Talk:Fortress castle

Requested move 27 January 2025

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

The result of the move request was: no consensus. – robertsky (talk) 16:31, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

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• Fortress castle → Yagura castle
• Fortress opening → Yagura opening

– I'd like to propose a (potentially controversial?) reversal of the page moves by user Ish ishwar on 23 July 2019, where they moved the pages "Yagura caste" and "Yagura opening" to "Fortress castle" and "Fortress opening" respectively. This was seemingly done in accordance with WP:ENGLISHTITLE, going by Ish ishwar's edit summaries, which cite Fairbairn as a source for the translation. This seems to refer to John Fairbairn, author of the 1984 book Shogi for Beginners (ISBN 4871872017). However, I would argue that:

1. "Yagura castle" is an English term according to WP:ENGLISHTITLE, and does not need to be translated further.

   It is commonly used in English sources about shogi, including in books. Japanese-English Shogi Dictionary by Tomohide "Hidetchi" Kawasaki (ISBN 4905225086) uses "Yagura castle" alongside fully English terms like "Double Wing Attack" and "Side Pawn Picker," as can be seen on this photo. Other sources that use the term include Computers and Games by Jonathan Schaeffer and Martin Müller (2003), and Shogi: Japan's Game of Strategy by Trevor Leggett (2011).

   (On Google Search, the terms "yagura castle" and "yagura opening" also seem to be more commonly used on pages related to shogi than "fortress castle" and "fortress opening," although admittedly the difference is not large enough to be conclusive.)

2. "Fortress" is an inaccurate translation of the Japanese term.

   For the word "yagura" there is no definition equivalent to "fortress" mentioned in this online dictionary, or on Japanese Wikipedia's disambiguation page at ja:矢倉. According to sources quoted on ja:矢倉囲い, the name of the shogi formation either comes from it looking similar to tower structures seen on walls and gates of Japanese castles (which are called Yagura (tower) on English Wikipedia), or it is named after a shop named Yagura (やぐら屋) that used to be located in Osaka city (in which case it would be a proper noun of unknown origin that cannot be translated).

The fact that "fortress" does not correspond well to the original Japanese term of course does not make it less notable as an English term, and I think it should still be mentioned as an alternative name at the top of the article. However, I do feel that it is an additional argument (alongside the prevalence argument in point 1) for preferring "yagura" over "fortress" in the article titles, and as a primary term throughout the article texts. Spenĉjo (talk) 01:06, 27 January 2025 (UTC) — Relisting. Reading Beans, Duke of Rivia 14:32, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

The meaning of fortress seems to correspond well with the second meaning of your first link. I'm not an expert on historical military architecture, but there seems plenty of form & function similarities between a castellum and a yagura, which is presumably why Fairbairn used the term. I think your lack of correspondence argument is false.

I used the term Yagura first when I created the article. I later changed it to Fairbairn's term, which he uses in the British Shogi magazine of the 1970s and later in his associated books.

My reasonings for using fortress were (1) Fairbairn was a professional translator of Japanese unlike everyone else who are all amateurs, and (2) the word fortress has a meaning in English unlike yagura.

For frequency, it seems hard to say which term is more common because the game terminology is pretty much missing from the English lexicon. The Hidetchi stuff is more readily available because its on YouTube and online book stores, which may lead to it becoming more common than the older material. However, that doesn't necessarily make the his terms superior especially since he is an amateur translator and not a native speaker of English in the first place (which explains some of his errors such as the Side Pawn Picker term you mentioned). Failing for a convincing argument here, I still favor fortress over yagura.

What makes the most sense to me is for Wikipedia to use the term that is best for world. That could be determined by a worldwide survey. That's better than two opinions. – ishwar  (speak) 03:51, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

• Question: Should the second word use a capital letter? Chess openings do (Sicilian Defence, King's Indian Defence, Nimzowitsch–Larsen Attack). I see that Double Fortress, Static Rook, Double Static Rook, Ranging Rook, and Demon Slayer (shogi) are capitalized. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 01:32, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

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

Fortress vs. Yagura

A continuation of the discussion at #Requested move 27 January 2025. (Sorry, I only just now found Ish ishwar's response, a couple days after the discussion was closed. But better late then never.)

• "Fairbairn was a professional translator of Japanese unlike everyone else who are all amateurs" - Ah, I see. I did search, but I couldn't find a lot of information about Fairbairn, so I was not aware. I assumed that "fortress" was likely a mistranslation that spread and got fossilized (as is pretty common in early literature for foreign games), but him being a professional translator definitely increases the probability that it was an intentional change, as Hidetchi theorized. (But it being a mistake is still plausible enough, in my opinion. Even professional translators can slip up in terminology that is outside of their area of expertise, especially in figurative usage like this, where the literal meaning of a term is barely important.)

And yes, I agree that the opinion of a professional translator should usually weigh more heavily than that of an amateur, but it's still just one person's opinion. (See also: Argument from authority)

• "a worldwide survey [would be] better than two opinions" - Unless there's an very clear preference (which I doubt), I don't think that a survey would be very useful compared to a well-informed discussion. Also, if by "two opinions" you meant the opinions of Fairbairn and Hidetchi, I cited two English books by other authors that use "yagura" rather than "fortress". And of course, there are also English sources that use "fortress". There is no clear preference between the two terms among citable sources, which is the entire reason why I started the discussion instead of citing sources.
• "The meaning of fortress seems to correspond well with the second meaning of your first link." - I firmly disagree. According to that definition, the word yagura means a building on top the gate or wall of a castle. I.e., it refers to a small section of the fortification, whereas "fortress" generally refers to the whole wall as well as the area inside of the wall, including the town and/or castle. The meanings don't correspond well, similarly to how "car" and "tail light" don't correspond.

A much closer translation of yagura would be "watchtower" or "guardtower" or, even more accurately, "wall tower". I would really prefer naming the article something like "watchtower castle" or "tower castle", but I did not suggest that because no-one uses that term. Every citable source calls it either "yagura" or "fortress", so following WP:COMMONTERM, we have to use one of those two terms for the title. And of the two, I think "yagura" is more neutral (because using the Japanese term sidesteps the question of what best to call it in English), and definitely more accurate to both possible origins of the Japanese name. Spenĉjo (talk) 00:09, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

not chess

• Note: This appeared in the notifications for WP:CHESS. WikiProject Chess is concerned almost exclusively with Western chess, and most of us are pretty terrible shogi players. Shogi has a completely different dynamic. Please don't add Shogi-related articles to WP Chess. Thanks. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 09:38, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

Requested move 11 February 2025

• Fortress castle → Fortress Castle
• Fortress opening → Fortress (shogi)

– Should the second word use a capital letter? Named chess openings do on Wikipedia (Sicilian Defence, King's Indian Defence, Nimzowitsch–Larsen Attack). In the shogi context, I see that Double Fortress, Static Rook, Double Static Rook, Ranging Rook, and Demon Slayer (shogi) are capitalized. For the second topic, the article says the name of the opening is "Fortress", not "Fortress opening", so the word "opening" seems to only be there for disambiguation. Other alternatives for the second topic are "Fortress (opening)" and "Fortress (shogi opening)". —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 16:57, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

I thought that I didn't think of the word castle as part of the name since I could say build a Fortress or build a Mino just like I could say build a Fortress castle or build a Mino castle. Therefore, I didn't capitalize it. Nonetheless, it could be thought as part of the name like the White House (adj+noun) or Boston College (noun+noun). (Castles aren't defences or openings so the parallel to chess is irrelevant. I don't see that many chess concepts similar to shogi castles are capitalized such as lowercase pawn center and tripled pawns.) Japanese folks seem to think of castle as part of the name though since they never drop the word 囲い (castle) from the name. Whether you capitalize castle or not seems fairly arbitrary. Doesn't seem important really. If you do move the page to the capitalized version, it would be best to go through every shogi page to make the convention consistent. Since I've written most the pages, they are consistent (more or less). Otherwise, I won't bother moving the page.

Similar to to castle, I didn't view opening as part of name. This one I feel more strongly about compared with X castle/Castle. (Japanese folks don't include the equivalent of opening in the name, either.) Yes, the word opening was added to Fortress opening solely due to disambiguation with fortress and Fortress castle. I find parentheses in entry names to be inelegant. From my memory, old print encyclopedias never did such an ugly thing. It's purely an artifact of Wikipedia design. Nonetheless, I realize that Wikipedia has little concern about aesthetics, so I don't have much objection to moving Fortress opening to one of your suggestions. Again, it doesn't really matter.

I think more a useful thing to do would be to contribute to meaningful shogi content. So, that's what I would encourage you to do. This is formatting fiddling. – ishwar  (speak) 01:32, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose the over-capitalization in Shoji articles in general. Dicklyon (talk) 11:23, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

@Dicklyon: Do you have a quarrel with the capitalization of chess openings? —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 18:32, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

Yes I do, though I admit they are almost always capped in sources (other than Library of Congress subject listings). They are clearly an exception from usual practice in other games, and shouldn't be used as any kind of precedent. Dicklyon (talk) 22:56, 15 February 2025 (UTC)