Talk:Shintaro Katsu

Macron

Shintaro Katsu → Shintarō Katsu — --Snek01 (talk) 07:33, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

• Please give a rationale if you can. Anyway, likely oppose. The title you suggest is more correct on some levels, but probably not what is suggested by WP:MOS-JP#Names of modern figures, bullet points 1 and/or 3 or the section on pseudonyms below it. Google Books shows a lot of uses without the macron, implying that this was the name commonly used for and by him in the English-speaking world. Dekimasuよ! 12:01, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
• Support. Names ending in -taro are almost always referring to ～太郎, which corresponds to たろう、not たろ、 and is thus correctly romanized as -tarō, not -taro, regardless of what lazy or linguistically/culturally ignorant writers of the past may have believed. This is not a case where an artist/writer/actor has intentionally chosen to spell their name a certain way in English, as is the case with Novala Takemoto (instead of Nobara), for example, or where a different romanization system still indicating the correct sound is used, such as is the case with Suzuka Ohgo, who is credited as such on all official media related to Memoirs of a Geisha - the "Oh" being distinctly different from just "O" and thus being used to represent おお. The choice of Shintaro over Shintarou, Shintarō, or Shintarô stems not from an intentional, formal, or even consistent decision to represent the actor that way in the English speaking world, but simply from laziness or cultural & linguistic apathy or ignorance. Essentially, it's a spelling mistake. While I am all for the use of stage names and correct representation of those names that are intentionally creatively spelled, we would be doing a terrible disservice to perpetuate the lazy and linguistically inaccurate spelling mistakes of earlier generations in cases such as these. LordAmeth (talk) 19:43, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, issues of possible laziness were why I decided to use a Google Books search rather than a normal net search; some of the hits there are actually scholarly. I generally agree with you, but I don't think the MOS distinguishes between intentional decisions to call someone something in the English-speaking world and unintentional ones. What makes this different from the standard case of our old pal Jun'ichirō? Did he make a conscious decision to have everyone spell his name Junichiro? Dekimasuよ! 00:57, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

What differentiates it is the fact that Jun'ichirō Tanizaki is still spelled correctly. Just because one person (Koizumi) is such an important figure in daily world politics to be seen in papers from the NY Times to the London Times as simply "Junichiro" does not mean that everyone whose name is じゅんいちろう has the same standard "English name". While Junichiro Koizumi has entered standard English usage just as sumo has, Shintaro Katsu has not, I would argue. I appreciate that you used Google Books, and I am myself astonished to discover that Donald Richie of all people has not bothered to put in macrons, but the fact that he does not seem to put macrons on anything is I think more of an indication of laziness (or whatever you may choose to call it) than an indication that each and every one of those words or names, from Ryuzo Shimada to Tomisaburo Wakamiya, has entered standard English usage. LordAmeth (talk) 10:59, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

We-ell. I think it's pretty silly that Jun'ichirō Tanizaki is where he is under the manual of style as it stands. I have probably ten Tanizakis on my bookshelf, mostly Tuttles, and none of him spell his name that way, so Junichiro Tanizaki certainly qualifies under point 3 ("Use the form publicly used on behalf of the person in the English-speaking world") before we ever get to point 5 ("If none of the above is available, use the macronned form"). My point is that if we're going to macron someone like Katsu who is less well-known, but still fits the criteria for removing the macron, we should fix the manual of style so that there's a clearer distinction between Zatōichi and Ichiro. Dekimasuよ! 00:27, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose attempts to correct attributed "laziness" on behalf of English language users. If reliable English language sources drop the macron, then we should too. Please explain to me why we should trust the balance of reliable sources for every single (at least theoretically) fact on Wikipedia, and then turn around and impute laziness, apathy, or ignorance when it comes to spelling.Erudy (talk) 02:05, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Because it depends on what sources are considered "reliable" and for what types of facts they can be relied upon. I just came across a book about Commodore Perry's famous journey to Japan. The book is written by a scholar of American history who hasn't bothered to accurately represent the Japanese spelling/pronunciation of many words, such as, for example, bugyō, which he spells without the macron. Does this make him an unreliable source? Not by itself, no. I'd still take most if not all of what he has to say about historical events and how they occurred to be reliable. But conversely are we to take him as a reliable source and just believe everything he writes without applying our own knowledge and understanding? No. Half a dozen other books - written by historians of Japan - will show that bugyō should have a macron.

I don't disagree with you here. As I said, we trust "the balance of reliable sources", which in this case (as you've presented it) seems to be 6 to 1 in favor of the macron. Of course we should address the reliability of one source amidst the context of a mass of others.

How do we judge whether a book is reliable for its spelling? By looking at how it spells other terms. If I pick up a book and see that it spells Guangdong and Xiamen as "Canton" and "Amoy" respectively, I will apply my own knowledge and know that this book is outdated and cannot be trusted to be accurate on the current modern spellings of the names of other cities either. So it is the same with this. Show me a book that doesn't bother to put the macron on Zatōichi, and I know it's a book that's not going to bother to put the macron on anything. That's not an indication of common English usage; that's an indication that the book you're looking at isn't professional (academic, scholarly) enough, and that you need to use a different book.

I'm troubled by this part of your argument. You seem to say that any systemically non-macroned source is not indicative of common English usage (because their lack of macrons demonstrates that they are not scholarly). This premise is not acceptable to me, much as I doubt a premise like "any systemically macroned source is not indicative of common English usage (because such works are overly technical and specialized)" would not be acceptable to you. English language writers are free to make editorial choices on how "precise" they want their spelling to be. To say that an otherwise reliable work must be ignored on the question of spelling, essentially because the creator does not agree with you on the matter, is to unfairly tip the scales ahead of time. To address your initial example, would you be willing to accept "bugyo" over "bugyō" if "half a dozen sources" used bugyo and only one used "bugyō"? From your argument it seems like you would simply ignore those "bugyo" sources as being unreliable. What happened to evaluating sources within the context of others?

I see that what I wrote was ambiguous - what I meant to say was that a systematically inaccurately romanized source cannot be taken as an indication of common English usage for any one given term. It's all about understanding the style choices of a given author or editor and recognizing that in an environment where everything is misspelled, no one term can be taken as being a reliable indication of how it should be spelled, or how it would be spelled in another context. If every book on Shintaro Katsu referred to him as KATSU Shintaro, would you take that as an indication of common usage, or recognize it as a stylistic choice on the part of that author/editor and recognize that it has nothing to do with Katsu in particular and how he would be referred to in "common" English usage in other sources? Just to be clear on where I stand. I hope you understand where I'm coming from with the references to Chinese cities, in terms of applying one's own knowledge, recognizing that a book is outdated or otherwise unreliable on spelling/nomenclature and that you don't disagree with me on that part. LordAmeth (talk) 10:36, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that "stylistic choice of editors", in the aggregate, simply is common usage. In a language without an official academy, those choices by multitudes of editors "create" the "correct" spelling by constructing spelling conventions. If "every book" on Shintaro Katsu really referred to him as KATSU Shintaro, I would say that this is the common usage that we should use. Look at your own example of Chinese cities: you yourself "misspelled" (under your definition) Xiamen and Guangdong (they should be Xiàmén and Guǎngdōng). Of course, this is not really a misspelling, because the words are spelled without the Pinyin diacritics in English. This covention is derived from the great mass of sources that romanized with "systematic inaccuracies", the very sources you critique as unreliable for use in determining spelling. The frustrating thing with spelling is that pervasive misspelling eventually becomes the correct spelling.Erudy (talk) 02:22, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Show me a book by a renowned or well-known specialist in Japanese cinema, which uses the macron or an equivalent accurate romanization system for other names, such as Zatōichi, and intentionally leaves it off for Shintaro Katsu, thus reflecting that his name, as an exception, has come to be widely known in English.

Once again, this test seems to stack the deck. Why can't I demand that you find a source, systematically un-macroned, that nonetheless uses "Shintarō Katsu"?

Because really what it comes down to is that I believe that accurate forms of romanization should be the standard, *except* where an alternate spelling/rendering is more common in English. "Junichiro Koizumi" should be an exception, not the rule, because there are plenty of other people whose name is じゅんいちろう who are not as well-known in English, and who thus do not have a standard "English" spelling for their name.... essentially, it comes down to the same reason that we write "sumo" instead of "sumō". That's an *exception* made for those few terms which have come into regular use as English words, and not something we should extend across all Japanese words simply because whichever sources we happen to be looking at (books A,B,and C but not D, E or F) haven't bothered to use macrons. LordAmeth (talk) 10:52, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

I think this is the bottom of our disagreement. I actually agree with you that the systematic romanization should be the default, (this is my reading of WP:Use English) but we disagree on the threshold at which the default can be overridden. You set the bar quite high, at the likes of sumo and Koizumi. I'd set it much lower: wherever there is discussion about a subject in English language reliable sources, there is a verifiable English language spelling convention for that subject which we should use. It may be that the discussion is in specialized circles that overwhelmingly use the macron, which would mean that the default is not overridden, but rather actually legitimated by verifiable usage. However, there is likely a large range of topics that have received wider treatment, often by sources that do not use macrons by editorial choice. It is here that I am quite willing to override the default in and remove the macron for our title. Probably it comes down to a matter of taste:)Erudy (talk) 04:40, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Summary: Shintaro Katsu is not an English name but it is just a name without diacritics. Guideline Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision)#If the two titles have the same meaning tells to use the the most appropriate spelling of the word. Guideline Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles)#Romanization tells to use Hepburn romanization and no other guideline is against it. Shintarō Katsu will be used in text of the article and also in the article name. --Snek01 (talk) 15:36, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

The relevant section of WP:MOS-JP is WP:MOS-JP#Names, not the section on romanization. I don't think anyone here is arguing about the correct way to convert the Japanese into our revised Hepburn. Dekimasuよ! 00:12, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

What a mess

This article sort of makes me despair. The people who wrote it don't seem to care at all about writing "an encyclopedia article about Shintaro Katsu" but just want to stick any old junk in a lazy way. The list of films is copy-pasted from IMDB! It is just a bunch of trivial junk about someone who is actually an important actor and deserves at least a respectable article. JoshuSasori (talk) 01:22, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Shintaro Katsu's curiosities

I'm looking for "Ryota" Actor's Name [A child from "Zatoichi Challenged" MOVIE]. Anybody knows? Napoleon03@gmail.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by Napoleon03 (talk • contribs) 14:17, 3 January 2015 (UTC)