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Requested move

The request to rename this article to Ugetsu Monogatari has been carried out. If the page title has consensus, be sure to close this discussion using {{subst:RM top|'''page moved'''.}} and {{subst:RM bottom}} and remove the {{Requested move/dated|…}} tag, or replace it with the {{subst:Requested move/end|…}} tag.

Tales of Moonlight and Rain → Ugetsu Monogatari – The work appears to be known primarily by its Japanese name even in reliable English sources. Several sources cited in this article, including Washburn and Takata, clearly prefer Ugetsu. Google Scholar search indicates 556 hits for "Ugetsu Monogatari" and only 126 for "Tales of Moonlight and Rain". Google Books search was less lopsided, with "Tales of Moonlight and Rain" coming out on top (20,100>12,700). This indicates that while Tales of Moonlight and Rain is the most common English translation of the title as used in non-academic literature (i.e., translations for the general public), scholarly sources generally prefer to leave the title untranslated. I can speculate that this is because Ugetsu can be translated several ways, and while in recent years "Moonlight and Rain" has become favoured, it is not the only possible translation. UNESCO have used the more literal Tales of the Moon and the Rain, and other translations exist. Because the title does not literally/directly refer to the content of the stories, it has been interpreted several ways, and so the Misplaced Pages article's title choosing to support one translation may violate NPOV. Relisted. BDD (talk) 09:32, 5 January 2013 (UTC) elvenscout742 (talk) 06:55, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

• Provisional weak support - Given that there isn't agreement on the English title, and that this is a 1776 text, prepared to go against 2:1 in print sources. But if there is a convincing argument against from anyone may change view. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:36, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Change to full support - on closer examination Ugetsu Monogatari gets around 4:1 over "Tales of Moonlight and Rain" on Google Scholar, plus ngram provided by Cuchullain below, plus too much variation in English names. In ictu oculi (talk) 11:49, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose. The top-selling translation is Chambers' Tales of Moonlight and Rain (2007), and No. 2 is Hamada's Tales of Moonlight and Rain: Japanese Gothic Tales (1972). Zolbrod's Ugetsu Monogatari or Tales of Moonlight and Rain (1974) is a distant third. See also Britannica. Nobody's just giving romanji without any translation. Kauffner (talk) 12:22, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Those links seem to be in error, I get different books from the ones you stated. Chambers is here. JoshuSasori (talk) 01:30, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose. The book sales are interesting and I think relevant data, and easily interpretted. There's no POV issue. Andrewa (talk) 17:12, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
  • Reply Misplaced Pages article-titles are not based on Amazon book sales, and where possible they should be based on reliable academic sources. Donald Keene's History of Japanese Literature is one such source that gives the more literal/accurate translation "Tales of Rain and the Moonthe Moon and the Rain". I listed another couple above. No one is suggesting we give only romanized Japanese (which isn't called "rōmaji", by the way, let alone "romanji") and no translation. I am merely saying we should not give undue weight to one particular interpretation of the title. I say the title of the article should be the only possible title that is generally accepted, and within the body of the article we can make reference to the various ways in which said title has been interpreted/translated into English. The fact is that the Google Scholar results I cited above indicate a complete lack of consensus in the academic community as to this work being called "Tales of Moonlight and Rain" -- well over 75% of the hits for "Ugetsu Monogatari" do not make any reference to the interpretation "Moonlight and Rain". Neither of the above comments address this issue, and appear to come from users who do not speak Japanese, and therefore cannot necessarily appreciate that ugetsu (雨月) means "the moon and the rain", and "moonlight" is only one interpretation apparently supported by a small minority of specialists. The POV issue arises thereof. elvenscout742 (talk) 15:35, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Addendum Not that I accept Amazon rankings as remotely appropriate for this discussion anyway, but: how could an old translation from the early 1970s be expected to have a higher sales than a 2006 translation on Amazon.com? Additionally, Kauffner above cites Britannica, but when I checked the link the latter appeared to give prominence to Ugetsu Monogatari and give the English title only in parentheses. Am I missing something? Because this seems to support my point that the article should be renamed ... elvenscout742 (talk) 15:43, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

I hardly think the term "POV" is appropriate for minor variations in translation. Such variations are not a reason to use Japanese. If the sources were calling this work Ugetsu without translating it, then this could be considered the common name. The practical value of a title depends on it being recognizable to as many readers as possible. The current best-selling translation is likely to be more representative of common usage than specialist scholarship. I get 2,480 post-2000 English-language GBook hits for "Ugetsu Monogatari" -llc, 3,400 for "Tales of Moonlight and Rain" -llc. Kauffner (talk) 04:46, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Plenty of sources call this work "Ugetsu Monogatari", including Encyclopedia Britannica. I also found that the close-second best-selling translation of the work into English (on Amazon alone) is the 1989 Tuttle edition of Zolbrod's Ugetsu Monogatari: Tales of Moonlight and Rain. This despite its publication greatly predating the founding of Amazon as a company. Your attempt to take this out of context by posting a link to the 40-year-old, $120 edition and claiming it as a "distant third" has been noted. The fact is that the majority of scholarly sources do not favour "Moonlight and Rain", and a significant number of sources that even provide "Moonlight and Rain" as a gloss still give preference to "Ugetsu Monogatari". This indicates that we are not arguing over "using Japanese", but over the use of the most prominent English name of the work, which just happens to be romanized Japanese. You have claimed several times that "the current best-selling translation" is a good indication of what English-speaking readers would recognize, but the fact is that Chambers is not exactly a New York Times bestseller -- it just happens to rank slightly higher on the sales ranks of a single, online bookstore than the older, apparently better-established translation that has been printed by two separate publishers. And again, Misplaced Pages should be using well-researched academic sources like Keene, etc. for articles like this. elvenscout742 (talk) 05:51, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't see how you can interpret Britannica as supporting your position. Their page on the book is entitled "Tales of Moonlight and Rain". "Ugetsu monogatari" is a page about the 1953 movie. (This is not exactly right, since the English-language name of the film is just Ugetsu, as the text acknowledges.) Britannica`s text gives both Japanese and English, so we of course use English, per WP:UE. I am not proposing to remove Japanese from the article text, you know. Kauffner (talk) 06:06, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

And I am not suggesting we move a reference to the Zolbrod/Chambers translation of the title either. But since there are numerous reliable sources that give different translations of the title, which are generally closer in meaning to the Japanese title, and most of the sources for this article give preference to the Japanese title, we should probably do the same. Ugetsu isn't like The Tale of the Heike or The Tale of Genji, which have been translated into English numerous times, always under the same literal title, and are widely discussed in English academic writing under those English titles. Ugetsu literally means "rain and the moon", and readers of Keene, etc. who decide to look up the work on English Misplaced Pages would be just as surprised to see this title as readers of Chambers would be to see the page named Tales of Rain and the Moon. I know this because I am one of the former group. elvenscout742 (talk) 07:27, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

How long do these usually take? No evidence has been presented that contradicts my initial argument that the academic community has no consensus on what to call this work in English. In fact the only opposing argument was based on Amazon sales figures, which when examined more closely support this page being moved (one high-selling translation calls it Tales of Moonlight and Rain, and the other calls it Ugetsu Monogatari). There was also a strawman argument based around the accusation that I was in favour of only giving the Japanese name with no English translation; this is a misrepresentation, as I am in favour of mentioning all of the ways the work has been referred to in English in reliable sources. The current title of the article is a free translation of the work's title (which literally means Tales of Rain and the Moon), and is not supported by the academic community. I think what needs to be done here should be quite obvious. elvenscout742 (talk) 04:42, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

• Support. I was prepared to close this as no consensus, but a closer inspection suggests the Japanese title has been more common in the sources in recent decades. While "Tales of Moonlight and Rain" is far and away the most common translation (the others get only a few hits each), this ngram shows a preference for "Ugetsu Monogatari" in books published since 1950. In contrast, the English translation of the better known "Tale of Genji" appears to be substantially more common than the Japanese Genji monogatari. There also appears to be a clear preference for the Japanese in scholarly literature on the subject, and it appears under "Ugetsu monotagari" in the common tertiary source The Japan Encyclopedia. While "Tales of Moonlight and Rain" isn't a bad title for this article, it appears Ugetsu monogatari is somewhat more common in modern sources.--Cúchullain /c 15:02, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

This 'support' vote is based on extremely dubious evidence. The film ugetsu is more famous than the original book, and when the film is discussed the title will be stated to come from ugetsu monogatari. There is also a jazz album with this title. JoshuSasori (talk) 01:30, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Change in the description of the stories

I just suppressed the word "homosexual" of the summary of the Blue Hood section. It gave the impression that the priest's soul had to be saved because of his homosexuality, which is at best a huge misinterpretation of the actual story. It is irrelevant, I think, to project our Western moral readings in a tale that was written in a civilisation so distant to ours : the word "homosexual" means nothing in 18th century Japan. Relations between men were regarded very differently there and then, and if you look a little bit further into that subject, you'll realize there is no way Akinari could have been implying that the priest turned into a monster out of his love for boys. Sorry if I made a few mistakes, English is not my mother tongue.

I appreciate your edit, and I think you may well have a point. I have, however, had to revert your edit, since it altered a quotation that had a clear citation. I do not own a copy of the book from which the quotation was taken, so I can't vouch for its reliability, but we can't simply remove the quotation marks and take out one word, as this would be plagiarism. I think the plot summaries in general need to be expanded and better-sourced; merely giving short quotations is not good enough. I might work on it a bit later, but if you like you can do this now, if only for the Aozukin story. However, removing a statement that has a citation and replacing it with original prose is also not a good idea, so it would be nice if you had another external source. elvenscout742 (talk) 07:14, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

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