Talk:Mainland Japan

Isn't Hokkaido sometimes considered as being part of Mainland Japan?

I know its settlement is relatively recent, but I always considered it as being part of the mainland. -- Tlotoxl 11:17, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I am originally from Hokkaido and my impression is that we usually exclude hokkaido from the mainland as the rest of Japan. Some google search shows

• [1] Location in Sapporo is a geographical advantage for bio-venture businesses, because many IT-related companies are based in the city. We want to supply a variety of products created here to mainland Japan and overseas, fostering new industries in Hokkaido'.
• [2] People come from Australia, Europe, America, and mainland Japan every November to March to ski in great conditions of dry and ample powder.

-- Taku 19:05, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)

Ok, you've convinced me!! ;) Still, I think people in Kyushu sometimes speaks the same way, seeing 'the mainland' as being only Honshu. From outside of Japan, however, Kyushu is surely considered mainland most of the time. -- Tlotoxl 04:41, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Taku, I have the following two questions:

• What term do you think is the Japanese equivalent of Mainland Japan, 内地, 本土 or others? I cannot get the nuance in English.
• What is the scope of "we"?

--Nanshu 02:54, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Farm Colony

The Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Farm Colony was administered by samurai led by John Henry Schnell, which were military personnel and thus an extension of the Japanese government, despite their lack of loyalty. Aizu and Shonai Domains during the Meiji Restoration Turned to Diplomacy: Confirmed in German Archives. DaRealPrinceZuko (talk) 01:43, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Everything you have cited in various forums have been WP:UGC, WP:CIRC, and (as in your citations from the Asahi Shimbun and Walk the Farm) WP:SYNTH. The Asahi Shimbun does not confirm your assertion. Aside from stating that the Schnell brothers were military consultants and translators for the Aizu clan, it doesn't mention anything about Wakamatsu or their involvement with it. Page 1 of the cited article contextualizes the brothers' involvement as having been part of the Aizu clan's desire to obtain support from Prussia against the Japanese government during the Boshin War. Therefore, they weren't and couldn't be "an extension of the Japanese government".

None of these reputable sources confirm your belief that the Wakamatsu farm was a Japanese imperial colony; all of them only mention the site's importance in the history of Japanese immigrants in the United States or exclude it from the legal definitions of gaichi:

• Kotobank entry on the definition of gaichi
• An Inquiry into Japanese Colonialist Discourse Before World War II (in Japanese) by Kimura Kan
• Walk the Farm's webpage on the Wakamatsu farm
• California State Parks webpage on the Wakamatsu farm
• History of the Wakamatasu farm from the American River Conservancy, which currently tends to the property
• Wakamatsu Farm and the Birth of Japanese America by Daniel A. Métraux, who also casts doubt on what he described as the "legend" around the involvement of samurai
• Pacific Pioneers: Japanese Journeys to America and Hawaii, 1850–1880 by John E. van Sant, where it explicitly states that the colony was a Japanese immigrant settlement, not a de jure or even de facto colonial territory

Your fringe beliefs, tendentious editing, and inability to provide evidence raise concerns of WP:DISRUPTSIGNS and WP:NOTHERE. —CurryTime7-24 (talk) 03:35, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

You accuse me of perpetuating fringe beliefs and engaging in tendentious editing and yet you're doing the exact same thing. You literally mentioned that Schnell was responsible for the establishment of Wakamatsu and I provided evidence that he was a samurai. Him being a samurai, a Japanese soldier, means that he was directly affiliated with the Japanese government. None of the sources you provided debunk the notion that the settlement was a Japanese possession. They do not explicitly state that Wakamatsu does not count as a Japanese colony. Wakamatsu's omission from the categorization of gaichi does not mean that it did not qualify. You also ignored the other definitions of "colony" by Dictionary.com and Oxford Dictionary, with the former including "any people or territory separated from but subject to a ruling power". DaRealPrinceZuko (talk) 03:55, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Clearly not part of the Empire of Japan, nor was there ever an attempt to imply that Japan had sovereignty. The naming "colony" itself here refers to the idea of "settlement", not to the idea of "colonization". While the underlying reasoning does not apply to this case anyway, an apparent consequence of the reasoning would be to designate all prewar Japanese embassies around the world as "gaichi", which is not what the word means or how it was actually used. Dekimasuよ! 07:25, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

How exactly does a settlement directly controlled by samurai not make it a part of Japan? Can a settlement be administered by military personnel without it being a part of a foreign overlord? DaRealPrinceZuko (talk) 07:39, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Were the people involved in this tea and silk plantation under orders from any government, being paid by any government, attempting to establish Japanese law on the plantation, or recognized as foreign agents by the people around them? Were they recognized as colonizers by anyone from "mainland Japan"? From the information I see here, the answers are all no. Dekimasuよ! 08:46, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't recall being under direct government orders as being an absolute prerequisite to count as an official possession. For example, the Belgian settlement of Santo Tomás in Guatemala was under the administration of a private company, rather than the Belgian government. DaRealPrinceZuko (talk) 08:52, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Your point above was that the people involved were "directly affiliated with the Japanese government" and made up of "military personnel". My response was that they were not directly affiliated with the Japanese government or acting as military personnel in any meaningful way by the time they were in the United States. (For that matter, samurai were always retainers of daimyō, which made them different from simply being "military of the Japanese government", but since there is a large variety of points being made here we can just skip that.) The new point you made was that there's no need to be under direct government orders, but the example you gave was of a case in which the government of Guatemala officially negotiated with a company run under the auspices of the king of Belgium. Neither any Japanese government (including that of Aizu Domain) nor the United States government made any such moves in the case of this settlement. (Nor would we expect the United States to let them in if any such claim had been made at the time, but again since that requires speculation, we can skip it.)

Even if all of the criteria above had been fulfilled, this company was never considered either "gaichi" or "Japanese territory" at the time or in reliable sources, which is what is presumably the reason for having the discussion about inclusion in this article. Dekimasuよ! 10:32, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

And none of you provided any reasons of why this settlement was not categorized as gaichi. You cited those sources to prove your point, but none of them explicitly state why the farm was excluded. DaRealPrinceZuko (talk) 16:48, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

I did not mention any sources above; please distinguish among the editors in this section.

However, I answered "why this settlement was not categorized as gaichi" in my first post. The settlement was not part of the Empire of Japan, and Japan never had, attempted to claim, or attempted to establish sovereignty. The applicable definition of gaichi is "本土以外の日本領土", meaning "Japanese territory not in mainland Japan", where 領土 (ryōdo, territory) is defined as "国際法上で、国家の統治権の及ぶ区域" ("the area under the control of sovereign rule by a particular country under international law"). If you believe there is a flaw in these established definitions or their application, you can write and publish your own paper on the topic, but including the farm here when no one considers it an example of Japanese sovereign territory under international law is original research. The reason it is not explicitly excluded by mainstream sources is that the case is so categorically different that the idea is not even under consideration. Dekimasuよ! 01:36, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

You answered the reasons for why the settlement was not classified as gaichi, but not the sources provided by CurryTime7-24. Also, the only ones doing original research are the two of you, as none of the sources state why the farm was not included. There's a difference between consciously disqualifying something and omitting something. The fact that you did not provide a source that explicitly states your reason for the omission proves that you are doing exactly what you accuse me of doing. The reason why I stated that a military is an extension of a government (by definition) is the fact that a military is a form of national law enforcement. None of the sources in the article, nor the ones provided in this discussion prove that the people who established the farm renounced their status as samurai. DaRealPrinceZuko (talk) 02:32, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

OK, so we have established that I did indeed give reasons why the settlement has not been classified as gaichi (and again, why the settlers should not e considered "the military of Japan"). This was for your edification; note that I have never tried to add any material about the farm to any Wikipedia article, ever. It is not providing an explanation on a talk page, but rather adding unverified material to an article, that constitutes unacceptable Wikipedia:Original research. My inductive reasoning here was intended to indicate that the search for reliable sources that call the farm an overseas territory of Japan is likely to be futile, although you are free to continue looking for such sources.

At the same time you have attempted to shift the burden of proof by appealing to absence of evidence to the contrary, but the burden of proof always lies with editors who seek to include particular material in an article. Wikipedia:Verifiability states that "All material in Wikipedia mainspace, including everything in articles, lists, and captions, must be verifiable." It also states that "material whose verifiability has been challenged... must be accompanied by an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the material." The inclusion of the farm in the gaichi section has been challenged, so verifiable sources stating that the farm was overseas sovereign territory of Japan must be provided. A claim that previous researchers may have overlooked or forgot about the topic does not satisfy WP:V.

Thus I ask you to recognize 1) for the farm to be added, it is necessary to provide evidence that reliable sources that call the farm sovereign territory of Japan, and 2) that reliable sources are unlikely to call the farm sovereign territory of Japan. Dekimasuよ! 04:04, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Again, none of the sources provided by CurryTime 7-24 confirm the reasons you provided for the omission of the farm from the categorization of gaichi. You are the one shifting the burden of proof by not providing sources that confirm the reasons you provided and denying the sources I provided against CurryTime. I provided a source stating that the farm was "America's first samurai colony". Samurai were not mere ordinary civilians. The Japanese government did not abolish the samurai class until the late 1870s, whereas the farm was established in 1869. Your reason for the samurai not being considered the military of Japan is also fallacious, as the ones who established the farm did not create a secessionist government from Japan. You've failed to debunk the notion that any form of military is subject to their country's respective government. It's pretty clear to me that the two of you simply filtered those sources to confirm your biases, rather than reviewing them as they were. DaRealPrinceZuko (talk) 04:25, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Until this post, the sole link you provided in the discussion was to an Asahi shimbun article that did not mention the Wakamatsu farm at all. At least I understand now why you are emphasizing the idea that there were samurai in the group. But anyway, you have given a SFGate article that calls the people involved immigrants; the Alta Daily News in May 1869 announcing their arrival also called them immigrants, and both SFGate and the Alta Daily News article it's citing say the settlers were "not serfs but free". Other newspapers cited in Van Sant state that they "adopt[ed] the habits and customs of the American people" and "had a desire to assimilate... with American ideas and customs." This doesn't make it sound like they were military representatives of Japan. And for what it's worth, re: "You've failed to debunk the notion that any form of military is subject to their country's respective government"—that's also basically the rudimentary or pop definition of the well-known rōnin, a hereditary military class not organized or subject to leadership. You are making no distinction between hereditary titles and actual military responsibilities, or between official and private acts.

Basically your claim seems to be that one source (better than none!) states some of the 14 men in the Wakamatsu group were from the hereditary class of "samurai" (note as well that the next hereditary class was "farmers" and the two were completely exclusive of one another; but these men in California were farming), and then you are concluding that this made the farm an overseas sovereign territory of Japan. However, Van Sant notes that the previous owner of the land foreclosed on Schnell in El Dorado County court, twice, resulting in the loss of the farm. I'm pretty sure an overseas sovereign territory cannot be repossessed in the county court of a foreign nation, and it does not appear that any samurai went to battle on behalf of the government of Japan over this (or surrendered, etc.).

Most importantly, the SFGate article makes no claim that the farm was ever overseas sovereign territory of Japan. Dekimasuよ! 05:54, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

References