Talk:Hirohito

done?

I'm pretty much done with my work on this article--others please jump in. It's been an education for me (which is why I write these articles).Richard Jensen 03:03, 28 May 2008 (CDT)

I've added the Japanese characters for the names. I romanized them to remove the macron (in ō), as this is confusing for readers and English media and sources seem to drop it (see also CZ:Romanization/Japanese). I struggled a bit with the translation of 'Dai Nippon Teikoku Tennoo': 'Dai Nippon' is 'Greater Japan', 'Teikoku' means either 'imperial' or 'empire', 'Tennoo' is 'emperor', but literally 'Heaven(ly) Ruler'. I settled on 'Heavenly Ruler of the Greater Japanese Empire', but alternatives are certainly possible. 'Dai Nippon Teikoku' is often translated as simply 'Imperial Japan'. John Stephenson 00:44, 7 June 2008 (CDT)

Nice job on the language! I gave a full bibliography and a new "further reading" section, and dropped duplicate references. Richard Jensen 01:11, 7 June 2008 (CDT)

Name

I think in this case we can justify calling this 'Hirohito' as this is how he is known outside Japan. However, within the culture he's always the 'Showa Emperor' and 'Hirohito' would not have been used to address him during his reign. It would rarely have been used even to refer to him. In English, nowadays other emperors tend to be referred to by the posthumous title (e.g. Emperor Meiji), and we can do that for other articles. However, other contributors may have a different view! John Stephenson 00:47, 7 June 2008 (CDT)

This question is the source of always evergreen, and always lengthy, debates over on WP. Things seem to have settled on Hirohito there. I'm of two minds, myself. He's definitely better-known as Hirohito in the English-speaking world, and of course the renaming-upon-death thing is something English-speaking cultures don't have, and are unfamiliar with. But it is of course not the translation of the name he is now known by in Japan...

At one point, I suggested titling the WP article 'Emperor Hirohito', as more respectful than just plain "Hirohito", but nobody liked that idea, since it didn't correspond, even in translation, to any name the Japanese would ever have used for him.

I wonder what they called Emperor Meiji in the West during his lifetime? During the period of initial contact, of course, the main person in Japan for Westerners was the Shogun, who was quaintly titled the "Tycoon" in the contemporary Western press (and the source of our word), so I'm not sure the Emperor would have figured large. However, after he Meiji Restoration, was he referred to as "Emperor Mutsuhito", or what? Have to look, sometime... J. Noel Chiappa 05:06, 8 June 2008 (CDT)