Talk:Mainland Japan

Isn't Hokkaido sometimes considered as being part of Mainland Japan?

I know its settlement is relatively recent, but I always considered it as being part of the mainland. -- Tlotoxl 11:17, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I am originally from Hokkaido and my impression is that we usually exclude hokkaido from the mainland as the rest of Japan. Some google search shows

• [1] Location in Sapporo is a geographical advantage for bio-venture businesses, because many IT-related companies are based in the city. We want to supply a variety of products created here to mainland Japan and overseas, fostering new industries in Hokkaido'.
• [2] People come from Australia, Europe, America, and mainland Japan every November to March to ski in great conditions of dry and ample powder.

-- Taku 19:05, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)

Ok, you've convinced me!! ;) Still, I think people in Kyushu sometimes speaks the same way, seeing 'the mainland' as being only Honshu. From outside of Japan, however, Kyushu is surely considered mainland most of the time. -- Tlotoxl 04:41, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Taku, I have the following two questions:

• What term do you think is the Japanese equivalent of Mainland Japan, 内地, 本土 or others? I cannot get the nuance in English.
• What is the scope of "we"?

--Nanshu 02:54, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Farm Colony

The Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Farm Colony was administered by samurai led by John Henry Schnell, which were military personnel and thus an extension of the Japanese government, despite their lack of loyalty. Aizu and Shonai Domains during the Meiji Restoration Turned to Diplomacy: Confirmed in German Archives. DaRealPrinceZuko (talk) 01:43, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Everything you have cited in various forums have been WP:UGC, WP:CIRC, and (as in your citations from the Asahi Shimbun and Walk the Farm) WP:SYNTH. The Asahi Shimbun does not confirm your assertion. Aside from stating that the Schnell brothers were military consultants and translators for the Aizu clan, it doesn't mention anything about Wakamatsu or their involvement with it. Page 1 of the cited article contextualizes the brothers' involvement as having been part of the Aizu clan's desire to obtain support from Prussia against the Japanese government during the Boshin War. Therefore, they weren't and couldn't be "an extension of the Japanese government".

None of these reputable sources confirm your belief that the Wakamatsu farm was a Japanese imperial colony; all of them only mention the site's importance in the history of Japanese immigrants in the United States or exclude it from the legal definitions of gaichi:

• Kotobank entry on the definition of gaichi
• An Inquiry into Japanese Colonialist Discourse Before World War II (in Japanese) by Kimura Kan
• Walk the Farm's webpage on the Wakamatsu farm
• California State Parks webpage on the Wakamatsu farm
• History of the Wakamatasu farm from the American River Conservancy, which currently tends to the property
• Wakamatsu Farm and the Birth of Japanese America by Daniel A. Métraux, who also casts doubt on what he described as the "legend" around the involvement of samurai
• Pacific Pioneers: Japanese Journeys to America and Hawaii, 1850–1880 by John E. van Sant, where it explicitly states that the colony was a Japanese immigrant settlement, not a de jure or even de facto colonial territory

Your fringe beliefs, tendentious editing, and inability to provide evidence raise concerns of WP:DISRUPTSIGNS and WP:NOTHERE. —CurryTime7-24 (talk) 03:35, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

You accuse me of perpetuating fringe beliefs and engaging in tendentious editing and yet you're doing the exact same thing. You literally mentioned that Schnell was responsible for the establishment of Wakamatsu and I provided evidence that he was a samurai. Him being a samurai, a Japanese soldier, means that he was directly affiliated with the Japanese government. None of the sources you provided debunk the notion that the settlement was a Japanese possession. They do not explicitly state that Wakamatsu does not count as a Japanese colony. Wakamatsu's omission from the categorization of gaichi does not mean that it did not qualify. You also ignored the other definitions of "colony" by Dictionary.com and Oxford Dictionary, with the former including "any people or territory separated from but subject to a ruling power". DaRealPrinceZuko (talk) 03:55, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Clearly not part of the Empire of Japan, nor was there ever an attempt to imply that Japan had sovereignty. The naming "colony" itself here refers to the idea of "settlement", not to the idea of "colonization". While the underlying reasoning does not apply to this case anyway, an apparent consequence of the reasoning would be to designate all prewar Japanese embassies around the world as "gaichi", which is not what the word means or how it was actually used. Dekimasuよ! 07:25, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

How exactly does a settlement directly controlled by samurai not make it a part of Japan? Can a settlement be administered by military personnel without it being a part of a foreign overlord? DaRealPrinceZuko (talk) 07:39, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Were the people involved in this tea and silk plantation under orders from any government, being paid by any government, attempting to establish Japanese law on the plantation, or recognized as foreign agents by the people around them? Were they recognized as colonizers by anyone from "mainland Japan"? From the information I see here, the answers are all no. Dekimasuよ! 08:46, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't recall being under direct government orders as being an absolute prerequisite to count as an official possession. For example, the Belgian settlement of Santo Tomás in Guatemala was under the administration of a private company, rather than the Belgian government. DaRealPrinceZuko (talk) 08:52, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Your point above was that the people involved were "directly affiliated with the Japanese government" and made up of "military personnel". My response was that they were not directly affiliated with the Japanese government or acting as military personnel in any meaningful way by the time they were in the United States. (For that matter, samurai were always retainers of daimyō, which made them different from simply being "military of the Japanese government", but since there is a large variety of points being made here we can just skip that.) The new point you made was that there's no need to be under direct government orders, but the example you gave was of a case in which the government of Guatemala officially negotiated with a company run under the auspices of the king of Belgium. Neither any Japanese government (including that of Aizu Domain) nor the United States government made any such moves in the case of this settlement. (Nor would we expect the United States to let them in if any such claim had been made at the time, but again since that requires speculation, we can skip it.)

Even if all of the criteria above had been fulfilled, this company was never considered either "gaichi" or "Japanese territory" at the time or in reliable sources, which is what is presumably the reason for having the discussion about inclusion in this article. Dekimasuよ! 10:32, 22 July 2024 (UTC)