Talk:Hiroh Kikai

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1 Image sizes
2 Article and book titles, and bibliographic info
3 Graduation
4 Shōmeidō Gallery link
5 Name and article title
6 an observation
7 This is a Good Article
8 GA

[edit] Image sizes

One problem with many art books is that small paintings and large ones are reproduced to more or less the same size: the degree of reduction is left to vary and it's not easy to distinguish between what was originally small and what was originally large.

If the Mediawiki software is left to do the job, there'll be no distinction between Ōtachi (Ecce Homo) at the one extreme and In-Between on the other. I therefore specified the sizes.

The heights of the covers are, to the nearest half-centimetre:

Persona (1st ed): 33cm
In-Between 8: 17.5cm
Ōtachi: 35cm
Ya-chimata: 21cm
Indo ya Gassan: 20cm
Perusona (2nd ed): 21cm
India: 30.5cm
Labyrinth: 23.5cm
Shanti: 28cm

The tallest is of course Ōtachi; the shortest In-Between. If Ōtachi is 240px high (which is big, but I think not too big), In-Between is 120px (which is small, but I think not too small). At this scale:

Persona (1st ed): 226px
In-Between: 120px
Ōtachi: 240px
Ya-chimata: 144px
Indo ya Gassan: 137px
Perusona (2nd ed): 144px
India: 209px
Labyrinth: 161px
Shanti: 192px

(In-Between 8 and India are wider than they are high.)

Thence the image sizes. -- Hoary 10:50, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Creative idea, linking the relative image sizes to their relative real sizes. I like it! Phidauex 16:19, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article and book titles, and bibliographic info

I've assembled the Japanese (transcribed, rōmaji) titles, Japanese (Japanese script) titles, English/Latin original (alternative) titles, and English (freshly translated) titles with some care. (Of course this doesn't mean I haven't made mistakes.) I've also put quite some care into their markup, attempting for example to distinguish between original and freshly translated English titles. (Again, this doesn't mean I haven't made mistakes.) I couldn't find very useful guidance for this in MoS (possibly because I didn't look hard enough), and had to devise a few distinctions and solutions by myself.

This isn't "my" article and of course others can edit. However, before rushing to fix an apparent inconsistency, do please examine the system so far. Briefly:

Japanese-language titles of magazine articles, etc, aren't italicized, despite being in Japanese; they're merely in quotation marks. (I thought that italicizing them would obscure the distinction between them and book titles.)
The English (or Latin) alternative title of book is added after a slash. If it's a book title, of course it's italicized.
An explanatory English translation of a title (one that's not on the original but instead is added for this article) is added in parentheses.

Of course it's possible that there are mistakes here, and people might disagree with the whole system. -- Hoary 10:15, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Graduation

Perusona -- the later, cheaper edition -- states that Kikai graduated from university in '78. This is clearly wrong: it's contradicted by for example his statement in the same book that he'd known his prof for over thirty years since graduation. Elsewhere, we sometimes read that he graduated in 1968, sometimes 1969. My uninformed guess-inference is that he graduated at the end of the 1968 academic year (1968nendo), i.e. in the spring of 1969.

Not that it really matters, but it's good for an encyclopedia to get the facts right. -- Hoary 10:53, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Kikai has an exhibition in Ginza now. I went there today, and since there were few visitors and he was happy to talk, I asked him. The answer was 1968. (He also pointed out that he hadn't taught at ~~university~~ the university where ja-WP said he was teaching: misinformation which I subsequently fixed there as well as here.) And if this is going to be decried as "original research", I'll counter that it's easily reproducible original research. -- Hoary 06:23, 3 March 2006 (UTC) (Slightly reworded 23:11, 14 March 2006 (UTC))

Great article! Why not add the Perusona information conflict as a footnote, just to help explain the truth to anyone who may have come across the mistaken date and assumed it to be correct. And although I doubt this is very WP - I've never seen this done in an article - there is a way to reference a conversation that we use at the museum/research centre where I work. Something along the lines of:

e.g. * Lee, Robert (Associate Professor, School of Humanities, University of Western Sydney). Conversation with Colin MacWhirter, 7 April 2004 (see object file PH1980:0205.01:001-033; PH1980:0205.02:001-025).

so: * Kikai Hiroh (Associate Professor, School of Humanities, University of Western Sydney). Conversation with Hoary (but real name), 7 April 2004.

You could then post a summary (or in an ideal world, a transcript) of the conversation in the Talk Page...

I was just ruminating on the amazing fact that there is presently no Ken Domon article... Pinkville 12:43, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for the praise. I'll add something about the years a few hours from now. The article is terribly lumpy and it will probably become lumpier before I get around to smoothing it -- and also, I hope, getting permission to use some images. (As for Domon, well, his images aren't "utterly adorable", so it's hardly surprising that they don't interest great swathes of right-thinking Wikipedia editors.) -- Hoary 23:11, 14 March 2006 (UTC) PS done. I did not add my name, because it would mean nothing to readers and might look like self-advertisement. Hoary 00:08, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Shōmeidō Gallery link

A lot of notes point to "Shōmeidō Gallery", i.e. this page. The content of this page is very similar; if the former disappears, the latter can be substituted. -- Hoary 10:11, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Name and article title

"Hiroh" is the way in which Kikai fairly consistently spells his name when writing it in rōmaji/rômazi (though I have seen "Hiroo" in the occasional magazine article); it's for this reason that this article is titled with "Hiroh". And it's "Hiroh Kikai" rather than "Kikai Hiroh" (a form that Kikai also uses) merely to accord with a Wikipedia guideline with which I heartily disagree. (I await the analogous renaming of Mao Zedong as "Tse-tung Mao", and the analogous renaming in ja-Wikipedia of Tina Modotti as "Modotti Tina".) -- Hoary 00:17, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] an observation

Hi Hoary, Certainly a good candidate for Good Article. (Thanks for the nomination of the less-worthy Ueno Hikoma article.) I don't see any need for changes in this, but for part of one sentence:

...and has said that he would have worked in film production if this had not needed writing and money This phrase seems a little odd, but I'm assuming it's film production that requires writing and money and that Kikai had few resources for either. Maybe this could be a bit more clear? Otherwise, it looks very good indeed. Pinkville 02:16, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

What awful prose; thank you for pointing it out. He claims not to like writing. (Which is odd, as people who are hugely better judges of Japanese prose than I tell me that his written style is superb, and to me that suggests practice fueled by some degree of enjoyment.) And his point is that film work would have needed writing and begging for money. I"ve rewritten the sentence, not necessarily for the better. Don't hesitate to point out other flaws.

And really, Ueno Hikoma looks a pretty good article to me. -- Hoary 05:58, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks.

The rewrite was better - but I've tried a more concise version that I hope you like. Pinkville 13:20, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I had a feeling that my rewrite was crap, and now that I see your rerewrite I know it was crap. Well done. Do feel free to tinker (or of course do much more than tinker); I'll waive the usual requirements for advance permission, fee, etc etc [emoticon]. -- Hoary 14:04, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks all round. By the way, what's an [emoticon]? (o_O) _[smirk] Pinkville 14:32, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] This is a Good Article

I'm promoting this article to GA status, based on the qualifications for Good Articles. It is well written, clear, and very well referenced. The tone is neutral, and it appears fairly comprehensive in its treatment of the subject. I appreciate the good fair use rationales on the images.

I do have a few suggestions for further improvement:

This article does not completely follow the Manual of Style. Thats OK, because it is well written, but to polish things up, bringing things into MOS compliance is key. Here are some examples:
I edited the lead paragraph as an example. Please look over Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies) for suggestions for biographies. Lead paragraphs should include the date of birth (and death, if applicable), place of birth, and the 'reason we care about this person'. The previous intro paragraph (sentence?) didn't include any of these things. It was a simple update, however. There may be other small issues to look at, to make the article conform to the guidelines for biographies.
Place names do not always conform to the MOS either. IE, Tokyo (Japan) would be better formatted as Tokyo, Japan.
Image formatting could be adjusted. You may wish to play with image formatting for better flow and asthetic value. Right now, all the images are aligned right. Try making some aligned left, and play with their size and position between paragraphs to make them flow into the article better. Guidelines aren't strict here, but it would be worth a minute or two of tweaking to make them flow better.

This is a well done article, about someone who I'd never heard of, (though I'll have to look up his work in the library, now!). Its in good shape now, and with a few more tweaks, will be truly excellent. Keep up the good work. Phidauex 17:47, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

As the author of a large part of the article, I thank you for your comments (and promotion of the article). But while I hesitate before countering your advice and changes when they're expressed so kindly and on such a happy occasion, I do have to disagree in places. Guidelines are just guidelines, and I must risk infringing WP:DICK by purposely breaking a few here. I'll explain.

I too was unhappy with the lead paragraph as it stood 24 hours ago. I'd agree with a claim that it was too short and not sufficiently informative. However, the rewrite managed to say "born" twice in a single sentence; gave detail (of little or no interest to most people in Japan, let alone anywhere else) of where he was born in a sentence immediately preceding its repetition at the very top of the following section; and, after saying that he was Japanese, pointed out that Tokyo was in Japan (as opposed to Texas?), which I think is an insult to the reader's intelligence. (After all, these are people choosing to read about a photographer, and not, say, some teen pop star.) So I undid a lot of your work. I have to rush off now, but I'll be back soon with more changes, because I'm still unhappy with the lead. -- Hoary 22:42, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

PS I've just looked at the relevant MoS (perhaps for the first time ever) and note that it doesn't say that the lead should include the place of birth. It does prescribe: ". . . Nationality . . . / What they did / Why they are significant." I'll amend accordingly -- and I'll also fiddle with the image placement, as you suggest. Hoary 02:52, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough, fair enough. I realize my version of the intro article wasn't perfect either (the exact location of birth was probably too detailed, as you mention), but the original one seemed distinctly lacking. It can be hard, when one is very familiar with a topic, to see through the eyes of someone who is not familiar with it. The previous version included roughly, "He's some guy who people liked because he took pictures in a place you've never heard of, at some unknown time." The intro paragraph must include relevant information about who this person is, when and where they lived, and why they are here. The current version is better. At least my efforts served to shake things up a bit.

You don't want to insult people's intelligence, but you also don't want to make too many assumptions about what people do and do not know. I had no idea where Asakusa was, for instance, and the context of Japan had not yet been set. The restating of facts is partially due to the fact that many people won't (or do not need to) read an entire article. Maybe they don't care about all the details of his childhood, but want to know his location and era. Making them 'hunt' for this sort of information isn't good. You may end up repeating yourself in the end, but it means you have a usable article for both skimmers, and detailed readers. Phidauex 23:44, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Keep on shaking! Yes, you make some good points here. I'll look again at the article a bit later today. (This stupidity has wasted some time that could have been spent more profitably.) Keep this article on your watchlist, and direct a shoe at my posterior whenever it starts to slip downward. -- Hoary 00:06, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GA

No surprise. Actually I'm opposed to the newspaper-like style of iterating, then reitierating, then culminating the facts of a story in Wikipedia - I believe it to be a condescending style, as if I can't reasonably decide on my own to read on from an opening sentence! Regardless, an article well deserving of Good Article status better! ...added by Pinkville at 22:56, 23 June 2006)

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