Talk:Japan

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: rejected by BorgQueen (talk) 08:43, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

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• ... that Japan has the oldest continuous monarchy in the world? Source: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/japanese-monarchy
  • Reviewed:

Created by Letizia Ferhati (talk). Self-nominated at 21:48, 25 May 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Japan; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

• Question - @Letizia Ferhati: Are you sure you nominated the correct article? Japan does not appear eligible for DYK; it was not created by you but by User:Alan D in 2001, and has neither been 5x expanded nor made into a GA recently, and indeed has been a Featured Article since 2007. Japan does not meet the "New" criteria of WP:DYKCRIT, did you mean to nominate a different article? - Aoidh (talk) 22:28, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Closing. As noted in the above comment by Aoidh this doesn't meet requirements, although it is understandable that the DYK process name causes confusion in this regard. CMD (talk) 00:49, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

User:Maxeto0910 great power?

YOU added both Great Power statements in Germany and Japan, both in their ledes and bodies, without prior discussion. I personally object to the inclusion of these descriptors, first of all one of the sources themselves (the one published by Stanford) points to the nebulous meaning of assigning such status to countries that possess neither nuclear weapons nor aren't permanent members of the UN Security Council. Moreover, these sources are opinions based on feeling and not categorical assertions based in fact. I'm restoring both articles to their original state from June UNTIL consensus is gained. As Nikkimaria pointed out in the edit history of this article, the previous format was sufficient. IMHO this designation is problematic, opinionated and creates too much noise in what should otherwise be a cold, distant and NPOV summary. PahlaviFan (talk) 00:30, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

1) No, I did not add these statements. These statements were added to the lead by other editors, whereupon I added a sentence about it in the body and added sources for verification. I just re-added the statement to the lead after your removal which you justified by saying that it is unsourced, which is clearly wrong as it is/was sourced in the body of the article.

2) Yes, these sources are based on opinions, because there are no specific agreed-upon requirements a country must fulfil in order to be considered a great power. The U.S. being regarded as a superpower is also not a definitive fact but a broad consensus among scholars and academics. There are also countries like Italy whose status as a great power finds a smaller consensus than the ones for Japan or Germany. There's nothing inherently wrong with citing sources based on opinions, particularly if the statement that is to be verified can't objectively be measured.

3) As long as we don't state that Japan or Germany is definitely an uncontested great power but merely that it is widely regarded as one, there's no issue regarding WP:NPOV. Maxeto0910 (talk) 00:41, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Nuclear weapons and permanent membership in the UN Security Council are fairly agreed upon--permanent membership in itself is the designation agreed upon by all UN members. There's also the problem of countries aspiring to the nebulous "great power" status vaguely defined, like India, and as such it can be a meaningless term prone to inflation. Prudence guides us to stick to the conservative definition instead of devolving into arguments across the lede and body. "NPOV" doesn't mean we cover all the opinions that exist in the world. PahlaviFan (talk) 00:48, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

1) Do you have reliable sources claiming that a great power must have a permanent UN Security Council seat and has to possess nuclear weapons?

2) No, we don't cover all opinions; just the ones which are notable and backed up by reliable sources. Maxeto0910 (talk) 00:52, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

1) See United Nations Security Council veto power

Due to all of the permanent members being considered great powers, the power of veto has also been called the "great power veto" or "great power unanimity". PahlaviFan (talk) 00:54, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

This sentence only supports the claim that all UN Security Council members are great powers; not that all countries which are no such members cannot be great powers. Maxeto0910 (talk) 00:56, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

"Great power veto" implies logically that great powers possess that veto ipso facto PahlaviFan (talk) 01:05, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

No, like I said: It only logically implies that all veto powers are great powers, not that all non-veto powers are not great powers. Likewise, all Ferrari owners are rich, but not all rich people own a Ferrari. Maxeto0910 (talk) 01:09, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Then clearly you interpret the source differently than I do. For me this is sufficient proof. A great power wields a veto from which it derives its power. Without it, there's dependence on the veto-wielding great powers and insufficient power. PahlaviFan (talk) 01:12, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Your interpretation is clearly original research because you make a conclusion out of something that is neither directly stated nor logically deductible. Maxeto0910 (talk) 01:13, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Then see the following at Great power

Permanent membership of the UN Security Council is widely regarded as being a central tenet of great power status in the modern world; Brazil, Germany, India and Japan form the G4 nations which support one another (and have varying degrees of support from the existing permanent members) in becoming permanent members. PahlaviFan (talk) 01:35, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

The part "Permanent membership of the UN Security Council is widely regarded as being a central tenet of great power status in the modern world [...]" is unsourced and also not supported by the source given later. And even if we'd accept the statement as true, you could argue that the G4 nations want to become permanent members specifically because they–particularly Germany and Japan–are unique in being widely regarded as great powers without being a permanent member. Either way, this still doesn't falsify the claim that a country doesn't have to be a permanent member in order to be considered a great power. Maxeto0910 (talk) 01:43, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Or perhaps because they aspire to be great powers. The Security Council itself was established to prevent great power conflict i.e. conflict between the 5 great powers that form it. If Germany, Japan, Italy (see what I'm doing there?) or any other non-permanent member of the SC wills to break the rules set by the great powers, the great powers shall act in conjunction to take any rogue actor down a notch. That's what distinguishes the great power-haves from the have-nots. PahlaviFan (talk) 01:48, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

That is circular reasoning because your argument only works if you set the premise that being a permanent member is a requirement for being a great power. Maxeto0910 (talk) 01:52, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Truth be told, both Germany and Japan are still occupied states and basically protectorates that are unable to form their own foreign policy independent of the United States. Germany's lack of reaction to Nord Stream pipelines sabotage points to that. It's entirely powerless. PahlaviFan (talk) 03:27, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Here are additional sources discounting Germany from great power status:

https://ecfr.eu/article/commentary_germany_as_a_geoeconomic_power/

>"Germany has traditionally been understood as a “civilian power” – that is, one that, unlike a great power, uses multilateral institutions and economic co-operation rather than military force to achieve its foreign policy goals and thus helps to “civilise” international relations by strengthening international norms. However, during the last decade, Germany’s “civilian power” identity has weakened. In particular, it has become less instinctively multilateral and less willing to transfer sovereignty to supranational institutions, even though it now seeks more power within multilateral institutions such as the UN."

>"... aspires to be a great power. Germany, on the other hand, has no such great power aspirations. In a sense, therefore, Germany may be the purest example of a “geo-economic power” in the world today."

https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/germany-in-europe-the-engine-that-couldnt/

>"History knows no great power that forgoes military power in favour of principled peacability. So Clausewitz does not live here anymore. Germany is a one-legged leader. Unlike Margaret Thatcher, Merkel and her successor are bound to ‘punch below Germany’s weight’."

>"Great powers, though, lead from the front, never mind that Barack Obama had apparently told the New Yorker that his motto was ‘leading from behind’. Given how profitable and pleasant its ‘culture of self-restraint’ has been, Germany will not soon re-acquire the habits of a great power and so prefer the protective herd to the vanguard." PahlaviFan (talk) 03:33, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

1) I'd totally disagree that Germany and Japan are "occupied states and basically protectorates that are unable to form their own foreign policy independent of the United States". But regardless of that, your conclusion is original reseach again.

2) The two sources you linked are a self-proclaimed comment and a self-proclaimed essay respectively; you can probably find dozens of sources of this type saying that Japan/Germany is a great power and dozens of sources of this type disputing it, just like you can find dozens of sources of this type supporting the claim that China is an emerging superpower and dozens denying it. You can probably also find a good number of sources of this nature arguing that the U.S. is not a superpower anymore. The trick is to find reliable sources–preferably academic literature or reputable analysis articles by renowned media outlets–and not comments or essays. Maxeto0910 (talk) 04:00, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

"you can probably find dozens of sources of this type saying that Japan/Germany is a great power and dozens of sources of this type disputing it,"

That's the gist of it! Thanks for getting it. This is precisely why I think we should avoid this descriptor altogether, it's just problematic and unnecessary. PahlaviFan (talk) 04:08, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

1) The fact that many opinions exist about something and are published doesn't mean that we cannot discriminate these opinions and sources based on their reliability and professionality. For example, do you think we should remove the statement in Michael Jackson's article that he is "widely regarded as one of the most culturally significant figures of the 20th century" or that he is "often deemed the greatest entertainer of all time" just because there are also many people denying that? There are probably thousands of comments on Reddit hating on MJ. Should each of these comments be given the same weight as a professional evaluation?

2) It's absolutely not unnecessary because it's highly interesting and relevant for readers to know how a country's power status is overall regarded by most academics, scholars and political analysts. Maxeto0910 (talk) 04:19, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Celebrity status is very easily countable by e.g. number of records sold. Come on now. PahlaviFan (talk) 06:52, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Now that's a straw man. The statements I mentioned as examples aren't that he is among the most successful musicians based on his records or something easily quantifiable like that; they are that he is widely regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of a whole century, and that he is often seen as the greatest entertainer of all time. Based on your logic, such statements would be problematic as well and should be removed because many people would deny that. I'd disagree with that; I think these statements are just as fine and verifiable by reliable sources like the statement that Japan or Germany is widely regarded as a great power by scholars, academics and political analysts. Maxeto0910 (talk) 15:47, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

I should note that PahlaviFan is a sock and has been indeffed. Mellk (talk) 07:42, 5 August 2025 (UTC)

References

WW2 atrocities

There should be more detail in this article's WW2 section about the true scale of war crimes committed by Japan throughout Asia during the 1930's and 1940's. I tried adding some but a lot of it was cut out. Just look at how long the WW2 section is on Germany's page - going into graphic detail about the Holocaust, even giving numbers of deaths for each ethnic group, detailing a lot of battles in WW2.

We could be talking about Nanjing, about Unit 731, about the literally tens of millions of civilians who were murdered.

Right now I feel like the section here suffers from the same problem as every other Western account of WW2 - minimizing or downplaying Japanese atrocities when they were in actuality just as bad if not worse than the Nazis. Ee100duna (talk) 00:34, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

We have talked about this before and came to the conclusion...that we are not sure this article about the modern country should go into much details about actions outside the country. Main problem we seem to have is a wide range of numbers when it comes to sources....thus hard to quantify here in a few sentences. Moxy🍁 00:42, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

I don't think your comparison is quite right. The Germany article gives number of deaths, but does not go into detail about specific atrocities. As to battles, that's a separate issue from war crimes - are you arguing that there should be more discussion of specific battles here? Nikkimaria (talk) 00:43, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

The battle history is probably okay - it has enough detail. What I'm saying is that there's not enough about civilians. The German article's WW2 section talks about persecution of civilians - both in and outside of modern-day Germany (through the Holocaust, POW system, etc)

I tried to sum it up some of Japan's similar crimes in a sentence or two and I don't see why that should have been removed. It was paraphrased from the lead of the "Japanese war crimes" article and sourced.

If we don't know exactly how many people died, can't we put a range? Ee100duna (talk) 01:03, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

Do you have a source on a range? Nikkimaria (talk) 01:06, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

I looked at World War II casualties and the range (at least in Asia) is actually a lot wider than I had anticipated. The article right now says "millions" and given the lack of concrete numbers maybe that's okay but I think the wording should be changed to say that the "millions" encompasses all of Asia and not just Japan.

Also, why shouldn't we keep what I put after "were committed against local inhabitants?"

It is brief enough that it gets the point across and highlights brief examples of the atrocities. Otherwise someone reading just this page (and not clicking on / hovering over any of the linked articles) wouldn't really get the full story about how evil they actually were. Ee100duna (talk) 03:00, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

"Millions" is correct for Japan specifically.

The role of this page is to provide a high-level summary, not to detail "the full story about how evil they actually were". Nikkimaria (talk) 03:06, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

Before I touched the article, it was already mentioning the enslaved women - good start. I still think it should briefly mention some of the other stuff (Nanjing/731) maybe even in the same sentence. Ee100duna (talk) 03:12, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

Demographics

"Japan is an ethnically and culturally homogeneous society, with the Japanese people forming 97.4% of the country's population." The reference is from 2007 and is no longer true. Japan si no longer among the worlds most honomogenous countries so we should change it. 118.103.63.137 (talk) 10:20, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

We need reliable sources that say that. Then I'm sure changes can be made. Masterhatch (talk) 11:39, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

https://eastasiaforum.org/2024/06/05/japans-multiculturalism-fails-to-keep-pace-with-rising-migration/

https://apjjf.org/chris-burgess/2389/article

Here are some. 211.19.95.104 (talk) 13:04, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

I think you need more than just opinion pieces and blogs. You need government census data. Masterhatch (talk) 14:11, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

They're not blogs, you can check. But yeah we would need more data. But even official censuses and counts here on wiki, gives quite a lot of immigrants for Japan. Among asian countries they have among the highest immigration especially in east and southeast asia.

There's 3.77 million immigrants in Japan, that's quite a lot by any metric and there's a lot of litterature that discuss it 211.19.95.104 (talk) 14:21, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

Don't confuse immigrants and minorities. Most of that number, by your very own source above, is minorities inside Japan not immigrants. I.e. non-Yamato. There are still a large number of indigineous people in Japan making up a lot of the non-Yamato numbers. Canterbury Tail talk 15:07, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

There mist be some confusion here. The 3.77 million are referring to people that hold foriegn citizenship and lives in Japan not naturalized people.

And yes there are minorites in Japan but the ones with Japanese citizenship are not counted in those numbers. It doesn't count Okinawans and Aino etc but that should definitely be written more about it so no matter which metric is used Japan is not very homogeneous... 211.19.95.104 (talk) 15:37, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

Yes it is, when 95%+ of the population shares the same values, language, outlook etc it's homogeneous. If it was only 80% it would still be classed as a homogeneous society. Also there are a lot of people who hold foreign citizenships that are not immigrants, mnay are second or third generation born in Japan but not Japanese. Anyway ultimately you need proper sources, but Japan is very homogenous by any standard of the term. Canterbury Tail talk 16:59, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

But there are sources that classify it as multicultural. You can look for yourself or see the ones I provided.

I highly doubt your claim that 80 percent would be considered homogenous in any way. Then you could even say that Singapore or France or England is fairly homogenous, but it is not classified as such. Secondly you say share the same values etc, within Japan 95 percent don't share the same religion for example.

Regarding your talk about third generation etc, it's of topic. That would still make it less homogeneous.

There are many academic sources that discuss multiculturalism in Japan. I'm not making it up... and Japan do have significant minorites now, more than many countries therefore it is not completely homogeneous.

New Zealand is 80 percent European origin. Would you call that homogenous? No, none does. 211.19.95.104 (talk) 17:07, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qcmxn

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338632778_Multiculturalism_in_a_homogeneous_society_from_the_perspectives_of_an_intercultural_event_in_Japan

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275824536_Multiculturalism_in_Japan_An_analysis_and_critique

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/07/31/japan/prefectural-chiefs-promote-multicultural-society/

"The proposal was handed to Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki and Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Kazuhiko Aoki by Shizuoka Gov. Yasutomo Suzuki. The minister said, "We'll work toward creating a multicultural society."

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said at a news conference that the central government "will continue to work with local governments" toward an inclusive society."

So this is what a minister in the Japanese govenrment said this year. At the very least there could be room for having a discussion that at least the Japanese governments goal is to create a multicultural society. And we also know that many academics have explored it there are many reliable sources that discuss it, at least there could be space to include that Japan has became more multicultural in the last 20 year or so that is undeniable since the amount of minorites and foriegners have increased. 211.19.95.104 (talk) 17:17, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

link anime

I noticed that the term "anime" that first appears under the Media subheading in Culture isn’t linked. Since it’s an important concept, linking it to Anime seems appropriate. Morich740 (talk) 23:58, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

 Done [1] ,Moxy🍁 02:03, 13 October 2025 (UTC)