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Talk:Korean influence on Japanese culture

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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 (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 (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 (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 (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 (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 (talkcontribs) 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 (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)

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 (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 (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 (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 (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 (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 (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 (やや) 15:30, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
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