Talk:Taishō (disambiguation)

Requested move 21 February 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. While the two sides of this discussion were numerically even, a strong body of evidence was marshaled to argue that the Taishō era is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for "Taishō". To my eye, the strength of the argument was sufficient to establish consensus for the era's PRIMARYTOPIC status; this consensus, in turn, constitutes a consensus against the proposed move. (closed by non-admin page mover) ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 16:59, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

---

Taishō (disambiguation) → Taishō – Lack of a primary topic. Taishō currently redirects to Taishō era, which is not referred to simply as "Taishō". ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 20:23, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose so far, as no evidence has been presented in favor of the move. The period is sometimes referred to simply as "Taisho", as a Google search for "during Taisho" or "Taisho was" shows, and that appears to be the most common usage. Dekimasuよ! 14:24, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

  I meant in the article Taishō era, it's not referred to simply as such. ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 03:37, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

  It is often referred to simply as "Taisho". Note that "Taisho 7" is referred to in the article, rather than "Taisho era year 7", and one of the sections is "Taisho foreign policy", not "Taisho-era foreign policy". We also have Taishō political crisis, which is a reference to the period rather than the emperor. Dekimasuよ! 07:06, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

  That's not quite the same. It's no more referred to simply as "Taisho" as the Victorian era is to "Victoria" or "Victorian". ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 16:07, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

  It's not always referred to as simply "Taisho", but it certainly is referred to simply as "Taisho". "Taisho was the flowering of that modernity in all areas, not least of which the arts" (Tokyo Art Beat). "Taisho was a golden age for periodicals" (Artscape Japan). "Taisho was Japan’s Jazz Age" (The Japan Times). "Arguably, it could be said that Taisho was the time when the post-Edo Japanese were at their weirdest and most unconventional" (British Chamber of Commerce in Japan). "Taisho was an era of coexisting vitality and sentimentality" (Meiji Asian Studies, Meiji University). It took me longer to paste these than to find them; there are thousands more examples readily available, and these all came from the first page of Google results, without even considering all of the results on Google Books.

The underlying question is whether "Taisho" usually refers to the period. While Meiji and Showa are disambiguation pages, Reiwa and Heisei each redirect to the period. So while this is a reasonable question, the actual relative usage of the possibilities on the disambiguation page is the key point. I did add a few entries to the disambiguation page (e.g. Taisho, Kochi), but those usages are uncommon. Compared with the emperors of the Meiji and Showa periods, it is well known that Emperor Taisho did not have much effect on his time (since he was not very competent), and in addition the period of time is more manageable to treat as a coherent whole, which probably explains why the mentions of "Taisho" are more likely to refer to the period. There's still no indication to me that a hatnote is insufficient. ("Taisho" redirects here. For the emperor, see Emperor Taisho. For other uses, see Taisho (disambiguation). seems perfectly fine to me; as does the current hatnote without the second part, since the emperor is mentioned in the first sentence of the article.) Dekimasuよ! 02:18, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Note that while it's occasionally referred to simply as "Taishō" in relation to the Taishō era, this isn't a consistently dominant usage. In the Taishō era article, "Taishō" isn't exclusively used to denote the era. This is similar to how "Victoria" or "Victorian" aren't always directly linked to the Victorian era. Therefore, a disambiguation page seems more appropriate, ensuring clarity, as the term doesn't unambiguously refer only to the era. ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 19:32, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes, because the term doesn't only refer to the era, we have this disambiguation page. The question is not whether the Taishō era is usually referred to as "Taishō", but rather whether "Taishō" usually refers to the Taishō era. Because it does, the current setup with a primary topic redirect is appropriate. (And in the Taishō era article, "Taishō" alone does exclusively denote the era; it is never used on its own to refer to the emperor, except once in the infobox under the heading "monarch".) Dekimasuよ! 01:50, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

The primary topic should be so much more likely than any other topics that it is what virtually all users will expect to find at the simple name. In the case of Taishō, although it is frequently associated with the era, the term is not exclusively or overwhelmingly used in this context. ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 21:39, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

As you pointed out at the top of the discussion, there are two criteria for determining a primary topic, usage and significance. For usage, the standard is "much more likely than any other single topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined, to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term"—the standard is not "exclusively" (in which case a dab page itself would be unnecessary) or "what virtually all readers will expect". I have given some indications here that the era is much more likely than any other topic to be referred to by this title, and no evidence to the contrary has been provided. The era also has the greatest long-term significance of the items on the disambiguation page. No one is trying to use "Taishō" as the title for the article on the era rather than Taishō period or Taishō era, but I have seen no indication that moving the disambiguation page to the base title will help readers, who it seems are most likely to be looking for the era. The disambiguation page was only receiving ~1 hit a day before this discussion began whereas the era receives over 600 hits daily, so people aren't ending up in the wrong location frequently. Dekimasuよ! 01:21, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

While the Taishō era might receive more searches, this doesn't conclusively make it the primary topic. The low hit rate on the disambiguation page could be due to the current redirect leading directly to the era page. ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 14:37, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

I checked 25 random mainspace links to Taishō that weren't the result of template transclusions. All 25 intended Taishō era. Dekimasuよ! 01:56, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

• Support per nomination. There are seven bulleted entries listed upon the Taishō (disambiguation) page, with little indication that one topic has such overwhelming primacy that it dwarfs the combined notability of the remaining six entries. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 23:16, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose, per Dekimasu's investigation above. -- asilvering (talk) 18:51, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.