness of this mass entry vote agin'im phenomenon, no editor has noticed that the text left by the editor whose version all applaud, has a glaring in-your-face pastiche of ungrammatical source-errant nonsense. I have cited it in the section below. So the objectors are not reading the page. They have shown up only to have looked at a diff, and made a generalization from it of my sloppy momentary oversight, quickly fixed, in order to support one editor notorious in my book for his incompetence, while not making a similar protest at the much more egregious patchwork of slipshod prose which TH1980's repeated editing of the text left untouched, meaning he approves of that patent incoherence since he hasn't corrected it.Nishidani (talk) 11:55, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

It may have been said already, but technically WP: articlesize recommends that articles not be greatly inexcess of 10,000 words, so I think the argument in favor of summarizing is compelling. Furthermore, as long as the sources are reliable and the information accurate, it doesn't matter which reliable sources we use, so I don't find it compelling that we need more citations to Sansom's older work as opposed to some of the more up-to-date works we are already using. I definitely believe that the article does cover "economic pressures, ideological currents, and geopolitical forces", and it has roughly the same amount of info on geisha as Encyclopedia Britannica's article on Japanese history, which is longer than this one... I don't want anything to get personal. Other users have been trying to correct the factual and citation errors that you inserted into the article, but it's also good that you are examining other users for similar problems. When it comes to writing quality though, there are two opposed opinions here too and I guess which one is better is ultimately just subjective. Anyway, I'm so far not seeing any consensus for either version, so we may need to temporarily leave this section partially finished until a consensus can emerge for one version. Homemade Pencils (talk) 22:27, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Article size will become an issue once the content, balance, sourcing, and other more important issues that pervade the article have been dealt with. We don't start with article size. We build an article, and then work on more superficial aspects such as WP:MOS compliance, formatting issues, and article size. This article has been an exhausting, exasperating ordeal due to the behaviours of editors including TH1980 and CurtisNaito, and it will likely take years before editors with all the skills necessary manage to work this article into something that can be "nicened up". These driveby editors will only discourage this from happening for that much longer. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 00:11, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Furthermore, as long as the sources are reliable and the information accurate, it doesn't matter which reliable sources we use

This is all abstract. Unless one has a hands-on experience of this page, and a memory for its woes, general impressions either miss, or gloss over, the essential points. Your remark assumes that because things look hunky-dory, everything must be okay. Eg. Farris is a 'reliable source'. The information reported from him of a tenfold increase over the Jomon population by late Yayoi times, is 'accurate'. Note 25 = Farris 1996, 25. Terrific.

That cannot be correct, because p.25 deals with a Tempyō era tax register. What happened? Probably TH1980 looked at the footnote no. 25, and confused it with the page number. One doesn't know, but it's typical of their carelessness. The datum for such an increase is on p.3, and always had been cited thus for years until July 16 when TH1980 started rushing to get a GA badge of approval by 'fixing' i.e., prettifying' a notoriously inadequate article. That's just one of numerous errors he introduced in an article that has remained woefully inadequate.

The earliest is eliminating a whole section at the very outset, while retaining one datum:

have been proposed as evidence for the first Homo sapiens in Japan; watercraft appear to have been in use in this period

Well that was how the prior text put it. But our GA-pursuing revisor dislike the idiom, and created an unattested form of English in rewriting this as

Early man likely arrived on Japan by sea on watercraft.'

Any English user knows that one 'arrives in' a country, never 'arrives on' a country. One arrives on time.

These are a couple of the obvious messes introduced by TH1980's revisions. As in 2015, little he 'fixes' stands up to scrutiny. Nishidani (talk) 05:08, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

According to the Google Books edition, the information about the population increase is indeed on page 25 of the book by William Wayne Farris. Maybe you own a different edition, because, based on the Google Books edition, what actually seems to have happened is that TH1980 deleted an incorrect page number and replaced it with the correct one. Also, "arrived on" is grammatically correct when referring to an island or island group, as is the case here. It would be incorrect to use "in" for an island group. Homemade Pencils (talk) 16:13, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

(note to self) Sigh, take a deep breath, and with a pagan's nod at making the sign of the cross, assume good faith.

Prove what you assert, don't just contradict another editor.

The edition cited in the bibliography is

William Wayne Farris, Population, Disease, and Land in Early Japan, 645-900, Harvard University Asia Center, 1995 ISBN 978-0-674-69005-9

Please note the isbn number: that is the only version for that year and it is the only version for that year available at Google Books

For page 3 see here for 'tenfold increase'.

If you search that book for 'tenfold' it occurs on no other page than this one, p.3

If you consult the same edition p.25, anyone can see it deals with a Tempyō era tax register.

I can prove what I wrote above, therefore. If you want to form hypotheses and make counterclaims about them, and then you'd better explain precisely what edition TH1980 used, because it wasn't the one attested to on Google Books for 1995 which is precisely the book listed in the bibliography as revised by TH1980.

As to your unfamiliarity with English idiom, please note that one can say 'arrive on' if there is a locative complement -as with you island example - before a following specification of a country, i.e. 'of Japan'. I.e. 'arrived on the shore(s)/soil (of Japan/America'), which there isn't here. Try google books for "arrive in Japan"(thousands of hits) vs "Arrive on Japan" . . (two hits). Likewise, "Polynesians arrived on Hawaii" vs numerous examples for "Polynesians arrived in Hawaii", which is an island aggregate.

It is unforgiveable how the rules here compel serious editors, with a record of actually having made major contributions to the encyclopedia, to waste huge amounts of time in situations of utter incompetence or prevarication, caused by occasional tweakers.Nishidani (talk) 17:45, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

The information appears to be on page 25 here[1]. You could easily find hundreds of examples on Google or Wikipedia of using "arrive on" for an island, and I have never seen a grammar book that specified that "on" cannot be used with "arrive" even for an island. By contrast, there are plenty of grammar books that state that a sentence should end in one period, not several periods as is the case in the text you wrote.Homemade Pencils (talk) 16:12, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Nobody's arguing to keep extra periods, Homemade Pencils, which are easily fixed by literally anyone not under editing restrictions. If this persists as part of your "argument", then one will have difficulty assuming you're arguing in good faith, and the competent will either (a) ignore you; or (b) report your disruptions. I assume you don't want to end up like TH1980, whose recent disruptions will shortly be reverted as a result of the overturning of his appeal. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 05:57, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for confirming my analysis, that prior to TH1980's revision, we had a stable reference to Farris 1995 p.3, and TH1980 changed the page number to 25 because he saw the information repeated on a different book by Farris 1998 p.25, which however he did not list in the bibliography. The result was a falsification of the given source. So here as frequently, he totally confused and screwed up even in carrying out one of the simplest level editing practices neophytes master quickly. And that is just one of several examples. The rule from experience is, check and recheck every edit he touches: you can't trust him to get anything right.

Since you clearly cannot construe elementary English, viz. when I wrote:-

As to your unfamiliarity with English idiom, please note that one can say 'arrive on' if there is a locative complement -as with you island example - before a following specification of a country, i.e. 'of Japan'. I.e. 'arrived on the shore(s)/soil (of Japan/America'), which there isn't here.

which admits on can be used restrictively of landfall (on an island).

You replied:-

I have never seen a grammar book that specified that "on" cannot be used with "arrive" even for an island

As if controverting me, when I agreed on that usage. This is called a strawman argument.

One can scour all the grammatical books one likes to make an argumentum ex silentio, but if one lacks sprachgefühl, one won't grasp the point. If one refuses the evidence of google, then again, we have prevarication. This has been a pointless exercise.Nishidani (talk) 19:50, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

The current figures used in the article come from page 25 of Farris, so unless we are going to change the text, the citation needs to stay as it is. I see no reason to change the page number for this. And unless there's proof from a grammatical book that "arrive on" is incorrect somehow (you still haven't provided a source for that), I don't see a compelling reason to alter that either.Homemade Pencils (talk) 22:18, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

You have completely ignored the point. That p.25 refers to another book by Farris published 3 years later (1998) not cited by TH1800 in the bibliography, where indeed Farris was self-citing a passage made in his earlier work (1995), which everyone always accepted as correct, before TH1980 introduced their confusion, while retaining the 1995 as the reference in his note and bibliography. The text as revised above will be restored (and, in a second moment, I will summarize it with just two superlative books we do use). You haven't taken on board that the person whose editing you are strenuously defending was banned for that WP:IDIDNOTHEARTHAT manner of editing, and if you imitate their behavior, the consequences will be identical

As to on/in, I gave you the rule you're searching for in grammar books above. 'Arrive on' is acceptable for setting foot (disembarking/landing) on a shore/island, where itr carries a strong locative sense, and specifies a particular event. But the idiom is interchangeable with 'arrived in'. 'Arrive on' carries a specificity, both spatial (arrive on a given date, with a 'vertical' nuance) and temporal, (Erik the Red on Iceland/Greenland), whereas the normative idiom 'arrive in' is generic and 'horizontal', and does not bear an implied nuance of 'at some point' in a given landscape. 'Arrive on' is often the default narrative form used of military movements, of troops or upper echelons making landfall on some occasion. When you are dealing, however, with an island aggregate, archipelago, etc, as with Indonesia, Japan, Hawaii usage overwhelmingly favours 'arrived in', though one can write 'on the islands'/'in the islands'. One 'arrives on Kyushu/Kaui/Sakhalin/Hokkaido/Madagascar/Sumatra' as an historical event. One 'arrives in' Japan, Indonesia, Australia (an island aggregate/continent). That there is slippage between the two, as so often in English idiom, does not cancel out the strong bias towards 'arrive in', be it an island, an archipelago or a continent. These are all nuances that emerge if one has the requisite sprachgefühl, and no more require documentation that an informant requires a book to correct an anthropologist confused over subtleties of usage in the language (s)he, as an outsider, is trying to master. The next time you travel, tell a native English speaker you 'arrived on Japan or on Korea/on California/on Great Britain', and, while you might not notice a quizzically raised eyebrow on your interlocutor's mien, you can be dead certain that they will pause and infer, rightly or wrongly, that while you probably use English with effortless fluency, it must be your second language. Nishidani (talk) 10:47, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Restarting the article

I have inserted the passage, an earlier draft of which was contested, but not this version. I don't like it, but that is the way the received text I didn't want to alter had to be sourced. I'll try to get round to rewriting it per two sources, which cover most of this information. I hope to get time to work down to the Kōfun period, revising this.

There's a lot to be fixed here aside from that. Firstly it completely ignores Okinawa (and Hokkaidō) at the outset, an integral part of modern Japan. In this it inadvertently reflects the centralizing historiography of the Honshū imperial tradition. You can't do that because part of the earliest archaeological strata in the J.archipelago is found in those islands. Whoever wrote the bit about arrival on watercraft on Japan doesn't seem to know that the earliest movement into Japan came through land bridges, and is reading back into the early Jōmon the method used by immigrating peoples from continental Asia shipping over from China and the Korean peninsular in Yayoi times. The genetics stuff is garbled conceptually and even grammatically, proof if ever that if you don't understand the technical side, but want to refer to it, this kind of material should not come from a primary source, but competent secondary sources etc.

Thirdly, I suggest that editors willing to step in and do an article worthy of this magnificent culture keep the Cambridge History of Japan, 6 vols at their elbow or fingertips when working through each section. Once that basic outline is resketched, one can add particular studies that provide more details. A reference system that provides the page with notes for details (since every generalization will often elicit problems of nuance or disputed interpretations) is required.

There's no hurry, but steady progress over several months should see to it that something comprehensive yet succinct will emerge.Nishidani (talk) 11:23, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Recent specialized works deny the land bridge theory. The Cambridge History is rather out-of-date, and I wouldn't rely on it for that period. The 2012 article by Tsutsumi Takashi already in the article states, "around 40,000 cal BP there was no land connection between the continent and Japan, so these first Homo sapiens settlers of the islands had to arrive by crossing water." Another one, the 2014 article by Akira Ono also says that land bridges only connected Japan and Korea during brief periods that were unassociated with human migration. Thus, the first humans arrived on Japan by sea over the Tsushima Strait... And also, for a short article, there is no reason to mention Hokkaido and Okinawa in a discussion of Kofun era Japan. Those were very minor details compared to the unification of the rest of Japan under the Yamato Court. I'm also not aware that the genetic studies have been contradicted by any newer data, all of which shows that Jomon ancestry accounts for 20% or less of modern Japanese genetics.Homemade Pencils (talk) 19:52, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

上記を読んで 鉄面皮という言葉が思い浮かんで仕方がない.Nishidani (talk) 11:48, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Just in case I might give the impression of imitating your own practice by dodging the issue, let me clarify. I won't be exchanging views with you because (a) you appear to be a meatpuppet of a banned editor (b) in that you know nothing of the topic other than what the two references he provided for the page he edited state (c) so you cite the two sources he gave, trusting that this is the consensual picture. (d) In the sections above, it is clear you will prevaricate ad infinitum over the obvious.

(c) The two sources TH1980 provides are by lithic specialists. In this area of initial human populations of Japan, there are three distinct disciplines that have to be integrated (a) the archaeology of material artifacts, esp. lithic remains (b) genetic studies, in which the Okinawa-Hokkaido extremes are crucial, and which you dismiss outright, without realizing that the text on this is utterly garbled grammatically (c) paleoclimatology. Of the 6 routes possible over the timeframe, lithic specialists prefer 2 premised on seafaring. Geneticists remain neutral. Historical climatologists are far more disposed to land bridges (Conrad Totman here, Patrick Nunn here, to cite but a few). Of this broader context you know nothing, understandably because your ostensible function here appears to be one of sauntering in to rigorously defend the banned editor's utterly confused editing positions. You have made zero contributions to the article, and have no record for doing any constructive work here, so if your intent is to take over from where the 'other' chap left off, you'll be doing it alone. I look forward to seeing for once someone actually show what they know, rather than idling about with talk page pettifogging while doing little other than correcting comma placements in articles.Nishidani (talk) 15:51, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Ainu

There's no mention of the Ainu in the article as is. I think they are relevant to the history of Japan.Ordinary Person (talk) 11:54, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Azuchimomoyama-japan.png

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 02:23, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Typo?

Article says "Yayoi people" in first paragraph, but links to an article titled "Yayoi period". I don't know enough about the subject to feel like I should fix this, but I'm writing this to bring it to the attention of more knowledgeable editors. 74.134.169.22 (talk) 12:07, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

I have fixed the wording. The opening paragraph is about a sequence of periods. The people are mentioned in the second paragraph. –Austronesier (talk) 13:41, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

Change to Common Era dating system

I will be changing the dating system on this article away from the biased, Christian based AD/BC to the common era system next week. If you object, please state why you are ok with the biased system here. Eupnevma (talk) 19:10, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Before you go changing AC BC please read Wikipedia:Manual of Style, specifically MOS:VAR. Also, instead of hundreds of discussions regarding the changes on hundreds of different talk pages, get a conversation going here: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. Thanks! Masterhatch (talk) 20:51, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Medieval Japan

Seeing that other articles like Samurai link to here using the term "medieval Japan", which I am sure many readers will not know and think that "medieval" refers to the same period in time as in the context of European history, wouldn't it make sense to introduce this term when talking about the "feudal Japan"?--Nico b. (talk) 20:38, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Classical does seem an unusual choice given this is usually used to describe considerably earlier periods in Greece & Rome? Can we have a citation ? 27.85.205.27 (talk) 00:01, 1 May 2023 (UTC)