Talk:Japanese people

Reverted edits

I reverted a mass of edits by @Dr. Hud:: none has an edit summary, some are clearly controversial (like moving the paragraph on Christianity to the beginning of the section), some strange (rearranging paragraphs out of chronological sequence, removing images). The editor appears to have a history of not responding to questions, so revert is the next step ("BRD"). Imaginatorium (talk) 05:53, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

@Dr. Hud: The above is my justification for reverting your contributions. Please read WP:BRD; this is the "Discuss" step, and means you have to provide a justification for your edits. Imaginatorium (talk) 14:25, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Japanese and descendants in the Philippines

Numbers given have ranged from 20,000 to 200,000, but there are no definitive sources that have been given. The 255,000 number that was here recently had no cites at all. Here is what I have been able to find:

• The Japan Times article cites Oka, head of an advocacy group for Japanese descendants as estimating the number of Japanese descendants in the Philippines at 120,000 (the number previously in this article). The same article also said "The number of Japanese-Filipinos was estimated at around 10,000 in 1994.... The Philippines and Japan keep no records of these children."
• Elswehere, Oka estimated the number in Manila at 3,000, and the same article said the total number is unknown; this probably would not project out to 200,000
• the academic source formerly given here, written by Ohno Shun, explicitly said 20,000 was a claim by The Federation of Nihonjin-kai Philippines
• MOJ says there were 16,570 Japanese nationals residing in the Philippines in 2017
• ethnicgroupsphilippines.com says 200,000, but does not appear to be a reliable source and the websites it links to are dead with the exception of The Japan Times. It is unclear where their number comes from, particularly because we know both governments don't keep track.

I have not been able to find anything more helpful in Japanese. There are other advocacy groups but they don't tend to make numerical claims. A large number of Filipino people in Japan have/claim Japanese descent, but that is not material for the number in this article. The removals and reversions here have also been quite tendentious, including what at first glance could be taken to be editing while logged out. I suggest that we return the number to 120,000 and retain all three sources, which readers can judge according to their own standards. I don't think there is any justification for keeping only the high figure from an unreliable source. Pinging Nihonjoe, Johanry. Dekimasuよ! 05:39, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Johanry, you're going to need to stop with your reverting ([1], [2]) and discuss this as you are beginning to edit war. At least two editors (both of whom are very familiar with Japan and sources related to Japan) disagree with your edits. Also, what does "The reference is doubled already" mean? @Johanry and Dekimasu:. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 19:30, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Dekimasu that ethnicgroupsphilippines.com is not a RS. It's a privately run site with hardly more than one contributor—that's my guess. Like its mother project friendlyborders.org, there is no person or organization explicitly mentioned who runs it. The source list of the second site is hair-raising (Instagram, WP...).

The other figures dug up by Dekimasu are at least attributable, but all appear to be rough estimates, except for the one by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As long we can't find a source which gives data for the number of people that primarily self-identify as Japanese (would all people of mixed descent do so?), I'd stick to the official figure as the only reliable one, and propably add a note about the range of estimates for people of Japanese-Filipino mixed descent.

And I agree with Nihonjoe that the edit warring (unexplained reverting!) by Johanry and the IP is untenable. –Austronesier (talk) 09:07, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

@Dekimasu: Go ahead and revert to the 120k figure with the three sources. We can leave it at that until and unless more recent reliable sources can be found with different figures. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 22:12, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Difference of views between the English-speakers and the Japanese

The article says: In recent decades, there has also been an increase in the number of multiracial people with both Japanese and non-Japanese roots, including half Japanese people., which is totally true. In a previous version I edited, it also said: in some cases, these people may also identify or be regarded as Japanese., but this information has been deleted. Is it because, in the English-speaking countries, it is "bad" to say that having one parent belonging to Ethnic Group #1 may not necessarily and automatically give you the status of being a member of the Ethnic Group #1? I have the impression that, contrary to Japan, you see ethnicity as basically a synonym of race (or a sub-division of big races). If this is true, then yes, anyone with Japanese roots is ethnically Japanese; for example, the Nikkei people would be ethnically Japanese, which is, seen from Japan, not correct, because ethnicity is not only a matter of biological heritage, but it is also necessary to speak Japanese natively, to be culturally Japanese (behaviors, cultural references, etc.), and lastly, in general, to be a Japanese national. In that sense, Japanese ethnicity is inherited from one's parents (or just one parent for the so-called hāfu, etc.), but unlike to the racial thing, there are also important environmental factors to take into account.

For example, Naomi Osaka, a Japanese national, may generally not seen as Japanese on an ethnic level, because, first and foremost, she cannot speak Japanese (almost) at all. (Of course she may be seen as Japanese, in the sense that she is a compatriot and has a Japanese genealogy in part).

People are free to self-identify to what they want, but fixing boundaries for the studied concepts is necessary in any scientific approach, I think. The point is not to say that half-Japanese are never regarded as ethnically Japanese (many are), but that it actually depends on many factors, i.e. an ethnic group is not just a biological concept. Maidodo (talk) 07:34, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

I appreciate your perspective, but I believe you are overthinking this to some extent. After you added the phrasing in question in July, I was the one who eventually removed it with the edit summary "I think the intention was to clarify the scope of the article, but removing the clause entirely is probably preferable to focusing on gatekeeping of ethnic purity." This was mostly in reaction to subsequent edits between our work on the article, but in other words, the fact that they are mentioned in the lede of this article is an indication that they are within the article's scope. Who considers those people to be Japanese, or whether they identify as Japanese, is not something that we need to evaluate in order to write this article.

Separately, your addition today to the effect that "Ethnic Japanese speak the Japanese language as their mother tongue" does not seem to me to be appropriate in the context of this article. This would exclude not only Naomi Osaka, but many people who have ethnic ties (yes genealogical, but also cultural, traditional, religious, historical, etc.) who do not speak Japanese, such as Nikkei communities in Hawaii, Brazil, etc.

The question is actually more fraught in the case of this ethnic group than in the case of many others, as descendants overseas were treated as imperial subjects during the imperial period regardless of their ties to Japan (or lack thereof). This has been studied in terms of soft colonialism, but again, it is not necessary for us to deal with that here. The scope of the article is adequately defined without making active or passive attempts to exclude anyone, and it is doubtful that this is a difference on this point between English speakers and Japanese speakers. (Your question avoids the question of people who are bilingual, and there are Japanese researchers who have argued that Japanese ethnicity should not be determined by linguistic ability. To go further down this path would simply force us to add several different and contradictory definitions to the article, with sources, and I doubt that would be helpful for readers.) Dekimasuよ! 08:03, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply or sorry if my English (a foreign language for me) is not always correct or seems childish. I will just add some comments on two points. (1) The question of including or excluding some groups as such the Nikkei communities. I agree that you can have a broad definition that would include them, and a narrow definition that would not. Probably American general perception is that Japanese (as a category in the census) is above all a matter of genealogy, versus the Japanese general perception that Nikkei communities are ethnic groups are not identical to the Japanese ethnic group, i.e., rather groups affiliated or closely related to the Japanese as a ethnic group (I am not talking about the first generation of immigrants). Japanese almost never use the word "Nihonjin" or "Nihon minzoku" when it comes to Nikkei communities or those communities' individual members. In other words, the broad definition may be recognized and personally I fully respect it, but the article seems to ignore the Japanese common sense which much emphasizes the narrow definition. It is, to me, a bit weird. I am trying to argue that you should change everything in the article, but some consideration for the Japanese common sense, in the case of an article about Japanese People, does not look as irrelevant. (2) I don't have a scientific source on hand, but my view is that Japanese language (mother tongue) is the No. 1 factor when it comes to defining the present Japanese ethnicity (in the sense of "Nihon minzoku" in the narrow sense). It is at least as important as the genealogy. That's why I thought it is worth mentioning in the first part of the article. I am saying that the language is almost a necessary condition. However, I am not saying that this is a sufficient condition. Maidodo (talk) 22:59, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps I was too quick to say that there is no difference of opinion here between Japanese speakers and English speakers, because you are using those words differently from the way I would (to me, you speak both Japanese and English, and I speak both Japanese and English; this is not inherently connected to whether one or both of us is a "Japanese person").

This article is indeed about the English-language topic "Japanese people", and it is possible that this does not match the scope of an article titled nihonjin or nihon minzoku on the Japanese Wikipedia. In such cases, we should in fact rely upon the English meaning of the term, and the Japanese terms can be qualified or removed if necessary. Further, "English meaning" does not equal "American meaning" here.

In many cases in discourse inside Japan, ethnicity and nation have been conflated—sometimes, but not always, for nationalistic reasons. However, Japan has never been monoethnic, and the many different definitions of Japaneseness have changed over time. Rather than it being the case that "foreign" perspectives are based primarily on genealogy (note that this itself assumes the existence of an authentic native perspective on Japanese ethnicity, which is not necessarily correct), I believe you are overemphasizing measurable concepts, up to and including genealogy. Ethnic borders are permeable and self-identification is one important component. For example, you write "Japanese almost never use the word 'Nihonjin' or 'Nihon minzoku' when it comes to Nikkei communities." In your sentence, "Japanese" means "Japanese people in Japan" or perhaps "citizens of Japan." However, people in Nikkei communities may indeed refer to themselves as nihon minzoku or even nihonjin. The most obvious distinction to make between English-language and Japanese-language usage is that (whether ethnicity is tied to language, or genealogy, or something else), ethnicity is not tied directly to citizenship in English-language sources. Whether that is a valid distinction in terms of anthropology/sociology/history/international relations is probably something to be negotiated in scholarship outside of Wikipedia, rather than here. Dekimasuよ! 03:49, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your interesting perspectives. Japan, especially among countries or area with a decent size, is one the most homogeneous place you can find on this planet. For sure, if you go into details, there are nuances to add, but negating this feature is like, you take a man of 90 years old and say, actually he is not old, humans can live quite longer. Yet, the subject I proposed for this discussion is the boundaries of the Japanese ethnicity when it comes to the descendants of the Japanese who emigrated from Japan to the Americas (mainly), or when it comes to the multiracial people with Japanese blood.

By the way, I am totally fine with the need to clearly distinguish ethnicity and citizenship, here. I basically agree also when you say that "Ethnic borders are permeable and self-identification is one important component". This is also true that both (ethnic) Japanese in Japan and the diaspora share the same ancestry group; this element may unify them under a common identity when it comes to ancestry. One can say the same thing about multiracial people, despite they have several ancestry groups to refer. But if you look the definition of an ethnic group (as you know minzoku in Japanese), you have linguistic and cultural features. Those features can be lost if some people get separated from the "mother" group.

That's why I think a more balanced view is to acknowledge that the Japanese ethnic group (Nihon-minzoku) is a anthropological group that primarily live in Japan and, very importantly, which bear the Japanese culture (日本文化を担う), which obviously include the language. But this would not deny the right for other groups or individual (for example Nikkei communities in America, or half Japanese person without the full usual set of Japanese cultural features) to identify themselves as affiliated or strongly tied with the Japanese ethnic group, through ancestry and possibly other things. I am not thinking that the article should literally exclude those people but, it would be beneficial, for the sake of understanding of what Japanese ethnicity means in reality, to better distinguish between the Japanese ethnic group stricto sensu and the related groups or groups derived from it. Maidodo (talk) 06:11, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Gender, Race and Computing

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 25 September 2023 and 15 December 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Ehosa (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Racoon dolphin (talk) 06:56, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Why no "not to be confused with" for Javanese?

@Dekimasu The Javanese people page lists "Japanese people" as a not to be confused with. There are slightly more Japanese people than Javanese- they both have over 100 million people. I do not see it unforeseeable that someone might get Japanese mixed up with Javanese, the same way the other way around happens enough that it appears on the other page. Why the revert? HadesTTW (he/him • talk) 02:39, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the message. As I wrote in my edit summary, the guideline says that "these hatnotes should only be used when the ambiguity exists for a significant portion of the readership". I had removed this hatnote a few years ago as well, with the edit summary seems unlikely, and this is reflected in absence of that article in reader navigation at WikiNav. That is, no one had actually been clicking through to Javanese people when it was in the hatnote previously, indicating that the two weren't being mixed up. In the event that readers do reach the wrong page, it is highly unlikely that they will be confused because there is not actual ambiguity between these topics. The example used in the guideline gives an example of two terms with identical pronunciations but different spellings, which is not the case here; the two topics are not close enough that something like WP:SMALLDETAILS would normally be a concern. I have no problem with removing the hatnote from the Javanese people page, of course. (Ethnicity pages generally have a variety of issues, but I notice right away that the top of the Javanese people page is also not following WP:NOETHNICGALLERIES.) I believe Austronesier agreed with the revert, so perhaps he has something additional to contribute here. Dekimasuよ! 04:58, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

No one seems to be clicking through from Javanese people to Japanese people either: [3]. Dekimasuよ! 04:59, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

I have removed the hatenotehatnote from Javanese people now for the very reasons mentioned by Dekimasu. There might be some Indonesians with limited proficiency of English (thus not exactly our readership) who might pronounce "Japanese" and "Javanese" alike (v is often rendered as [p] by Indonesians), but they are of cource aware of the different spellings and know perfectly well what they refer to. So there is not much reason to assume that somebody will land on the wrong page because of mixing these two terms up. –Austronesier (talk) 10:14, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! (Not that hatenotes are really what we want on WP...) Imaginatorium (talk) 14:14, 24 August 2024 (UTC)