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Kugyol and katakana

Okay, our article on Gugyeol explicitly states that that system was first developed in Korea after katakana developed in Japan. I know other Misplaced Pages articles are not supposed to take priority over external reliable sources, but there are a few complications here. First, the source cited was not written by Sohn but by Ramsey. Second, Ramsey doesn't go into much detail on what the relationship between the two was, making it a bit unclear what he's talking about when he says "kugyol"; I have no choice but to check our article on the subject, and our readers will do the same. If the Gugyeol article is chronologically confused on when the system developed, then that article needs to be tweaked in accordance with reliable sources before we claim katakana (which developed in the ninth century) before we go around implying that it was based on a system that "first came into use in the early Goryeo dynasty". Third, what Ramsey actually says in his article is that the linguistic/cultural tides started turning in the "late traditional period" and already in the 16th century Korean was taking more influence from Japanese than vice versa, and today the Japanese language has a huge influence on everyday Korean. This is not what the creators of this article want to admit, and it's not what Ramsey was being inaccurately quoted as saying. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 16:14, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

S. Robert Ramsey is just one of many scholars who believe that katakana was based off Gugyeol. In his book he spends several paragraphs discussing the various ways that the Korean language influenced the Japanese language. By contrast, he says almost nothing about Japanese influence on the Korean language prior to the colonial period.TH1980 (talk) 19:18, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

He says significantly more about Japanese influence on the Korean language prior to the colonial period than about kugyol and katakana. Also, if Ramset is just one of a great many scholars, then you should have no problem locating sources to support your claim and edit the gugyeol article so that article can be chronologically consistent with our katakana article and this one. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:42, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

@TH1980: I notice you blankly reverted me again without making any attempts to address my concerns, or even indicating that you understand them. If you do not indicate either here on the gugyeol article that under the definition you are working with "gugyeol" refers to something that existed before the 9th century CE and was known to the Japanese monks who developed katakana, I will revert back and bring this to RSN to see if anyone else can help work out the problem. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:12, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

@Hijiri 88: Fair enough.TH1980 (talk) 03:56, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

@TH1980: If Mikiso Hane actually says on page 39 of his general historical survey of Japan that Okura was "a Korean who lived in Japan", then he had a poor grasp of the scholarly consensus on this issue, and is directly contradicted by the vast majority of reliable secondary sources, who either hold to the majority opinion that Okura was the son of a Kudaran medical doctor named Okuni, but was either born in Japan or (while still an infant) was taken by his father who fled the peninsula when Kudara fell, or hold one of the minority views like that he was a sutra copyist or a member of the "Yamanoue clan" who claimed imperial descent. No sober historian trained in the relevant area refers to him as "a Korean who lived in Japan".

But I don't actually think it's the case that Hane disagrees with the mainstream view: I think he says something else, and you are deliberately misquoting him in order to get around the consensus that has already been established on this issue on the relevant talk page. If you want your personal opinion of Yamanoue no Okura's "nationality" to be cited anywhere on English Misplaced Pages, please ask User:Cckerberos, User:Sturmgewehr88 and User:Shii to take back their earlier statements on the issue, or find other neutral third-parties who agree with you. Please do not edit war to maintain an anti-consensus wording in a separate fork article.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 07:00, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Also (and this point just occurred to me now) you cited Ramsey as holding this view and were reverted; you then cited a different Ramsey source and falsely attributed his view to another scholar; when called out on this, you claimed Ramsey is "just one of many"who hold this view. Care to name one? You seem to have lied about your more recent source (I say "lied" because it's inconceivable you read the source closely enough to pick out a tiny piece of data like that but accidentally failed to notice the name of the author) in order to give the false impression that it was written by someone other than your previous source, and then directly stated that presenting the view as being held by more than one scholar is your goal. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:05, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

@Hijiri 88: I do not appreciate being accused of "lying" (as you put it). The book by Mikiso Hane says, "Another significant literary accomplishment of this period was the compilation of the Manyoshu... The Korean influence is also present in the anthology. One of the three main poets of the Manyoshu, Yamanoe Okura, it is now believed, was a Korean immigrant in Japan." What more do we need than this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by TH1980 (talk • contribs) 00:58, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

@TH1980: You deliberately misrepresented the author of your source as being someone other than the author of your previous source, and then explicitly stated that it was your intention to show that this view was held by more than one scholar -- what do you want me to call that?

As for Okura: What you need to do is go hunt down more sources on the Korean influence on the 萬葉集, then add that information to our article on the 萬葉集, not here. Additionally, if that is the exact quote, then your edit was indeed a misrepresentation of the source. That "Korean influence" was probably present in the very first waka anthology, which was mostly forgotten between the 10th and 18th centuries, and this Korean influence was only discovered in the latter half of the 20th century, does not "show the Korean influence on Japanese culture". It's also impossible to read that quote as saying the influence is "by by Yamanoe Okura, a Korean who lived in Japan". It's not only historically anachronistic (how do you define "Korean"?), but also borderline racist to call 帰化人 and 渡来人 "Koreans living in Japan". The only way you could read your source the way you have is if you wanted to reinstate poorly-sourced text that was removed from this article months ago -- months, in fact, before you under your current user name even edited this article.

Tell me, how did you come across this page, and why did you reinstate claims that had already been removed months before you came across this article? Who are you, and which other accounts have you used?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:54, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

There is no doubt that the material on Yamanoe no Okura should be included in some form. Mikiso Hane's book is a perfectly fine and reliable source to use, but I've seen the same thing noted in other sources. For instance, Roy Andrew Miller concurs with this theory in his article "Plus Ça Change" for the Journal of Asian Studies. Miller also says that, according to Yamanoe no Okura's biographer Nakanishi Susumu, there are direct corollaries between Yamanoe no Okura's poetic style and earlier Korean poetry. Of course I'm aware that there are other theories about Okura, and we could mention those as well. Alternatively we could simply insert "According to Mikiso Hane" at the beginning of the sentence so that the readers know that it is Hane's viewpoint. However, one way or another, there is still no justification at all for completely deleting this material. We just need to tweak the text in order to find a version we can all agree upon.

I feel the same way about the Katakana-Kugyol connection. Many if not most scholars do advocate this theory. Not only does the source which was previously cited say that the connection in question "seems certain", but moreover I notice that the previous source which was cited here was a book co-written by Ki-Moon Lee and S. Robert Ramsey which states that "many in Japan as well as Korea" agree with this theory. An article in the Japan Times, "Katakana system may be Korean, professor says", also reports that the latest evidence gives strong support to this theory. Scholars don't know for sure when exactly Katakana and Kugyol were first developed, and I'm aware that other theories about the origins of Katakana do exist, but there is still no reason to delete the text in question entirely. This theory is advocated by a very large body of reputable scholars, so it is clearly worth a mention. As I said before, we might need to tweak the text to find a version we agree upon, but that is still not a justification for deleting it entirely. Furthermore, there is no reason to force this article to line up with the article on Kugyol because that articles does not contain any citations to speak of. It should go without saying that a reliably sourced statement in one Misplaced Pages article does not need to be changed to match an unsourced claim in another Misplaced Pages article.CurtisNaito (talk) 02:00, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

• Comment

There are books that say katakana is not derived from Kugyol. On the contrary, katakana is a mother of kugyol.

• When the same family-based approach is applied to East Asian scripts, though, the result is potentially misleading, in that it obscures the range of influences involved. At worst, the result can be simplistic and therefore controversial theories of mother -> daughter linear relations between scripts are suggested, e.g.:
  • 'phags-pa -> han'gul
  • katakana -> kugyol
  • Chinese character script -> Khitan, Tangut, Yi, Jurchen, Sui ... etc.

...

However, there are reason to doubt a direct connection between katakana and kugyol. First, although the fact that visually identical forms have totally different values and derivations does not discount influence - as our comparison of katakana and the guanhua/ zhuyin systems in section 2 illustrates - the chronology of the scripts does not suggest such influence. The earliest use of katakana is dated to 828, and the script soon made the transition from an 'auxiliary' script providing interlinear glosses to a writing system in its own right (Habein 1984: 24). No extant use of kugyol exists before the fourteenth century, and the script was exclusively 'auxiliary' and interlinear. We would have expected a similar transition of kugyol, but there is no evidence of such a transition.

• The similarities in forms and functions between Kugyol and Katakana suggest a certain historical connection, but no one has definitely proved it yet.
• These new characters came to be known as kugyol, "orally transmitted secrets." The kugyol are traditionally, but no doubt erroneously, ascribed to Chong Mongju (1337-1392). The same process of selection and abbreviation took place in Japan at the end of the Nara period (710-794) and the beginning of the Heian (794-1185), in particular in the eighth and ninth centuries, therefore much earlier than in Korea, and yielded the katakana or more angular form of the syllabary.

1. McAuley, T. E. (2013). Language Change in East Asia. Routledge. pp. 183–190. ISBN 1136844686.
2. Song, Ki-Joong (1998). "The Writing System of Northeast Asia and Origin of the Korean Alphabet, Han'gul". Seoul Journal of Korean Studies. 11: 21 publisher=Institute of Korean Studies, Seoul National University. {{cite journal}}: Missing pipe in: |page= (help)
3. American Oriental Society. Middle West Branch (1969). Denis Sinor (ed.). American Oriental Society, Middle West Branch, semi-centennial volume: a collection of original essays Issue 3 of Oriental series, Asian Studies Research Institute. Indiana University Press. p. 243.

―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 22:23, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Personally I think the text is sufficient as it is. None of those three sources explicitly say that Kugyol was derived from Katakana, whereas Ramsey states unambiguously that Katakana was derived from Kugyol and he puts it in the context of the general influence Korean writing had on Japan. I think we can mainly use the Ramsey source here, while also noting that not all historians agree with it.CurtisNaito (talk) 23:15, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Son of a ... how the hell did I miss this discussion until now!? Anyway, Curtis, that is the most blatant example of wishful thinking on your part that I have seen since the "Shigisan" incident. If a bunch of sources say one thing in a cool and impartial manner, providing the evidence and letting readers draw their own conclusions, and one other source simply states, providing no evidence, his own conclusion that happens to be the opposite of the conclusion most readers would draw from the other sources, then (assuming all are published by university presses or some such) we can only assume (if indeed we are forced to assume anything, as you always seem to want to) that the one outlyer is "cutting-edge" and should only be used carefully and sparingly (as Nishidani has). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:57, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

The majority of the sources above are no more detailed than the ones which indicate the opposite. Furthermore, the Lee/Ramsey source explicitly said that "many in Japan as well as Korea" believe that the Korean characters came first. Each source can give its own opinion, but only Lee/Ramsey gave a vague indication of numbers. Ramsey and Yoshinori Kobayashi both concurred that Katakana was based off gugyeol or similar characters. You are assuming that their ideas are fringe but not only is there no evidence for that, the Lee/Ramsey source provided a statement suggesting just the opposite. At any rate, the text TH1980 added was attributed to Ramsey alone, so you could have just as easily accused him of underrepresenting the theory's popularity since it is clearly supported by far more people than just him.CurtisNaito (talk) 11:12, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Okay, you keep talking about how Ramsey says "seems certain", and the quote here is from Ramsey's essay here (which is actually about Japanese influence on Korean culture, but that's beside the point). Now you are talking about "Lee/Ramsey", a source to which I have no access, but what do you mean by they "give a vague indication of numbers"? Could you provide a quote from that source, which might actually be of some use!? Also, Yoshinori Kobayashi? This guy? Where do you get the impression that he concurred with Ramsey that "katakana was based off gugyeol"? This is to the best of my knowledge the first time anyone other than Nishidani, in his bashing the pre-AFD version of the article, mention him. Neither the pre-2014 version of the article nor its source said anything about Kobayashi saying katakana was based on gugyeol. Are you trying to subtly attack my other recent edit? Or are you just randomly pulling bizarre claims out of your ... lower back, again? TH1980's first edit to this article in February (which conveniently coincided with a spur of activity on the part of two other obvious sleepers) attributed the view to Ramsey; his second edit last week wrongly attributed the view to Sohn; he then claimed on the talk page that Ramsey was one of many who hold this view. But so far neither he nor you have been able to cite even one single other scholar who holds the view that katakana was based on gugyeol. How the hell can you claim he was "underestimating" the view's support among academics!? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:50, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

The point Yoshinori Kobayashi was making was that Katakana and gugyeol share many common characters. The important thing that he and the "Gugyeol Society" he was working with discovered was that the Korean characters predate the katakana. Lee/Ramsey says, "Simplified kugyŏl looks like the Japanese katakana... The origins of kugyol have still not been accurately dated or documented. But many in Japan as well as Korea believe that the beginnings of katakana and the orthographic principles they represent, derive at least in part from earlier practices on the Korean peninsular." If the Korean origins of katakana were a fringe theory it would not have said "many believe", it would have said "few believe". Incidentally TH1980's older edit did not mention gugyeol either, though the source co-written by Ramsey did emphasize the connection between the two.CurtisNaito (talk) 12:04, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Again, please provide some evidence that "many in Japan as well as Korea" believe this. I'm getting a terrible feeling of deja-dit right now... And your pointing out that the Lee/Ramsey source doesn't talk about gugyeol (and neither does Kobayashi, as far as any evidence you have succeeded in presenting indicates) does not help your case. You have thus far not been able to find a single scholar other than Ramsey who believes katakana was based on gugyeol. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:03, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

The Lee/Ramsey source does say that and it does mention gugyeol. I'm still not sure why you don't believe the sources even when they are directly quoted to you word-for-word as above. Lee/Ramsey provides good evidence for the validity of the theory that, as the article currently says, katakana "arose in part at least from scribal practices in Korea", including gugyeol characters as noted in the article. For the record, I am okay with the current wording used in the article. The origins of katakana in gugyeol is a popular theory, but is of course only one possible theory. As for Yoshinori Kobayashi, I suppose the Japan Times article on katakana's Korean roots did not mention gugyeol, but other media reports did mention it. For instance, here is a quote from an article in the Asahi Shimbun, December 15 2000, "同じようなヲコト点のほか、韓国で口訣（くけつ）と呼ばれる、日本のカナのような文字が、十一世紀の経典「瑜伽師地論（ゆがしじろん）」などで見つかった。... 小林教授は「今のところ時代は逆だが、日本のヲコト点が韓国のものをまねたものだった可能性もある。...」" The article did also say that the possible Korean origins of okototen do not necessarily prove that kana also has Korean origins. However, others concluded that it was a possibility. Despite the biased title, here is a Korean news report dealing with the exact same story relating to possible gugyeol-katakana connections.CurtisNaito (talk) 00:14, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

You keep saying you have provided quotes from Lee/Ramsey that indicate both authors (not just Ramsey in his separate, unrelated essay) consider katakana to have been based on gugyeol, but no matter how many times I reread your comments I can't see these quotes from Lee/Ramsey. On your talk page you gave a quote from Ramsey's separate, unrelated essay that does indeed make that claim. (If I recall correctly I asked you for a quote from Lee/Ramsey and you passed off a quote from Ramsey-solo as coming from Lee/Ramsey, but anyway...) The only other quote you have provided (as far as I can see; if I am wrong I apologize) is the Japanese one above from a newspaper report quoting Kobayashi, indicating that "there was a script resembling Japanese kana found in the eleventh-century sutra Yugashijiron and other sources, called gugyeol the periods are the reverse but there is at least a possibility that wokoto-ten was based on a Korean model". In this quote, Kobayashi is talking not about "katakana" or "gugyeol", but about "wokoto-ten", and it is made clear that gugyeol post-dates katakana by several centuries and "resembles" katakana. You are now apparently taking the claim of one author (Ramsey), who if he genuinely believes what you attribute to him (again, his essay was actually about Japanese influ on the modern Korean language, so it's difficult to tell what he thinks about gugyeol and "katakana"), is on the "cutting edge" of scholarship on this point, and going out of your way to interpret anything any other scholar has said that happens to use similar words -- even the opposite point -- as saying they agree with said "cutting edge" view. If you honestly think that this quote supports your assertion that Kobayashi claimed "katakana" was based on "gugyeol", then you need to be immediately blocked per WP:CIR before you insert any more spurious (and, given how the view you are attributing to this still-living university professor is fringe, potentially libelous) attributions into the encyclopedia. As for the dubious/laughably bad English subtitles (1:01~1:11 "For example, blah blah blah"...) provided by a Youtube user with a very clear genda ... I'm not even going to touch that. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:23, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Hijiri you really need to stop with the threats. Remember that you insisted dozens of times that Miller never called Yamanoe Okura "a Korean" in his essays, including the one you claim to have read called "Yamanoue Okura, a Korean Poet in Eighth-Century Japan". I checked the essay and in fact he describes Yamanoe Okura in that manner many times. However, in spite of your mistake I did not immediately call for you to be blocked per WP:CIR. Here yet again you are woefully mistaken, but I won't asked that you be banned because of it. Lee/Ramsey says, "Simplified kugyol looks like the Japanese katakana... The origins of kugyol have still not been accurately dated or documented. But many in Japan as well as Korea believe that the beginnings of katakana and the orthographic principles they represent, derive at least in part from earlier practices on the Korean peninsular." In other words, as explained earlier, many kugyol characters look like katakana, and for this reason "many" believe that katakana originates in Korea. If conversely the similarities between katakana and kugyol meant that kugyol characters were based off katakana characters, then the statement would not have ended with "derive at least in part from earlier practices on the Korean peninsular". It's the same point that Yoshinori Kobayashi has made.CurtisNaito (talk) 04:08, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

I agree that Hijiri 88's threats are not helpful here. If you two both agree that the text currently in the article is okay, then arguing about it is a waste of time.TH1980 (talk) 05:22, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Well, I suppose you're right about that. Sorry I don't know why we are still debating this. I think we are in agreement here on what the text of the article should look like.CurtisNaito (talk) 05:37, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but neither of you have been able to cite a single scholar, other than one curious passage that might as well be a misprint in the essay by Ramsey, who says that "katakana was based on gugyeol". "Japanese phonetic writing, or kana, may have been based on earlier Korean models, and one later Korean model that bears resemblances to kana is gugyeol" is NOT the same thing. And I have not been threatening anyone; I simply said that users who are too stupid or biased to realize that it is not the same thing should be blocked. The reason you have not been able to find any other scholar is that every single scholar accepts that gugyeol developed later than kana. By the way, I highly suspect I'm the only one still posting here who knows the difference between "kana", "kunten" and "katakana" -- would my suspicion be correct? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:57, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Yamanoue no Okura

First off, Curtis, thank you, for only templating the side of this dispute with which you disagree, even though that side was restoring the previous consensus wording in the face of unilateral edit-warring to impose dubious wording not supported by the source. You are once again showing that incisive and critical insight into Misplaced Pages policy and guidelines that have defined all your interactions with me up to this point.

Second, if you don't see how this is a misrepresentation of the source, let alone a clear violation of previous consensus both here and on Talk:Yamanoue no Okura, then you need to be blocked per WP:CIR immediately. (@Nishidani: He's at it again -- any suggestions?)

Third, your reverting me (and tagging me, but not TH1980 or Ubikwit), as revenge for my previous actions is pretty disgusting. You should be reverted just for that, let alone the fact that you admitted in your edit summary that the edit was problematic.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:30, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

The source was clearly not being misrepresented. As you can see, the relevant part was quoted above and what was being inserted into the article accurately reflected it. My only concern is that we might want to include other points of view as well. One way of including other points of view would indeed be to change the text slightly. We could add on "According to Mikiso Hane/Nakanishi Susumu/Roy Andrew Miller..." However, the second way of including other points of view would not require any changes to the current text in question at all. The second way is simply to add on other points of view after the text in question. "However according to (scholar x) Yamanoe Okura's poetry does not exhibit Korean influence on Japanese literature."CurtisNaito (talk) 03:35, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Since you called Nishidani I should point out incidentally that he said, I think Yamanoue no Okura should be included. I don't think anyone has ever said that similar material should not be included, the only is question how to include it. We can either modify the existing text, or add on new text, but one way or another I don't think there is a good reason to delete it entirely.CurtisNaito (talk) 03:57, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

There are various takes on this issue The Princeton Companion to Classical Japanese Literature--Ubikwit_{見学/迷惑} 04:20, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

@User:CurtisNaito: Mikiso Hane is NOT a notable/reliable source on the Man'yōshū, so including him in a list of literary scholars (is he one?) who consider Okura to have been of Kudaran origin is ridiculous. We could cite dozens of more notable/relevant scholars, but naming the father of the theory (Watanabe Kazuo came first, but...) should be enough. Hane's work is a general historical survey on Japan, hence his poor grasp of the Okura Toraijin Theory. You say he cited Miller -- I don't doubt it, since Miller is about the only mainstream source that calls him "Yamanoe Okura". If you want a single, reliable, well-informed, well-written, highly accessible and very mainstream source that backs up the vast majority of my wording, try Keene, Seeds in the Heart (1999 Columbia University Press edition), Chapter 3, notes 9 (160) and 208 (173), and page 139.

I also must say -- I never thought I'd have to argue this point on this page with Korean nationalists; please understand, I accept the theory as the most reasonable explanation for what we do know about Okura, and consider it to have received the support of the vast majority of scholars who actually matter. But we still can't call him "a Korean who lived in Japan", because that is not the theory that has such broad acceptance. And almost no serious scholar considers him to represent a "Korean influence on Japanese literature", since most of the textual evidence for his continental origins is rooted in his knowledge of the Chinese and Indian classics.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:53, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm not aware that you have been arguing with any "Korean nationalists" here. Mikiso Hane is a reliable, secondary source and there is no evidence that he misunderstood anything about Yamanoe no Okura. Tertiary source means a dictionary or encyclopedia, so a history of Japan is not a tertiary source. Mikiso Hane, Nakanishi Susumu, and Roy Andrew Miller are three serious scholars who clearly believe that Yamanoe no Okura's poetry represents Korean influence on Japan. All three sources also say he was of Korean immigrant origin, so among advocates of the Korea theory including Miller there is no disagreement that he was indeed a Korean living in Japan, though naturally that is not the only way he can be accurately described. This current version of the text is decent if we add a citation and delete the inappropriate comment. It would also be helpful to tack on Nakanishi's comment about the direct influence that Korean poetry had on Yamanoe no Okura's work.CurtisNaito (talk) 10:12, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

When I say "nationalist" I mean people who read modern Korean nationality into people who died 1300 years ago. Jagello and KoreanSentry are two examples of Korean nationalist POV-pushing SPAs with whom I have been forced to argue on this page. TH1980 is a ... well, maybe not Korean; I can't tell, since some of his/her edits have been to articles on the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. But certainly their edits here and on The Magnificient Seven have had an unpleasant anti-Japanese flavour. I have also argued with Japanese ultra-nationalists on this very issue. The problem here is that on one side we have Korean ultranationalists misrepresenting the scholarly consensus as "Okura was a South Korean poet who proved the superiority of Korean culture to Japanese!!!!11111!!" and on the other we have Japanese ultranationalists responding "Okura was not a South Korean poet and he didn't prove the superiority of Korean culture to Japanese!!!!11111!!". None of these ultranationalists have a proper grasp of what the scholars actually say, but sadly on English Misplaced Pages (and on this article in particular) we have far more ultranationalists than impartial users who rationally assess what the scholars are saying. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:30, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Well, I think we can solve the problem simply by sticking to the material presented in the relevant reliable sources. Miller is a reliable source whose article states both that Yamanoe no Okura was Korean and that he represents a Korean cultural influence on Japan. If Miller is a reliable source, then he can't also be a ultranationalist. All we have to do is report what he said in the article. As I said though, I'm open to the possibility of also mentioning an alternative theory to the Korea theory.CurtisNaito (talk) 10:42, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

EDIT CONFLICT (not in response to Curtis' comment immediately above) Also, can you give me a source on Nakanishi's statement on the influence of Korean poetry? I don't think citing a Miller book review for such a statement is appropriate, and it would be better if we could check the original Nakanishi source. Also, as I pointed out, this could be a comparison of Okura's poetry to later Korean poetry, establishing connections between Okura and hypothetical, no longer surviving precursors to this later Korean poetry. That's not the same thing, and if it is so then we should say so directly in the article. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:36, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

RESPONSE Again, please be specific as to what you mean by " article": Miller had a long and storied career; he was a diligent scholar of Old Japanese and comparative linguistics and literature, and a great writer (I have never read anything he wrote that I didn't enjoy); he was not, as far as I can tell, popular among his peers in the field of Japanese literary studies -- he had very harsh words for just about all of them at some point, and I can't imagine anyone writing that way about their friends, even if they disagreed; he wrote about Okura, to the best of my knowledge, twice -- once, earlier, in his review article of the translation of Kato's A History of Japanese Literature: The First Thousand Years, and later, in more detail in his original, and brilliant, monograph "Yamanoue Okura, a Korean Poet in Eighth-Century Japan"; the latter was mostly focused on analyzing the influence, not of "Korean poetry" (whatever that means) of a particular sutra and school of Indian Buddhism that had been popular in Baekje, but not Silla or the Japanese archipelago, on his poetry. Most scholars, though, don't focus so much on the Indian Buddhism influence -- they focus on Okura's knowledge of Chinese studies. I have never said Miller was an ultranationalist -- he was the opposite, and that is part of why I admire him so much. It is also why I find it especially annoying -- even offensive -- when Korean ultranationalist Wikipedians who have never read any of his other works -- and would probably be scandalized by the things he said about ancient Korea not be a single unified nation of one race speaking one language -- cherry-pick quotes from him to support their own 2015 political agendas. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:36, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

I mentioned a number of times that the article by Miller I have been using is "Plus Ça Change" for the Journal of Asian Studies. Miller notes that Nakanishi has described direct Korean influences on Yamanoe Okura's works. To quote another work which is even more clear, Gary Ebersole says in an essay in the History of Religions, "It was, and sometimes still is, important for many Japanese scholars to claim the Manyoshu as a produce of the pure Japanese spirit. Recent scholarship, however, has made this position untenable. Nakanishi Susumu, for example, has conclusively shown that the famous Manyo poet Yamanoe Okura was himself a Korean immigrant. Moreover, Nakanishi has shown significant direct parallels between some of Yamanoe Okura's poems and the Old Korean hyangga." In other words Okura's poems are not purely Japanese, but rather show Korean influence. Miller's views about Korean influence on Japan were outlined in his essay(Curtis, the "essay" by Miller you are citing is a book review, not an essay. Please learn to speak English. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 15:32, 5 May 2015 (UTC) ) in a clear manner and I haven't seen any evidence that any Misplaced Pages user has ever willfully or accidentally misrepresented them.CurtisNaito (talk) 12:26, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Okay, this is turning into an IDHT shitfest of Talk:Emperor Jimmu proportions. When that happened I clicked on a few links and found a dubious edit on the article on a popular poet/children's author whose family's cafe I frequent; that led to a separate shitstorm I have only just recently finally begun to recover from. I don't have the energy for another IDHT shitstorm like last year. You mentioned the book review you are citing on this page, but by that time you had already posted an ANEW thread that shut down discussion here, and I didn't see your post here until sometime after you had cited "Miller" a bunch of times on the ANEW thread. Additionally, sometime before you posted the above reference to "Miller" I specified this, and asked you to refrain from citing Miller's brief, non-considered discussion of the toraijin theory in the book review, when he also wrote an entire, separate, 20-page monograph specifically addressing the topic. Also, could you give me a date for "the History of Religions"? I checked Ebersole's faculty page and couldn't find it. Depending on when he wrote the quote, it is either too outdated to be quoted on this talk page in 2015, or too out-of-touch with scholarship in the relevant field (he is, after all, a historian of religions, not literature). Most of the relevant scholarship on the issue was done in the 1960s, and the debate had largely died down by the mid-1980s, with a majority accepting that Okura came from the peninsula but with some dissenters. "Recent scholarship, however, has made this position untenable. Nakanishi Susumu, for example, has conclusively shown that the famous Manyo poet Yamanoe Okura was himself a Korean immigrant." -- Nakanishi Susumu "has" shown this some fifty years ago -- why are you using such out-of-date sources, Curtis? Also, you still haven't answered my question -- are the Korean hyangga Nakanishi compared to Okura's poetry older than Okura's poetry, or more recent? If the latter, I'm not criticizing Nakanishi's scholarship (I do, of course, consider him to be correct), but we need to specify that if we are going to cite it in the article. Your overreliance on far-removed, English-language, American tertiary sources is a problem on this point.

If you don't specifically address my concerns in your next response, I will take it as meaning you are unwilling to discuss with me on the talk page, and I will revert any counter-consensus attempt you make to edit the article. I will not continue to dance to your tune, Pied Piper. You are misrepresenting your sources, and your sources themselves have been cherry-picked to allow for maximum misrepresentation. You did this the other times we interacted as well. I am getting sick and tired of this behaviour from you. I don't know why you have not been indefinitely blocked yet, or at least TBANned from editing articles on early Japanese history. I would say "goodbye", but I guess I am still technically obliged to assume that your next edit to this page will be an intelligent, well-reasoned response.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 15:30, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

The Ebersole source is from 1983 and there is no reason why it shouldn't be regarded as reliable. I think the quote from Ebersole that I provided does indicate that Okura was influenced by Korean poetry.CurtisNaito (talk) 15:40, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

What exactly is the Ebersole document to which you are referring?--Ubikwit_{見学/迷惑} 17:10, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

An essay which I quoted above which provides the same information as the Miller article, noting that Okura's works demonstrate Korean influence on Japanese literature.CurtisNaito (talk) 17:15, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Refcite?--Ubikwit_{見学/迷惑} 17:16, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

"The Religio-Aesthetic Complex in Manyoshu Poetry with Special Reference to Hitomaro's Aki no No Sequence," History of Religions 23,1 (August, 1983)CurtisNaito (talk) 17:18, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Too much detail. Even if Ebersole is right, he's still fringe: not in the sense that the view he holds is fringe, but in the sense that he is on the fringe of Japanese literary scholarship. @Curtis: What exactly do you want this page to say? Do you think we should just say "Okura was a Korean living in Japan"? That's not what any of your sources say. It's a popular theory among literary scholars, probably the most popular regarding Okura's origins, but it is not supported by direct documentary evidence and there are no reliable sources covering the theory in detail that just call him "a Korean". We should not be naming every single scholar in every remotely related discipline who has spoken positively of Nakanishi's theory: we should just say a large number of literary scholars accept the theory, and either only name Nakanishi Susumu, or maybe name Watanabe Kazuo and Nakanishi Susumu, or maybe name one or both of the former and name Aoki Kazuo as the primary opponent of the theory. Per WP:POVFORK, this page should not go into more detail than the main Yamanoue no Okura article (why would it? what are the motivations of the users who want it to?), and that page already saw a very specific consensus on this that a single sentence is sufficient. That was User:Shii's proposal, and User:Sturmgewehr88 agreed -- I came out on the losing side of that argument, so if anyone here wants to reopen the discussion so my preferred, thorough discussion can be re-added to that article, I am all for that. But any discussion of revising the previous consensus to expand the Yamanoue no Okura article should be taking place on Talk:Yamanoue no Okura, not here. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:33, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Well, according to Misplaced Pages's "other stuff exists" policy, we don't need to harmonize every article. It's obvious that both the article Korean influence on Japanese culture and the article Yamanoe Okura are in need of expansion. We can't decline to expand the article Korean influence on Japanese culture on the grounds that the Yamanoe Okura article has not yet been expanded. Each need to be expanded and they don't have to be expanded in tandem with one another. And there's no need to question the good faith of other users. No one has had any bad motivations for wanting to improve article content. As for what I want the article to say, I was okay with Nishidani's version which summed up most of the main points. Basically many scholars believe that he was Korean and many scholars believe that Korean culture influenced his writings. The general details of this is all that needs to be said.CurtisNaito (talk) 00:49, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is about page deletion! I'm talking about writing responsibly so readers don't come away misinformed and not —maintaining forked articles that violate consensus established on the talk pages of the main articles. WP:AFD doesn't come into it at all. Your constant incompetent, IDHT behaviour and failure to understand Misplaced Pages's core policies and guidelines, let alone reliable sources, is really beginning to try my patience: I was about to close this comment with "you bloody buffoon". Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:30, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

It's the same principle. The fact that one article has not yet been expanded is NOT a justification to stop expanding a different article. As I said, many scholars believe that he was Korean and many scholars believe that Korean culture influenced his writings. That's what this article should indicate. I suppose that the Yamanoe no Okura article ought to indicate the same, but as long as this article is reliably sourced there is no requirement that they line up perfectly. I think you should have discussed your recent deletions before going ahead with them. Nishidani described his additions as "the obvious edit". I suppose Nishidani's version is good enough so I support it for now. I don't know whether TH1980 supports it, but he is at least clearly in favor of expanding coverage on Okura. If you are the only user who does not want expanded coverage of this issue, against three users who do, then you are deleting material without consensus.CurtisNaito (talk) 02:44, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

For the last bloody time, no scholars believe he was "a Korean", and you will never find any sources that say this. Why can't you get it through your thick skull that the modern idea of "Korean nationality" didn't exist in the seventh century!? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:07, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Hijiri a Korean just means someone from Korea. I never said "Korean nationality". There are plenty of reliable sources that call him a Korean or a Korean immigrant(i.e. a Korean). For instance, the Cambridge History of Japan says, "The case for Okura as a Korean born in Paekche and brought to Japan soon after birth is argued by Nakanishi Susumu."CurtisNaito (talk) 11:11, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

"a Korean just means someone from Korea" LOL you can't say that in an article about "Korean influence on Japanese culture." That means that Chinese people who passed through Korea are Korean and should be included. Shii (tock) 11:42, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Well in common parlance I don't normally say that I am "from x region/nation" if I am just passing through. If someone says "I am from China" it's unlikely they are an Australian returning from a vacation in China. At any rate, the point is that plenty of reliable sources refer to Yamanoe Okura as either "Korean" or "a Korean".CurtisNaito (talk) 11:49, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Again, Curtis, assuming "Curtis Naito" is your real name, and you are a person of Japanese ancestry who grew up (was born?) in an English-speaking country, by the logic you are applying to this page this would make you "a Japanese living in America"? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 13:43, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

That's not really true because according to the Korea theory, Yamanoe Okura was born in Korea. However, it doesn't matter anyway because most reliable sources, including the Cambridge History of Japan, call him "a Korean" or "a Korean immigrant". I'm only advocating we describe him as the sources do. You're objecting to the definition used by the reliable sources, not the definition used by me alone.CurtisNaito (talk) 13:48, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

For example, I think we are all in agreement that Roy Andrew Miller, author of the article "Yamanoe Okura, a Korean Poet in Eighth-Century Japan", is a reliable source, right? In that source Miller says(p.708), "Okura was not merely a foreigner, he was a Korean".CurtisNaito (talk) 13:54, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Actually, for your benefit Hijiri, since you can't access the source, I will provide a series of quotes for you from Roy Andrew Miller's article "Yamanoe Okura, a Korean Poet in Eighth-Century Japan".

"Okura was not merely a foreigner, he was a Korean"

"Okura, thus... was a Korean."

"He was a foreigner, a Korean."

"the very individual whom they selected to symbolize all that was unimpeachably Japanese about what they called "The Way of Subjects" has turned out not even to have been a Japanese at all, but a Korean!"CurtisNaito (talk) 14:03, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Again ... gugyeol and katakana?

Okay, if Lee and Ramsey consider katakana to have come into being after the tenth century, they are WP:FRINGE and should not be cited in the article. If (and I suspect this to be the case) "gugyeol" has more than one meaning, or our gugyeol article is wrong in saying it was developed in the Goryeo dynasty, then that article needs to be updated to include that information. Or by "katakana", do Lee and Ramsey (neither of whom are Japanese specialists) mean "specific details of how the katakana script was used to gloss Buddhist sutras written in Classical Chinese"? If the latter, then Lee and Ramsey are using clumsy/vague terminology that they borrowed/misinterpreted from more reliable specialist sources, and a better source should be located.

At present, our readers (and I) have no choice but to click the link and read that gugyeol developed after the tenth century, and so katakana must be later.

Per WP:BURDEN, this isn't my job: the users who want to include this claim need to justify it by finding reliable sources that back them up and editing responsibly so that readers don't get the wrong impression.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:23, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

You can't declare Lee and Ramsey to be fringe based only off your own opinion. What source do you have stating that Lee and Ramsey are fringe? As I said before, there is no need to force a reliably sourced statement in one article to line up with a unsourced statement in another article.CurtisNaito (talk) 02:27, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

It's not "my opinion" that katakana developed in the ninth century: this is the standard scholarly view taught in every university with a Japanese historical linguistics course in Japan and the western world. But also: shit. Just noticed that the current, extant reference to katakana and gugyeol actually doesn't say what I thought it did. It was written by Nishidani based on his correct reading of Lee and Ramsey, that the two system share similarities but their relationship is obscure. This means that when TH1980 added the claim that katakana was "based on" gugyeol he/she was not only lying about the author of the source and misrepresenting its contents, but introducing material to the article that was directly contradicted by other (more accurately sourced) material in the same article!

Damn...

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:39, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

No, TH1980 cited the source correctly. Ramsey said that it "seems certain" that gugyeol influenced the creation of katakana. It was not misrepresented in any way.CurtisNaito (talk) 02:47, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes, but what does that mean? What does Ramsey mean by "gugyeol"? What does he mean by "katakana"? What does he mean by "influenced" and "creation"? All of these are variables we should not have to deal with: Ramsey's essay was a short piece describing, primarily, Japanese influence on modern Korean. In his longer discussion of this topic he was apparently more clear what he meant. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:03, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

The words "gugyeol" and "katakana" don't have multiple meanings. If you believe that there are two different writing systems both called gugyeol then you need to provide evidence of that. You accused TH1980 of lying about his source but you can't say he lied based on your personal theory that gugyeol can refer to two different writings systems. As for the word "influenced", I don't think it's overly ambiguous but even if it is, the word was taken directly from the Ramsey source. You can't accuse someone of lying because they directly copied a word from a reliable source. At very worst maybe plagiarism, but obviously not lying.CurtisNaito (talk) 11:25, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Curtis can't read anything correctly, while Hijiri is second guessing scholarly sources, in an increasingly disastrous venture into WP:OR. I thought I'd solved the dispute between both misprisions by the way I formulated my edits. For the record,

Miller said that the literary establishment support the Toraijin Theory; he said that one or two fringe authors writing for a foreign (non-Japanese-speaking) audience have ... not directly rejected it, but ignored it.)

Is incomprehensible to justify removing the source, which you haven't evidently read.

You can't cite Miller as a respectable source and then cite a doctoral thesis that Miller absolutely rejected as a piece of garbage as also being a reliable source: which is it!?)

is dumb. Scholars differ, and one could cite Marshall Unger, an acute critic of Miller, and Miller, a critic of Levy's translation of the Man'yo, and Hideo Levy altogether without methodological or cognitive dissonbance. You got things wrong in any case

• (a) Miller took an axe to Ian Hideo Levy’s The Ten Thousand Leaves: A Translation of the Man’yōshū: Japan’s Premier Anthology of Classical Poetry, 1981, which I did not cite. I cited a different work by Levy, his Hitomaro and the Birth of Japanese Lyricism, Princeton University Press, 1984 pp.42-43. In both, Miller and Levy are directly citing and supporting the same scholarly thesis, by Susumu Nakanishi. You’re losing the plot, rapidly, and you have a problem with 'Koreans'. There was no such thing as 'national identity' (Korean/Japanese) at the time, references to Korea and Japan are to be read as toponymic shorthand. Both of you are apparently pushing a modern ethnic passive aggressive defence and assertion controversy in the cultural/historical conflict between Korean and Japanese nationalisms that is totally irrelevant to these articles. I will restore what was removed.Nishidani (talk) 10:22, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

What are you referring to when you say that I can't read anything? This is a section on Gugyeol and Katakana. In my above post I only pointed out that the scholar Ramsey was accurately quoted by TH1980.CurtisNaito (talk) 11:28, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

@Nishidani:

I did read Miller (Plus Ça Change), but what am I expected to do? The wording in the article was the opposite of what Miller said, so I was left with a choice between removing the bullshit sentence (and the source attached to it) or removing the bullshit sentence and replacing it with a proper summary of what Miller says, but I still don't think a book review in which Miller kinda-sorta discusses the Okura Toraijin Theory but is mainly talking about the quasi-kokutai ideology that informed the book is a good source for this: if we are going to summarize Miller's view of the Okura Toraijin Theory, then we should go with the 20-page dissertation devoted to the subject, not the book review that mentions it in passing.

No, Miller took an axe to both books. I haven't actually read his review of The Ten Thousand Leaves (I would love to, but it looks like I'd have to drop 40$ or some such on a 30-year-old back issue of The Princeton Review. His vicious review of Hitomaro and the Birth of Japanese Lyricism can be read on JStor here. I haven't actually read the book in question, though. The scathing review reads kind of like it might just be Miller doing his idiosyncratic "it uses a romanized form of modern Japanese pronunciation like everyone else except me and Philippi" schtick, or holding a grudge against Levy for the earlier-reviewed Leaves.

And I agree with you on most of the rest -- I just think this discussion should be taking place on Talk:Yamanoue no Okura, not here.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:17, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

I have had the same problem with Naito. To repeat, Hijiri, you removed Roy Andrew Miller, 'Uri Famëba,' in Stanca Scholz-Cionca (ed.),Wasser-Spuren: Festschrift für Wolfram Naumann zum 65. Geburtstag, Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 1997 pp.85-104, pp.85-6, p.104, evidently without reading it. It is quite beside the point to mention Plus ça change...Nishidani (talk) 12:21, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

I stand corrected about Miller's review of Levy's second volume. It is probably only one of three or four things by Miller I haven't read. Yet your point is totally immaterial, since this is not about Miller, or Levy (I have their books in my personal library). It is about what is said of Okura's continental/Korean background. Levy's 1984 book is dedicated to Nakanishi Susumu, was written in good part under his supervision (Miller's work on Okura was also indebted to Nakanishi), and that of Earl Miner, of Marius Jansen, so your dismissal of it as a doctoral dissertation swiped at by Miller is pointless: wanna list of great linguists who have mocked Miller's confusions? Such informed nitpicking is normal, and your mentioning it to independently evaluate edits on sources is, plainly, a violation of the limits imposed on wikipedian editors.Nishidani (talk) 12:34, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

(Edit conflict -- I started watching a video in another tab and didn't notice for a long while) Shit, did I? That was an accident, and I apologize. I didn't check the page history to see who added what (hence my immediately-withdrawn fustercluck at the top of this thread where, I thought TH1980 or Curtis had re-added the "Katakana was based on Korean Gugyeol, even though the latter was developed in the 10th century and the former in the 9th" BS, but on closer reading it was actually a well-sourced, rational piece that was probably your work from some months ago), and when I saw Miller's name appear in the literature section when I glanced at it, I thought it was Curtis misrepresenting what Miller said (again). You'll have to forgive my thinking this -- all I really had to go on without trawling through the page history (something I was recently harshly criticized for elsewhere) was that Curtis was arguing with me on this talk page over what Miller said, when Curtis hadn't understood what Miller said.

Anyway, as to the "literary establishment", though... Miller said elsewhere that the majority of Japanese literary scholars accept that Okura was an immigrant from Baekje, so I find it kind of hard to believe that he wrote that Okura's Korean ethnicity was "an established fact though one disliked by the Japanese literary establishment". Could you elaborate?

And again,I thought I was arguing with someone who had misread and misunderstood Levy, and had used Miller in the same inappropriate manner; I know it technically violates AGF to assume Curtis has misread and misunderstood a source I haven't myself read, and is misrepresenting it, based solely on the last ten or fifteen times he has done just that, but I don't think any harm is seriously done by assuming that if Curtis is quoting a scholarly source on early Japan then he is probably misquoting it. The fact that Levy had not been discussed or directly quoted on the talk page made me extra suspicious. Now that I know it was you and not Curtis who was citing Levy, I am confident he has been cited correctly and the information provided is accurate. Are we done here?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 13:23, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

'I find it kind of hard to believe that he wrote that Okura's Korean ethnicity was "an established fact though one disliked by the Japanese literary establishment". Could you elaborate?'

‘Only in modern Japan has there been persistent and determined resistance to any recognition of the historical facts concerning Okura’s Korean ethnicity; the orthodox bundan establishment not only continues to assert, against all the evidence, that although Okura was to be sure “one of the most creative and original of the Kyūshū poets,” regrettably “nothing is known of his origins” –nothing, one is forced to add, except that he was a Korean.” Pp.85-86

'In part his comes about because of Okura's unique binational background and multilingual heritage‘ p.104.

That is Miller's view, and he is slipshod, since many other sources treat Nakianishi's theory as an 'allegation' or as imputing to Okura a 'Korean' origin. The fact is that in all likelihood, he was of continental origin (nothing excludes the possibility however that, given the reverse immigration from Yamato/Kyushu, some of his background might be Yamatoish, nota bene), but Korea, like Japan, did not exist as a nationality: continentals from dozens of tribal groups probably entered Japan in tens of thousands over 3 centuries, and their identities were tribal primarily. Miller says more specifically that Okura's poetry has terms that suggest a Puyo ethnic origin, which is not coterminous with 'Korean'. The word 'Korean' is being used here as a toponym, not as an ethnonym, which is how Curtis unthinkingly takes it. Nishidani (talk) 19:12, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

But why do you assume that I'm using it strictly as an ethnonym. The only time I ever called him a Korean was when the sources did, so I suppose I wasn't thinking about it in terms of ethnonyms and toponyms, I was basically just copying the sources. Miller did say "the very individual whom they selected to symbolize all that was unimpeachably Japanese about what they called "The Way of Subjects" has turned out not even to have been a Japanese at all, but a Korean!" Miller never really said whether those were ethnonyms or toponyms and I never said anything about that either. I just copied his wording.CurtisNaito (talk) 19:22, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

You really ought to be criticizing sources on the basis of the sources, and not on the basis of who added them to the article.CurtisNaito (talk) 13:31, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't know where you live, Curtis, but for me the only legal way I can access most of these English-language academic sources from American and European publishers is by ordering them off Amazon, paying sometimes exorbitant prices and waiting several weeks for delivery (until this dispute has already ended?), so how may I ask do you expect me to judge these sources on their own merits? I have seen you abuse every single source you have cited that I do have access to, so it is perfectly reasonable to assume that you will do it again. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 13:37, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Well, I think it's reasonable to say that one shouldn't criticize a source which one hasn't read. I have never misrepresented any sources, but it goes without saying that a Misplaced Pages user should not delete sources without first judging them on their own merits.CurtisNaito (talk) 13:44, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

@CurtisNaito: Well if you have access to (or even read) these sources, then it shouldn't be hard for you to post a direct quote from them that support your statements? And you have definitely misrepresented sources in the past. ミーラー強斗武 (StG88ぬ会話) 17:02, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

I have provided direct quotes for all the sources I was asked to provide quotes from. Furthermore, no one has ever found any evidence that I have ever misrepresented sources.CurtisNaito (talk) 17:06, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Curtis. I don't address you often. You are incapable of reading a source correctly, or in context, as IO have consistently shown (see the refs on the edit-warring board). Hijiri has his problems, 'overreading' or 'second-guessing sources'. Your problem appears to be that you google the key points you want (i.e. Okura+Korean) find 'stuff' and then wish to write, 'Okura is a Korean', which is methodologically stupid, and editing with a bias. Between the two, a tedxious discussion of POV extremisms at loggerheads then takes places, and in the meantime the article is neglected or suffers from edit-warring. You write:

‘Okura was born in Korea. However, it doesn't matter anyway because most reliable sources, including the Cambridge History of Japan, call him "a Korean" or "a Korean immigrant".

Well, I gave the CUP source, and it is extremely simple to construe, but you misconstrue it, which means either you don't understand the niceties of very straightforward English or you read past the text when its nuances disturb the POV presentation you are trying to introduce. Cranston wrote:

'‘It is thought that Okura himself was of kikajin descent’ Cranston p.479

'It is thought' is an impersonal passive, and the use of the word 'think' indicates speculation, not a fact. Cranston does not call Okura a 'Korean' or assert, as does Miller, that he is 'of Korean descent'. Cranston notes that he is thought to be descended from immigrants'. Elsewhere he has written that Okura putatively had foreign origins. Both Cranston and Miller, if you read everything they write on the topic, say Okura was either 'binational' or that in writing of Yamato, he writes as a native of that society.

On past experience, you won't understand this, but just drive ahead. But I trust other people can read the implication. You can't read for nuts, and your simplistic reduction to prove a pseudoid only wastes huge time among serious editors.Nishidani (talk) 17:31, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm aware that the Korea theory is not the only one in existence. I said right at the beginning that I was open to including an alternative theory as well. However, I was being criticizing just for mentioning in the talk page that he is regarded, according to the Korea theory, as "a Korean". I surely can't be criticized for saying this when the Cambridge History of Japan says the same thing. Hijiri once said, "(Miller) never in fact once used the word "Korean" as a noun to refer to a person, only to the language." But Miller refers to Okura as "a Korean" constantly, saying things like "Okura was not merely a foreigner, he was a Korean", "Okura, thus... was a Korean.", "He was a foreigner, a Korean.", etc... The Cambridge History does also say, "The case for Okura as a Korean born in Paekche and brought to Japan soon after birth is argued by Nakanishi Susumu." It just goes to show you that most scholars do not draw a sharp line between "Korean immigrant", "Korean immigrant descent", and "a Korean". Scholars use all of those terms interchangeably.CurtisNaito (talk) 17:38, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

You misrepresented sources at Emperor Jimmu, which Nishidani pointed out there. ミーラー強斗武 (StG88ぬ会話) 17:45, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

I did not misrepresent the sources. David Earhart's book Certain Victory: Images of World War II in the Japanese Media says "Emperor Jimmu... was said to have the phrase". Japan Encyclopedia defines Hakko Ichiu as "an expression attributed to the mythical emperor Jimmu". Kenneth Ruoff's book Imperial Japan at its Zenith says that Hakko Ichiu "was a saying attributed to Emperor Jimmu". The passage itself was taken almost word-for-word from the Nihon Shoki. I have never misrepresented any sources. Currently the Emperor Jimmu article does say that the statement was "incorrectly attributed" to him, but the source currently cited doesn't say anything even remotely like that. Of the two sources Nishidani cites in the above quote, only one of the them seems to indicate that the phrase was not connected the Jimmu. The other one merely says that Tanaka Chigaku "popularized" it rather than inventing it. But at any rate I had never mentioned in the conversation before the two sources Nishidani brought up there. How can I be accused of misrepresenting sources which I never used in the article and never mentioned in the talk page?CurtisNaito (talk) 17:47, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Bullshit, and further proof you will not admit to error while generating huge threads. You almost invariably 'misrepresent sources' because you are ignorant of the topics, and can't understand any niceties of critique in fields where speculation, slipshod reportage, ideological battles, and whatnot are endemic. You don't know a good source from a bad source. You can't understand anything that is complex (all of these subjects are). When corrected you just keep POV pushing, and refusing to budge.Nishidani (talk) 18:52, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Only one diff has been provided to suggest that I misrepresented sources. However, the only two sources in it are sources which I never cited in the article and never mentioned in the talk page. I can't be accused of misrepresenting sources which I never mentioned. Even though you eventually found one source which did not say that Hakko Ichiu was attributed to Jimmu, it did not negate the half dozen sources which I accurately cited saying that it was attributed to him. Even now the article on Emperor Jimmu says that Hakko Ichiu was "incorrectly" attributed while citing a source that says the opposite.CurtisNaito (talk) 18:57, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Nope. I'm fucked if I'm going to waste hours on this. But aside from the egregious Jimmu case, I showed above you misrepresented Cranston. That's two, and you're evidently having problems with elementary arithmetic.Nishidani (talk) 19:03, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

I only quoted one single line from the Cambridge History, which said "The case for Okura as a Korean born in Paekche and brought to Japan soon after birth is argued by Nakanishi Susumu." I never said that all scholars believe that Okura was from Korea, I was just pointing out that I should not be attacked for occasionally calling Okura "a Korean". Plenty of reliable scholars call him that.CurtisNaito (talk) 19:08, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

For chrissake, man, can you try at least once to understand what other people, yes people who can see at a glance you've never read an original source in ancient Japanese, are telling you? They might not be right, except that they know you have absolutely no idea of the silly implications of your use of secondary sources. you can't tell a good one from a bad, you can't contextualize one position within a complex set of scholarly debates. You just cull nice snippets that groom a prejudice. That's what you give the impression of doing, and these articles require critical critical judgement not boorish googling for 'results' that you like. Nishidani (talk) 19:18, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

What I understand is that I was trying to discuss article content, but kept on getting interrupted because I occasionally called Okura "a Korean". What's wrong with using the same wording as the scholarly community does? Yes, I'm aware that "a Korean" is not the sole and exclusive method of describing him. "Korean immigrant" is another one which is used just as often, but it doesn't change the fact that "a Korean" is still an acceptable way of describing him according to the reliable sources which I accurately quoted and did not misrepresent.CurtisNaito (talk) 19:27, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Stop repeating yourself with variations of a hackneyed defense meme. I for one am not going to read you anymore. If I see crap on the page, I'll revert it. Bye.Nishidani (talk) 19:29, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Well if it's really that contentious then I guess we could put into the article something like, "Yamanoe Okura, variously described by scholars as 'a Korean immigrant', 'Korean', 'of Korean immigrant descent', or 'of kikajin descent'..."CurtisNaito (talk) 19:33, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Chong-Sik Lee

• 'Edo Neo-Confucianism was based in substantial measure off Korean writings, especially the works of Yi Hwang..'

That is both not correct English, and a falsification of the source and history. Japanese Neo-Confucianism was based on Zhu Xi, his school, Chinese commentators, Korean commentators, etc. Chong-Sik Lee is a political scientist. Please don't bring sources to this controverted article that are general, and do not cite people who step out of their own academic area of expertise to venture into territory that they evidently have no knowledge of.Nishidani (talk) 19:02, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

I can understand what you're saying. When I looked over the source myself it appears that there are both advantages and disadvantages to citing it. On the one hand, Edward Chung has more focus on the field of philosophy, which is the relevant section of the article, but on the other hand Chong-Sik Lee has more focus on Korean influence on Japanese culture, which is the topic of the article as a whole. Citing Lee has the strong advantage of being more on focus in regards to the article as a whole, because the topic of the page cited is listed explicitly in the book's index as being "Korean influence on Japanese culture". However, citing Chung has the advantage of being more on focus in regard to the section in question, because Chung's book is about philosophy. Obviously though, Japanese neo-Confucianists were heavily influenced by the Korean tradition. Including the comment about "stop googling" was rather unnecessary since it seems like both citations came from Google Books. Ultimately, I wonder if we should cite both Lee and Chung.CurtisNaito (talk) 19:24, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

The problem is this is a dated theory, even in Japan, one which newer scholarship has effectively disproven. I'm thinking of Willem Jan Boot's work in particular. I'm watching a film, (ad break), but will fix the rest in due course. So far I have given two sources for the claim, without attribution, because they are superior (even if wrong). Nishidani (talk) 20:06, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Marius Jansen's The Making of Modern Japan (2000) also notes the connection. It says, "Koreans also served as transmitters in Tokugawa studies of the neo-Confucian scholarship of China. The works of the Korean scholar Yi Hwang (1501-1570), better known by his honorific Yi T'oegye, circulated widely among Japanese scholars and acquainted many with what was to become a principal strand of Tokugawa thought."CurtisNaito (talk) 21:27, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Now that Liam Neesan has saved his daughter, after several shoot-outs in which he liquidated about 37 people of various dubious nationalities armed with machine guns, while suffering a slight wound to his arm, I have some leisure. Marius Jansen wrote his last book while in his late 70s, and was simply out of touch, and on this it's rather peculiar because another Netherlander, Willem Jan Boot, had torn the theory, associated with Abe Yoshio, to bits almost two decades earlier (The Adoption and Adaptation of Neo-Confucianism in Japan:The Role of Fujiwara Seika and Hayashi Razan, Leiden University 1982). It's true that this is a doctoral thesis, but it has been generally accepted by the specialist literature as having made a convincing case.

'A similar great transformation in Japanese intellectual history has also been traced to Korean sources, for it has been asserted that the vogue for neo-Confucianism, a school of thought that would remain prominent throughout the Edo period (1600-1868), arose in Japan as a result of the Korean war, whether on account of the putative influence that the captive scholar-official Kang Hang exerted on Fujiwara Seika (1561-16519), the soi-disant discoverer of the true Confucian tradition for Japan, or because Korean books from looted libraries provided the new pattern and much new matter for a redefinition of Confucianism. this assertion, however is questionable and indeed has been rebutted convincingly in recent Western scholarship

Nishidani (talk) 22:08, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

1. Jurgis Elisonas, 'The inseparable trinity: Japan's relations with China and Korea' Early Modern Japan, The Cambridge History of Japan, vol.4 Cambridge University Press 1991 pp.235-300. p.293.

p.s. You'll get plenty of sources that recycle the meme, but the fact that many of them state blandly that Zhu Xi/Chu Hsi's thought, the basis of Neo-Confucianism, came to Japan in the wake of Hideyoshi's conquest of Korea shows the sources are just copying each other. Zhu Xi's thought was introduced into Japan some centuries earlier by Zen Buddhist monks.Nishidani (talk) 22:14, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

I highly question whether the theory has been entirely disproven, in one essay collection by leading Korean scholars written as recently as 2009, Ha Woobong writes in his essay "Kang Hang and Confucianism in Modern Japan" that Kang Hang "exerted a decisive influence upon Seika in his attempt to develop as a full-fledged Confucian scholar." The essay does discuss the original introduction of Zhu Xi's ideas into Japan, but here is what it says about that, "Prior to , the Japanese had remained virtually in the dark about Zhu Xi's philosphy. Japanese Buddhist monks who had studied in Song China in the early thirteenth century introduced the philosophy to their country, but only a few student monks at the five leading Rinzai Zen temples in Kyoto showed an interest in it, so Japanese knowledge about the philosophy remained at a low level." In other words, the role of Korean scholars was decisive.CurtisNaito (talk) 22:22, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

For fuck's sake, Curtis. Don't drag me into further waste of time. it's a kindergarten principle of scholarship that if a theory is subject to a scholarly rebuttal at date x by scholar A, and that theory continues to be mentioned after date x by scholars who ignore A's work, then the latter are not tenable as sources, because they show unfamiliarity with the scholarship. This means that Ha Woobong is worth reading if he provides us with information on criticism after 1982 that challenges Willem Jan Boot's conclusions. If he or any other source fails to mention van Boot, they're simply repeating stale stuff. And the mention of The passage you cite gives me no confidence, because Ha Woobong gets it wrong. Zhu Xi's philosophy was the special preserve of the Five Zen Monasteries since Kamakura times (which actually became 10, the 5 in Kyoto being added to by 5 in Kamakura). This wasn't esoteric (a few student monks). Fujiwara Seika like Hayashi Razan came from Buddhist priestly families, and that is where the former got to study Zhu Xi, before the invasion. In any case, have you the faintest inkling about this subject, other that names and passages you google up?Nishidani (talk) 22:48, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

And the last version was not a "falsification". The original text said, "Neo-Confucian learning had made much progress in Korea, where the Yi dynasty had adopted it as the Korean official philosophy. Such leading Japanese philosophers as Fujiwara Seika (1561-1619) and Hayashi Razan (1593-1657) based their neo-Confucian learning on Korean writings, particularly those of Yi Hwang..." There is no need to use such hyperbole like "falsification". The quality of English was fine, the source was accurately represented, and the gist of the text involved was only subtly different from your version which said "Edo Neo-Confucianism was built on foundations laid by Korean scholars". This theory continues to be advocated by leading historians.CurtisNaito (talk) 22:29, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Look,don't do that:

The first editor wrote, ungrammatically, and fraudulently

(A)Edo Neo-Confucianism was based in substantial measure off Korean writings, especially the works of Yi Hwang..'

(B)"Neo-Confucian learning had made much progress in Korea, where the Yi dynasty had adopted it as the Korean official philosophy. Such leading Japanese philosophers as Fujiwara Seika (1561-1619) and Hayashi Razan (1593-1657) based their neo-Confucian learning on Korean writings, particularly those of Yi Hwang..."

If you can't see that A is WP:SYNTH, then you shouldn't be editing Misplaced Pages. A says 200 years of Neo-Confucian learning was substantially indebted to Korean writings. (B) says 2 foundational Japanese neo-Confucians ca.1600-1650 based their learning (false: they were immensely learned before that) on Korean writings (false). Kindly piss off.Nishidani (talk) 22:48, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Well, I know how this will play out. I'll just revert, unless the basic criteria are met for good sourcing. Talking to you is pointless.Nishidani (talk) 22:51, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Nishidani, please keep it civil. The original text did not say "200 years of Neo-Confucian learning", but it goes without saying that Fujiwara Seika and Hayashi Razan were decisive in the creation of the ideology. There was no fabrication here. Given the fact that Ha Woobong's essay represents up-to-date (2009) scholarship on the issue, surely we should mention it.CurtisNaito (talk) 23:01, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

if a theory is subject to a scholarly rebuttal at date x by scholar A, and that theory continues to be mentioned after date x by scholars who ignore A's work, then the latter are not tenable as sources, because they show unfamiliarity with the scholarship.

It is not civil to be, as you are, consistently stupid or thick-headed. You simply have no idea of how to read a text, analyse a source, and evaluate it in terms of the flow of scholarly work. Piss off.Nishidani (talk) 23:04, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Why, when I say someone shouldn't be editing Misplaced Pages (that's what "should be blocked" means), am I told that I "really need to stop with the threats", but when Nishidani says the same thing he is told to "keep it civil"? What's the difference?

As to the substance, obviously Nishidani is pretty much right once again. I think Nishidani and I disagree on whether a dubious influence on two Neo-Confucian scholars in the 17th/18th century of some Korean but mostly Chinese and Japanese predecessors should be cited as a "Korean influence on Japanese culture", but as usual I'm prepared to compromise on this point as long as no outright lies are cited in the article.

And obviously I also agree with Nishidani that TH1980 and CurtisNaito need to "stop Googling". The recent example of "I read in the foreword to a general reference work that some Japanese 'legends' might have been based off of Korean ones" is again pretty problematic. I'll try to go out myself later and search for the answers to the questions I posed in my comment here, but it would be nice if either Curtis or TH1980 would drag their own weight for once...

By the way, it's not really related but when I "Ctrl+F"ed the word "Google" on the page history, I found this funny edit summary from 2008. Interestingly, it appears to be from a Korean-POV-pushing SPA who was indefinitely blocked for sockpuppetry. @CurtisNaito: Wanna tell me again how this article and the general topic area don't have a history of disruptive sock edits?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 16:01, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

I would suspect everyone here is using Google, not just TH1980 and I. Good is scholarship is good scholarship, no matter what search engine you use, and as I mentioned, there are academic works written as recently as 2009 dealing specifically with the impact of Korean neo-Confucianism on Japan, so this is not a debunked theory. Clearly TH1980 is pulling his weight because there wouldn't be a section on "philosophy" or information on Yamanoe Okura if hadn't been editing. Every single recent addition to the article without exception was based on text that either TH1980 or I added to the article.

Regarding mythology, Hane cites the book Nihon no Chosen Bunka, which deals specifically with Korean influence on Japan. Hane says that Japanese myths have "Korean origins" and in the index the subject of the page is listed as "cultural influence of Korea". Although I don't think Hane should be qualified as a tertiary source, the use of some tertiary sources is fine. Just take a look at this article you recently wrote on Koshikibu no Naishi. Almost all the citations are to tertiary dictionaries and encyclopedias.

Also, from now on could you put your comments into the talk page instead of the article? Cluttering up the article with points for discussion is not useful at a time when we can discuss the issues on the talk page instead.CurtisNaito (talk) 16:21, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

So Hane is a tertiary source, as he has not consulted the primary sources, but rather a modern book. Well, I assume it's modern: the only "Nihon no Chosen Bunka" I could find was published in 1998, after Hane. Either way, he has not consulted the primary sources, and provides no details with which we can improve this article; if Nihon no Chosen Bunka is any good, we can hunt it down and see what it has to say. Curtis, please tell me the name of the author and publisher, and the year of publication.

Also: Curtis, who wrote this? Why does the author have a "faculty mentor"? Is this a graduate student's essay? PHD theses are one thing, but...

Anyway, your comment on the Koshikibu no Naishi is somewhat disturbing -- are you stalking me? I checked numerous reliable sources written by experts in the field, and since they all said the same thing I wrote this thing on Misplaced Pages. I wrote what the sources say, and did not go out searching for sources that said what I already wanted them to say (or that said something similar to what I wanted them to say). This is how good editors behave. And per WP:TERTIARY, articles should be initially structured to resemble those appearing in paper encyclopedias, since these have already been weighted appropriately: this is not the same as going out and Googling whatever sources back up what one wants to write, even if they are written by people who have not themselves engaged in vigorous primary-source research. The people who write encyclopedia articles on classical Japanese literature in Britannica, Mypaedia and the like are generally experts in the field who are thoroughly versed in the relevant scholarship, as well as the primary sources. Please do not compare what I do to what you do.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 16:35, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Mikiso Hane was a very well respected scholar and is a reliable source on Japanese history. His books are at least less tertiary than the dictionaries and encyclopedia you cited in the other article. I think it would okay to cite McNair Journal just for the opinion of the scholar Kim Yeol-kyu. McNair Journal isn't ideal, but if you check Google Books you can see that the McNair Journals of various universities are cited in reliable sources regularly.

Nihon no Chosen Bunka was published in 1972.CurtisNaito (talk) 16:49, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Hane is not an expert on Koshikibu no Naishi, or the Kojiki; scholars who have studied these in primary source material are NOT "more tertiary" than him. You are completely misunderstanding how and why we use secondary and tertiary sources; if a tertiary source is contradicted by secondary sources, it means it is probably in error; if all the secondary and tertiary sources say the same thing, we are encouraged to format our articles the same way reliable print encyclopedia articles written by experts in the field are formatted. Saying to me "Oh! You cited an encyclopedia article on this unrelated article, for completely uncontroversial material that is not contradicted in any of the secondary sources! You cited a TERTIARY SOURCE!! You are a bad person and a hypocrite! You are not allowed tell me that my source is inadequate or that I am misreading sources!", as you are apparently trying to do, is utterly ridiculous. Please stop bringing up unrelated bullshit and making bullshit accusations against me. If you continue in this it will be taken as a personal attack. Stop this madness now, or there will be consequences. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 17:02, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

There is no outright prohibition on tertiary sources on Misplaced Pages, but secondary sources are favored. I was just pointing out that your edited articles use far more tertiary sources, so it seems you are aware of this. There is no reason to discredit reliable sources just because they are allegedly "tertiary". Hane's status as a tertiary source is dubious, but one way or another we don't yet have a source which says that some Japanese myths do NOT have their origins in Korean myths. Therefore, this seems relatively uncontroversial.CurtisNaito (talk) 17:10, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

You still don't understand the problem. Tertiary sources should not be used when they are contradicted by secondary sources, because the secondary sources are (generally speaking) written by specialists who know a lot more about the material in question. In this sense, "tertiary source" means a source written based on a single, non-specialist author's reading of a secondary source. You will notice that my comments on the Koshikibu no Naishi article refer to Keene apparently getting some details wrong, perhaps because he barely mentions the subject (similar to Hane wherever he has been cited here) and is, in this sense, a tertiary source; I left the comments because Keene is a reliable source and checking his sources might indicate that he was right and the general reference works were wrong, in which case the article can be changed to reflect what he says. The difference between Keene there and Hane here is that while Keene is well-known for his work on Heian-period waka poets, Hane's bibliography appears to consist almost exclusively to works devoted to modern Japanese history (mostly 20th-century but with some Tokugawa stuff), which could hardly be further removed from our present concerns.

An article in a general encyclopedia that was most likely written by a specialist in the topic is not a "tertiary source" in this sense, especially when it has been collated with several other such works. Such works are "tertiary" in that they provide a brief summary of a large volume of primary and secondary sources, and so they are ideal for creating the bare bones of an article that can be expanded on later, especially when multiple such sources are carefully consulted. This is not the same as or even comparable to what you have been doing, which is to Google whatever sources from "reputable scholars" in entirely unrelated fields that happen to say either (a) what you already want them to say or (b) something extremely vague that you can present as what you want to say. The fact that you have to resort to such obscure, barely-relevant-to-the-topic works is enough to make the rest of us suspicious that you actually tracked down and read better sources, but they didn't say what you wanted them to so you ignored them.

The Kojiki and Nihonshoki are not my main area of interest, so I can't say for certain whether Hane and Yoo (Curtis, you have not read Kim, you have read Yoo) are wrong on this matter, and I also can't tell you which specialist sources you should check to see what they actually say on the subject (Keene's chapter on the Kojiki cites the writings of Kurano Kenji, Kanda Hideo and Saigou Nobutsuna a lot, but regarding Korean influences he says of Ledyard's horserider defense that it is "an up-to-date, brilliantly reasoned study of this period, so ... take from that what you will, I guess) but I can tell you that what you are doing now is going about it in the wrong way.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:13, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't believe that dictionaries and encyclopedias should be described as secondary sources. By contrast, history books are generally considered secondary sources and certainly Hane cites a very wide array of secondary and primary sources in his history of Japan. It's not that I have a problem with citing tertiary sources in some circumstances, as you do so frequently, but in this case you're trying to debunk a secondary source without any policy-based reason to go on. Do you actually know of any secondary sources which contradict the view that some Japanese myths have Korean-based origins? If so, we can include that opinion in the article but even then it doesn't justify deleting the valid alternative point of view.CurtisNaito (talk) 03:41, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Curtis, please define "history books". If you mean "books about stuff that happened in the past" then your claim that such a broad range of books are "generally considered secondary sources" is laughable. If you mean "undergraduate textbooks about the academic field called 'history' and general historical surveys like most 'histories of Japan'", then you are wrong to say that they are secondary sources -- they are tertiary sources, as their authors will generally admit. The fact that their authors are generally well-regarded scholars of at least some area of history is irrelevant to the question, since so-called "textbooks" that contain a large amount of original research based on primary sources generally won't be used in university classrooms. (By your own admission Hane is not a secondary source regarding the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, because he got his information from a book about Korean culture in Japan, published in 1972.) Yes, such works are generally considered reliable tertiary sources, but they are tertiary nonetheless, and when they include piecemeal reference to material far outside their main focus and equally far outside their author's main area of expertise they can make mistakes, sometimes pretty embarrassing mistakes, and so picking out such details and posting them on Misplaced Pages is inappropriate.

General reference encyclopedias are slightly less reliable tertiary sources, but but when several of them have been checked against each other and they all say the same thing they can generally be trusted as giving the scholarly consensus. Simply saying "you use tertiary sources and (I think) I'm using secondary sources therefore you are wrong and a hypocrite" while ignoring these factors is an utterly stupid way of discussing on this site.

Hane's work falls into the former category; Donald Keene's A History of Japanese Literature too. Bix's Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan is a bit dubious because he wrote his book to promote a particularly extreme revisionist view of the imperial role in World War II that a lot of specialists, maybe the majority, don't accept. Bix was writing a book on a 20th-century emperor, so using him as a source for the first emperor was problematic, especially when he got the Nihon Shoki confused with the Shoku Nihongi. Now, citing Hane's name in a sentence about the most ancient of Japanese myths, when Hane is known exclusively for his work in modern Japanese history, is almost as bad; he doesn't have a Misplaced Pages article yet (he will someday), so the casual reader is left to assume he was an expert in the Kojiki.

Now, if you still can't wrap your head around these issues then ... well, I've grown almost as tired of trying and failing to explain to you as Nishidani has. It's a waste of my time, when I could be rectifying the fact that we don't have a Takebe Ayatari article yet. If you continue to waste my time in this manner I will request on ANI that you either be blocked or TBANned from pre-1868 Japanese history.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:21, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Well, I was taking this from Misplaced Pages's definition which notes that "Secondary sources in history and humanities are usually books or scholarly journals". By contrast, encyclopedias and dictionaries are defined by Misplaced Pages as tertiary sources. One defines a sources on a source-by-source basis, not a sentence-by-sentence basis. In fact, one would be hard pressed to find any history books or scholarly journals which do not cite some secondary sources, and yet Misplaced Pages notes that, "a peer reviewed article is always a secondary source." It's true that Hane does cite secondary sources, among other types of sources. In this case, however, Hane is directly citing a work of specialist scholarship dealing entirely with Korean influence on Japanese culture. I'm not going to be banned, so we are just going to have to work this out. I think it's up to you to find a source which says that some Japanese myths do not have Korean origin. When we know that there are reliable source affirming something as a clear fact among scholars, then we assume it is a fact unless we have other sources presenting other points of view. I'm fine with including other points of view, but right now we have no evidence that they exist.CurtisNaito (talk) 12:39, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Mythology

This is interesting, and quite possibly accurate, but Hane at least is apparently a tertiary source -- has he consulted the Kojiki/Nihonshoki himself? -- and "many Japanese myths" and "Korean stories" are both far too vague. Does "about the age of the gods" mean "recorded in Kojiki Book 1" (the technical definition of the 神代) or just "myths about gods"? Some elaboration is definitely required. I'm also wondering whether scholars view these as "Korean influences" or traces of some earlier "proto-Japono-Korean" mythology from which both Japanese and Korean mythologies have developed -- if so, this does not belong in this article but rather in its own separate article since it would be neither a "Japanese influence on Korean mythology" nor a "Korean influence on Japanese mythology". Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 16:54, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Note: The above was originally a WP:COMMENT in the page source, but was removed. I am reposting it here on the off-chance that other users want to engage in constructive discussion of how to improve the article. This is NOT an invitation for CurtisNaito to turn this into yet another bottomless pit of nonsense. Curtis, please do not respond here. If you do, you will have demonstrated your own bad faith, since I am only agreeing to post this here rather than as a WP:COMMENT so that constructive discussion can take place on the talk page. You have already demonstrated that you are incapable of this, and any discussion you have touched has turned to mush.

@Nishidani: What do you think of the mythology discussion?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 16:54, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for moving the comment, but saying that I don't engage in constructive discussion is just assuming bad faith. At any rate, if there is still any actual problems with the mythology section, all we have to do is emphasize it as Hane's and Kim's opinion. It's at least a clear fact that those two individuals believe that Korean mythology has influenced Japanese mythology, so as long as we recognize it as their opinion our facts will be straight.CurtisNaito (talk) 17:03, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

It's not an assumption of bad faith. An assumption of bad faith would be "I hope you don't post any more inane, irrelevant, unconstructive comments, but I know you probably will". The irony is that by calling what I did say an assumption of bad faith, you actually proved that even if I had said thus I would have been justified in doing so.

Anyway, I'm still not comfortable with citing the opinion of Mikiso Hane, apparently a specialist in the oral history of 20th-century Japan who occasionally also dabbled in the intellectual history the early-modern Japan, and Kim, whose book is in Korean and whom neither of us has consulted directly but you have accessed through a short McNair Journal entry written by a college student, in the text of this article. If specialists in the Kojiki and Nihonshoki are saying these things, then they can be found and cited; if not, then the views are fringe, since they can only be attributed to scholars on the remotest fringes of the relevant field, and should not be cited, period.

Again, I don't know one way or the other (hence my not removing the material outright), but the burden is on you and TH1980 here, not me.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:13, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Technically though it's not just Hane's opinion. Hane actually says, "scholars have analyzed the similarities between the Korean and the Japanese myths and have presented persuasive arguments concerning the Korean origins of many Japanese myths about the early gods." Hane cites a book dealing specifically with the subject of Korean influence on Japan. Therefore, this is an argument made by many scholars and the current sourcing is more than sufficient. I think that it's up to you now to find a source which says that this popular view is actually "fringe". However, Kamstra's book "Encounter or Syncretism" also suggests that some Japanese myths originated in northern Asia and were brought by Koreans to Japan. Kamstra says, "Japanese mythology contains enough indications of this Korean belief in heaven... one can see the symbol for the Korean immigrants who had either brought this sun-worship to Japan or strengthened it there..."CurtisNaito (talk) 03:28, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

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