About Yosha Bunko
By William Wetherall
First posted 1995
Last updated 24 March 2025
About Yosha Bunko Reconfiguration • Personal background • Yosha Bunko • News Nishikie • Steamy East • Konketsuji • Wetherall
Fair use Creative Commons • Permissions • Attributions
Romanization Chinese • Japanese • Korean • Vietnamese
Translations Structural fidelity • Terminology • Dates
Technical Scripting, validation, styling • Languages and coding • Browsers and monitors • Disclaimers • Contact
About Yosha BunkoReconfigurationOn 21 March 2025, the directories of the 5 domains formerly associated with Yosha Bunko were consolidated under the yoshabunko.com domain. And the domain was secured by an encryption certificate, which qualifies Yosha Bunko as an "https" (secure) rather than "http" (unsecure) website, as follows. www.yoshabunko.com The above link will open a Gateway directory to all Yosha Bunko content, with separate directories for Yosha Bunko, The Steamy East, News Nishikie, Konketsuji, and Wetherall, as before -- but without their domains. Unlike the original configuration, which divided content between 5 domains, internal links within the consolidated website will remain within the overarching yoshabunko.com domain. This means that navigating from one page to another, within or between any of the 5 directories within the domain, is now seamless. Moreover, because all Yosha Bunko content is now accessed through directories below the yoshabunko.com root directory, Yosha Bunko's thousands of files and images can now be copied to a thumb drive or other storage medium, or transmitted through DropBox or other 3rd party file sharing servers, for private or library archiving and access off line. This portability will also enable my children to easily keep Yosha Bunko on line. If necessary to move the website to another server, they will need only to transfer the yoshabunko.com domain to the new server, then upload the Yosha Bunko files to the server -- without altering their organization, hence all links will remain the same. Direct links to Yosha Bunko directoriesWhile the easiest access to the consolidated Yosha Bunko website is through the Gateway at the above link, the directories to each of the 5 components of the new website can be accessed and bookmarked at the following links. Yosha Bunko https://www.yoshabunko.com/yoshabunko/ybnav.html Link changesNote that, with regards to links, all pre-reconfiguration links that have been published or bookmarked over the past 25 years are now invalid. Search engines may continue to list cached Yosha Bunko webpages with their older http URLs, but they will fail, because the pages have moved. Links to the pages on the reconfigured website should enjoy greater longevities. But nothing lasts forever, expect perhaps nothingness. The Wild Woolly Web is living proof of the universal laws of uncertainty and impermanence. The encryption of the website, to qualify it for https status, was necessitated by the stricter standards now imposed by search engines and browsers, which flag as insecure or risky, and downrank if not ignore, unencrypted, mostly older http websites. The URLs of all Yosha Bunko articles originally began with one of the Yosha Bunko domains. After the domains were consolidated under the "www.yoshabunko.com" domain, article URLs begin with the name of the directory with which it is associated, as in the following examples. Older versus current URLsThe oldest, later, and current URLs for two articles will suffice to show how Yosha Bunko's configuration has changed over the years. Only the current https URL is valid. Japan's Nationality Law: Kishine Barracks and the 106th General Hospital: The sub-directories and file names have been stable. What has changed has been whether sub-directories and files have been associated with (1) the root of one of several domains (oldest), (2) a higher directory on the root of the rental server account (later), or (3) a higher directory on the root of the yoshabunko.com (current). The most important change, other than making all Yosha Bunko content portable and readable off line, is the encryption that qualifies Yosha Bunko as a secured (https) website. Personal backgroundI was born in San Francisco and raised there for 14 years. In 1955, while in the 8th grade, I moved to Grass Valley, where I completed the 8th grade, then the 9th grade and high school. I commuted to Sierra College, then in Auburn, and completed a 2-year engineering program that prepared me for transferring to the University of California at Berkeley as a 3rd year student (junior) in the Department of Electrical Engineering in the College of Engineering. During the summers of 1959 and 1960, I worked as an engineering aid in the Electronics Division at the U.S. Navy Shipyard at Hunters Point in San Francisco. The position was linked with a federal program that qualified me to postpone my start at Berkeley for 1 year, hence I worked at the shipyards from the summer of 196I through the summer of 1962, and began my studies at Berkeley from the fall of 1962. The first semester at Berkeley went well and my grade point average (GPA) was higher than my average at Sierra. The Cuban Crisis that fall, however, shattered my political innocence, and by the spring of 1963 I decided I didn't want to be an electrical engineer whose best employment opportunities would be in work directly or indirectly related to the development or maintenance of missile systems. I began auditing numerous courses in the Liberal Arts College, while continuing to attend the lab components of my engineering course because I was partnered with a friend who depended on my contributions to experiments and projects. Because I sat out the final exams, I was placed on a 1-year probation to consider if I really wanted to be an engineer, During the summer of 1963, while working for the Tahoe National Forest as an aid on a surveying party, I was received an order from the local Selective Service (Draft) Board to take a physical examination. I passed, and was slated to be drafted into the Army for 2 years. However, to avoid being drafted, and undoubtedly being assigned to a missile battery or other weapons related work, I enlisted for 3 years, which allowed me to choose my field of training and work in the Army. From 1963-1966, I served as a medic, ambulance driver, and clinical laboratory technician. My last assignment was a 9-month stint at the Pathology Laboratory of the 106th General Hospital in Japan. Returning to California, I resumed working at the Tahoe National Forest, while completing several UC Berkeley correspondence courses I had begun in Japan, and contemplating my return to the campus. I considered studying medicine or pursuing a career in clinical pathology -- or enrolling in the Oriental Languages Department, as I had nourished an interest in Japan while in high school, and an interest in Chinese writing while at UCB before being placed on probation. I opted for language studies, which surprised everyone who knew me, for languages and the humanities had been my weakest aptitudes. The Oriental Language Department accepted me on the strength of an interview by the departmental dean. But enrolling in the department required that the dean of the College of Engineering approve a request to transfer to the College of Letters and Science. The College of Engineering dean turned out to the assistant dean who put me on probation. The problem was what to do with the "Incompletes" that had become "Withdrawal Fs" on my transcript. He agreed to waive them, on the condition that I do well in my future coursework. From the fall of 1967, I studied Japanese, but also Chinese and Korean, and several courses in history and anthropology. And in the spring of 1969, I completed a BA in Japanese Studies, an individual major I petitioned to pursue in the Group in Asian Studies, with one foot in the Oriental Languages Department and the other in the Anthropology Department. From 1970, I resided in Japan for a couple of years, during which time I taught English, lived with a family, and married, while continuing to study the Japanese language, mass media, and social issues by myself. From 1972-1975, I returned to Berkeley on a fellowship, completed an MA in Asian Studies, and fulfilled all requirements for a PhD in Northeast Asian Studies (Japan and Korea), except for a dissertation on suicide in Japan. In 1975, I returned to Japan to begin back-to-back doctoral research grants that enabled me to study suicide in Japan as a research fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health, then at Kōnōdai in Ichikawa. I completed the dissertation, "Following-in-Death in Early Japan", which I filed at Berkeley in the fall of 1982. And I remained a visiting researcher at NIMH until 1995. On a personal level, I became the father of a daughter in 1978 and a son in 1982. Representing my children as a parent-guardian, I was a co-plaintiff in their separate lawsuits against the government of Japan, claiming that they had a constitutional right to acquire Japanese nationality through their mother. The law was revised in 1985, and they became Japanese in 1987. I became a permanent resident in 1983, and I've been a Japanese national since 2012. My daughter and son continue to reside in Japan, and two grandchildren live within a few minutes on bicycle. Occupationally, I have had numerous part-time jobs in many fields since I was 12 years old in San Francisco. Until I stepped down from my last part-time editing and translation work in Japan in 2011, I always had at least one job. In Japan, I taught English, including reading and writing, and Japanese-English translation, for 26 years at a vocational language school in Tokyo. While teaching, most years two days a week, I held a number of part-time editing jobs, conducted and published research as an independent scholar, wrote many newspaper and magazine articles as a free-lance journalist, translated and wrote short stories, and co-translated a novel. I am partly a product of the following schools and majors.
Year of completion or graduation, left.
Grade or degree, middle.
Years enrolled, right.
Kindergarten and grade school
1947 k1-k2 Notre Dame des Victoires, San Francisco, 1945-1947
1949 1-2 Notre Dame des Victoires, San Francisco, 1947-1949
1953 3-6 Lawton Elementary School, San Francisco, 1949-1953
1954 7 Marina Junior High School, San Francisco, 1953-1954
8 A.P. Giannini Junior High School, San Francisco, 1954-1955
1955 8 Union Hill Elementary School, Union Hill, 1955
1957 9 Nevada Union Junior High School, Nevada City, 1955-1956
1959 10-12 Nevada Union High School, Grass Valley, 1956-1959
College and graduate school
1961 AA Engineering, Sierra College, Auburn, 1959-1961
Electrical Engineering, UC Berkeley, 1962-1963
Oriental Languages, UC Berkeley, 1967-1969
1969 BA Japanese Studies, UC Berkeley, 1969
1973 MA Asian Studies (Japan), UC Berkeley, 1972-1973
1975 abd Asian Studies (Northeast Asia), UC Berkeley, 1974-1975
1982 PhD Asian Studies (Northeast Asia), UC Berkeley, 1982
Over the decades since I left these schools, my own experiences and observations led me to question the quality of some of the knowledge and understandings my mentors tried to impart to me. If to question received wisdom is the purpose of education, then my education appears to have effective. Yosha Bunko"Yōsha" (羊舎) -- a Sino-Japanese translation of my family name -- means "sheepshed". "Wetherall" comes from "wether + stall", a stall or shed for wether, or castrated male sheep. It probably originated as an occupational name for a sheepherder who tended to shelters for wether. I adopted the name "Yō Kabuto" (羊舎兜) while living with a family in Japan in 1970-1971. I dubbed "William" into "Kabuto", as it is the name for the helmut worn by warriors in early times, and represents the "helm" of German "Wilhelm", anglicized as "William". The father of the home gave me a miniature metal kabuto on boys day, and the mother of the home gave me a boxwood seal with 羊舎, which I used to open a bank account, and continue to use as my personal seal over half a century later. "Yō Bunko" (羊舎文庫) -- stylized Yosha Bunko (without the macron) -- refers to (1) my personal library, (2) Yosha Bunko website, consisting of all the sections listed on its Gateway page, and (3) the parent Yosha Bunko section of the website. Yosha Bunko began as Yōsha Kenkyūjo (羊舎研究所) ["Yosha Research"], the name on an ex-libris seal I had made in 1970. The seal appears in some of the earliest books I bought in the course of building the library now known as Yosha Bunko. The term "bunko" is commonly used in names of personal or organizational collections or archives of documents and books -- i.e., a library. I no longer use the seal, except in nostalgic moments, and to impress my grandchildren. The original website was constructed in 1995, the year I first had a personal connection to the Internet. Prior to that, I could connect to a 3rd-party mail server through a dial-up modem, for the purpose of exchanging email the original way -- through a command-line interface, rather than through a mail client with a graphic user interface. Early incarnations of Yosha Kenkyujo posted not only my own articles, but articles by writer and researcher friends, including Mark Schreiber, Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu, John Maher, Tei Taikin, and Karel van Wolferen. The website also hosted the works of students in computer and writing courses I taught at Nichibei Kaiwa Gakuin, a vocational language school at the International Education Center in Yotsuya. The Yosha site underwent several metamorphoses as I changed Internet service providers, adopted more recent html scripting methods, and acquired several domains that represented my various interest. In the course of these revisions, and subsequent to my retirement as a teacher and move to my present residence in 2001, I dropped all contributed content, except for a few articles by Mark Schreiber, which I had integrated into "The Steamy East" and "New Nishikie" websites. Everything, warts and allYosha Bunko now includes web versions of many articles that I have had published over the years in books, journals, magazines, and newspapers. However, practically all of the most recent articles, which constitute the bulk of the content, have been published only on this site. My thinking related to some subjects has radically changed over the decades. Earlier articles that no longer reflect my thinking are clearly marked. Others have been partly revised to reflect my current thinking. When revising articles that have been published in paper media, I have left the original phrasing readable through overstriking, in order to document my stumbling travels through the world of thought. Toward this end, I have also posted many manuscripts of school reports I saw fit to save, from my undergraduate college days in the late 1960s and my graduate school days in the mid 1970s. I have no idea what became of the reports I wrote for high school and my first years of college in the late 1950s and early 1960s. However, I kept all the course reports I wrote during my later undergraduate studies and as a graduate student, and of course the dissertation I completed in 1982. Today I read many of my earlier writings with frowns and even gasps, at the ignorance and innocence that (mis)informed a number of attitudes, including romantic delusions that bordered on moral arrogance. News NishikieI acquired the "nishikie.com" domain on 21 July 2004 to accommodate the News Nishikie (formerly www.nishikie.com) website. "News Nishikie" is a translation of ニュース錦絵 (nyuusu nishikie), an expression I coined to bridge two understandings about such prints, and to side more with one than the other. The more common terms are "shinbun nishikie" (新聞錦絵) and "nishikie shinbun" (錦絵新聞). "Nyuusu" (ニュース) stresses the most essential meaning of "shinbun" (新聞) -- "news" rather than "newspaper", which at the time was "shinbunshi" (新聞紙) -- sheets of "paper" (shi 紙) with "new tidings" (shinbun 新聞). The older 新聞錦絵 (shinbun nishikie) or "news nishikie" school treats the prints as "nishikie based on news", while the more recent and fashionable 錦絵新聞 (nishikie shinbun) or "nishikie news" school contends that they were "news conveyed by nishikie". The former stresses the qualities of "nishikie" as woodblock picture commodities, while the latter emphasizes the characteristics of "news" as fresh and timely information. While not denying that some such prints did convey news in lieu of newspapers, most were based on reports that originally appeared in papers, printed well after their newspaper sources, and marketed like other nishikie. In others words, they were sold like souvenir prints, books, and other such printed matter, and reprinted as long as there was demand. My interest and collection began from a print that Mark Schreiber introduced to me through a dealer he knew and from whom he himself had bought some prints. A couple of months before I launched the News Nishikie site, Mark had published an article about such prints. He later contributed a few articles and reviews to the website, and a couple of lines to a coauthored article. The News Nishikie site is dedicated to all the sources of information introduced in the Bibliography and Web Sources, especially the collections of Kanbara Jinzō (1884-1954) and Nishigaki Buichi (1901-1967), the collection and studies of Ono Hideo (1885-1977), and more recently the studies of Kinoshita Naoyuki, Takahashi Katsuhiko, Tsuchiya Reiko, and Yoshimi Shun'ya. Such published giants pioneered much of the current research on what I have called "news nishikie". But I stand even more on the shoulders of Obata Mamoru (小畑護), an unpublished giant, who amassed the world's largest collection of news nishikie. I was fortunate to make Obata's acquaintance and correspond with him the old fashioned way, by phone and snail mail. I would meet him twice, the second time when he invited me to attend, and personally guided me through, the exhibition of the "Tōkyō nichinichi shinbun" (TNS) and "ūbin hōchi shinbun" (YHS) parts of his "Rikken Collection" at Chiba City Museum of Art in 2008. ImagesThe vast majority of the images in the New Nishikie section of Yosha Bunko are scans I have made myself of prints in my own collection. However, because arguments about news nishikie can only be advanced through visual evidence, I have taken liberties with images from Kanbara Bunko, Nishigaki Bunko, the Ono Collection, the Bunsei Shoin CD-ROM compiled by Tsuchiya Reiko, and a number of other sources, including the Chiba City Museum of Art catalog of the TNS and YHS prints in Obata Mamoru's "Rikken Collection". All images obtained from other sources have been acknowledge as such. Most have been used without express permission because I regard the nishikie works themselves to be in the public domain. In the same spirit, I offer all images of copies in my own collection, as shown on this site, to the world at large. In fact, I have directly shared some images with writers for use in their publications. The Steamy EastThe namesake of The Steamy East section of Yosha Bunko is the title of a newspaper column written in the late 1980s by Mark Schreiber, who contributed a few reviews of related fiction to the site. The domain name "steamyeast.com" was acquired on 14 January 2001. What you see is what you getMark and I have collected, between us, over 5,000 novels written in English, either set somewhere in greater Asia or involving something putatively "Oriental" or "Asian" elsewhere on earth or beyond. Our personal tastes in such works, and our views of their meaning in the social history of literature, are different. And our tastes and views have changed over the years and continue to shift. Do not, therefore, expect to find on this website the sort of consistency that is likely to be seen in a monograph written and edited by a single writer in a single state of delusion at a single time. The states of confusion on this site are rivaled only by the extent and boundaries of the Steamy East itself -- vast, warped, full of black holes and singularities -- and otherwise the sort of space no manner of matrix math magic could map into the flat, uniform, and theoretically orderly world one often encounters in writing that dwells on faulting Steamy East fiction for its tendency to portray Asia and Asians as strange, exotic, mysterious, inscrutable, sexist, cruel, or not quite human, if not mystical, otherworldly, or superhuman. From a certain critical point of view, much of what I am here calling Steamy East fiction is inevitably stereotypical if not also highly and hideously discriminatory, and politically incorrect, by the standards of judgment invoked by today's academics and critics. However, ignorance and prejudice are facts of life. Steamy East writers may have lived in one or another bubble, but their bubbles were actual, and their stories they need to be regarded as authentic artifacts of factual history. Even the worst Steamy East stories need to be understood and appreciated, for what they were meant to be when written, and why they appealed to the readers they did in their day -- rather than be despised or dismissed through ideological eyes that are apt to be, in their own ways, as biased and misinformed as the authors they disparage as dead white neo-colonialist male chauvinist pigs -- or whatever. If ignorance and prejudice do not warrant tolerance, neither do they deserve intolerance. Yet intolerance is the growing response to literature, past and present, that some people find offensive. The fashionable solution is to ban, deface, censor, and otherwise figuratively burn any books that do not suit ones religious or philosophical tastes. This is a particularly worrisome trend in the United States. The land of the free and home of the brave has become a country of censors, who now get jobs in publishing companies, libraries, and even universities -- policing language, thought, and behavior deemed ideologically unacceptable. The situation is not much brighter in Japan, where I have lived most of my life, continuously since 1975, and am now Japanese. As a writer, I know how complex and fragile the truth can be in a publishing world that is vulnerable to fashions of correctness and sensitivity -- resulting in editorial standards that put economic and political bottom-lines before upsetting sensitive readers with inconvenient facts and hard truths. What one learns in a classroom, and from mainstream media, is likely to be a highly filtered, sanitized, romanticized, and otherwise distorted fraction of the information one needs to understand the human condition past and present in its entirely, -- the whole condition,. This website has no bottom-line. What you see here will be what has been and is still out there -- "red in tooth and claw" in the words made famous by Tennyson's poem -- the natural world of Steamy East fiction -- with no apologies for the blunt and tasteless titles, cover art, and stories one sometimes encounters in the literary jungle. KonketsujiThe "konketsuji.com" domain was acquired on 27 August 2016. The index page of the Konketsuji section of Yosha Bunko was uploaded on 23 March 2017. About 150 articles have been created for eventual uploading to the website. Most have been completed, but because many require editing when writing other articles that are linked to them, they not be loaded until which point most planned articles have been written. The Konketsuji site originated in 2008 as the "Blending in Japan" section on the original Yosha Research site, The tag line of the "Blending in Japan" feature was "Fruits of migration and war". The feature was prominently listed at the top of the "Race" section of Yosha Research as "100-million hybrids" subtitled "Racial blending in Japan: Fruits of migration and war". When I revamped "Blending in Japan" as "Konketsuji" under its own domain, it was mostly a shell with only 25, mostly incomplete pages. Its introduction and table of contents remain posted as 100-million hybrids: Racial blending in Japan: Fruits of migration and war from its original link at the top of the menu of the Race section of Yosha Bunko. William WetherallI acquired the "wetherall.org" domain on 17 January 2001, shortly before I moved from my former home in Abiko to my present home across town. After opening an account on rental server, I began using the domain for my email, through the server's email handler, a well as for the Wetherall section of Yosha Bunko. The section became a place to present all writings not directly related to the subjects of the other sections -- namely, my short stories and other creative writings, translations, college reports, poetry, blogs, and local, family, and personal histories, and even photographs. The "Wetherall" component of Yosha Bunko was originally "Yosha Press", which started as a dream a few years before the ground for its construction was broken in January 2007 in the form of a domain called "yoshapress.com". The blueprints called for the publication conventionally printed and bound books, self-published in the true sense of this word, as Yosha Press imprints produced by a local printer with my own ISBN numbers. The first book, a collection of short stories already written but undergoing revision, was supposed to have come out later that year. However, more urgent matters pushed Yosha Press to the bottom of my list of priorities. By 2009, I had concluded that the goal of sharing my stories with others would be better served by publishing them on line. Electronic stocks would go up. Loggers, ink makers, and mailmen would have less work. Spiritually, though, I remain addicted to paper. So I retired released my claim to the "yoshapress.com" domain and focussed on web publishing. In 2018, however, I created the imprint "Soseki Books" for a friend, Kunioki Yanagishita, which he then registered for the purpose of publishing his novel Catch 51 in both Japanese and English. I helped him translate the English edition, and designed the covers for both editions. I also registered the sosekibooks.com domain, created a website to publicize the book, and hosted the through this domain on the same Sakura Internet rental server that hosts the Yosha Bunko websites. At the same time, I registered "Yosha Press" as an imprint and purchased a set of ISBN numbers I may eventually use for publishing POD editions of collections of my stories. The wetherall.org domain is also now secured as https://www.wetherall.org. However, since the consolidation of its content under www.yoshabunko.com, it no longer points to the Wetherall section of Yosha Bunko. I maintain the domain only to enable my personal email to be authenticated by email handlers, which are likely to treat mail from an unsecured domain as spam if not block. |
Fair useThe images and articles on all Yosha Bunko websites straddle public and private domains. To facilitate their non-commercial use by the widest possible audience, the contents of these websites are protected under the provisions of a Creative Commons License (CCL). See the section on Creative Commons for further information and links. See the sections on Permissions and Attributions for further qualifications regarding how CCL applies to content on Yosha Bunko websites. In the belief that the World Wide Web is an open and public forum, some articles on Yosha Bunko websites refer to an external website through a link which has been included without the owner's explicit permission. In the same spirit, other websites are free to post links to any content on a Yosha Bunko site without my permission. Creative CommonsThere are different kinds of Creative Commons licenses. The license under which this website is protected is called an Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike (by-nc-sa) agreement. Clicking the following links will display the license agreement in either English or Japanese. Creative Commons License Icon
English version of Creative Commons LicenseThis website is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Japanese version of Creative Commons Licenseこのウェブサイトは、クリエイティブ・コモンズ・ライセンスの下でライセンスされています。 PermissionsAll materials featured on Yosha Bunko websites are the properties of their signed contributors, or of their attributed or unattributed sources. They may be copied and used for personal but not commercial use, and for educational but not political or religious purposes. All articles on Yosha Bunko websites, with the exception of drafts in progress, may be quoted or cited with proper attribution. Please do not quote or cite articles clearly marked as drafts in progress without permission from their authors. AttributionsAttributions to articles on Yosha Bunko websites may be made in any manner so long as the authorship and source of the quoted or otherwise cited article is clear. All citation styles can be adapted to website sources. Bear in mind that the physical locations of Yosha Bunko websites changed in 2015. Until the summer of 2015, the websites resided on different J:Com servers in Japan, accessed through domains registered through Tera Byte Dot Com in Canada. Beginning 25 July 2015, I began transferring all domains, and all the websites, to a single Sakura Internet rental server in Japan. Older URLs are therefore mostly dead, though some may retrieve an out-of-date page from one or another Internet archive. The Yosha Bunko domain names are also stable as I own them, and they and the latest versions of the websites will be maintained by my children in the event I am no longer able to manage them. File and directory names are also generally stable but are subject to change. Example citationsHere are two recommended citation styles, depending on whether the article was originally published on a Yosha Bunko website or elsewhere. Again, keep in mind that, when shortening citations for the sake of brevity, the site name (shown in italics) and the domain name (shown in parentheses) should be given more priority than the physical URL. Articles originally published by Yosha BunkoWhen citing an article that has been published only on Yosha Bunko, please refer to the article as you would an article in a book or a journal. William Wetherall, "Nationality after World War II: Japan's bilateral talks with ROC and ROK", Empire: The Sovereign Empire: Occupations and settlements: Postwar nationality, Yosha Bunko (www.yoshabunko.com), https://www.yoshabunko.com/empires/Postwar_nationality.html, 1 August 2006, updated 25 August 2015, accessed 24 January 2017. William Wetherall, "Tonichi and Iwakura Embassy: Inaugural issue report on snowy Sierras and polygamous Salt Lake City", News Nishikie (www.yoshabunko.com), https://www.yoshabunko.com/nishikie/articles/Tonichi_Iwakura_Embassy.html, 3 February 2008, updated 10 June 2008, accessed 23 December 2015. William Wetherall, "Mr. Moto Is So Sorry: The handsome I.A. Moto in translation", The Steamy East (www.yoshabunko.com), https://www.yoshabunko.com/steamyeast/wetherall/Marquand_1938_so_sorry.html, 10 October 2006, updated 15 September 2006, accessed 21 January 2017. William Wetherall, "Hirano Imao (1900-1986): Champion of mixed bloods, ghosts, and other paranormals", People: Mixed-blood luminaries: Blending in while standing out, Konketsuji (www.yoshabunko.com), https://www.yoshabunko.com/konketsuji/people/People_Hirano_Imao.html, 1 October 2008, updated 10 May 2017, accessed 25 November 2017. [ Forthcoming ] Articles originally published elsewhereArticles first published elsewhere, and republished by Yosha Bunko, may be cited as follows. William Wetherall, "Rites of passage: History of funeral practices intertwined with religion", Far Eastern Economic Review, 16 March 1989, 143(11):67,70. As republished by Yosha Bunko (www.wetherall.org), https://www.yoshabunko.com/anthropology/Cremation.html, updated 19 January 1998, accessed 24 November 2015. William Wetherall and Mark Schreiber, "News nishikie: An arranged marriage that didn't last", Andon, Number 80, June 2006, pages 5-24. As republished on News Nishikie (www.newsnishikie.com), https://www.yoshabunko.com/nishikie/articles/Andon_2006_news_nishikie.html, updated 20 January 2008, accessed 28 February 2016. Mark Schreiber, "Suez to Suzie Wong", The Steamy East (5), Mainichi Daily News, 29 September 1986, page 9. As republished on The Steamy East (www.steamyeast.com), https://www.yoshabunko.com/steamyeast/schreiber/Schreiber_1986-1988_The_Steamy_East_ms.html#SE05, accessed 14 February 2016. |
RomanizationC, J, K, and V are used in parentheses to mark Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese (CJKV) readings of personal names, place names, and other expressions written in Chinese characters, e.g., Mutan (牡丹 J. Botan). When the reading of a CJKV character expression is shown in more than one language, the romanization will be marked as required, e.g., Bootang (牡丹 C Mutan, J Botan). When citing, for example, a Chinese, Korean, or Vietnamese personal or place name in a Japanese source, the Japanese reading will come first. Similar, when citing a Japanese name expressed in another language, that language's rendering of the name will come first. ChineseChinese related to the People's Republic of China (PRC) is generally romanized in pinyin (PY). Chinese related to the Ch'ing (Qing) Dynasty or the Republic of China (ROC) is generally romanized in Wade-Giles (WG). Sometimes one is shown after the other in parentheses. When both are shown, Pinyin will precede Wade Giles, e.g. Shin (清 Qīng Ch'ing) Proper nouns and other expressions usually pronounced in a local dialect will be romanized in customary spellings (Chiang K'ai-shek, Hongkong). Tones are not always marked. In Pinyin they will usually be shown diacritically (三民主义 sānmín zhŭyì). In Wade-Giles they are usually not shown (三民主義 san-min chu-i), but at times they may be shown by numbers (三民主義 san1min2 chu3i4). When transliterating from Japanese sources, the received or implied Sino-Japanese readings are shown first. For example, 北京 will be shown as Pekin (ペキン) unless otherwise marked Beijin (べいじん), with the understanding that terminal "-n" in Japanese is pronounced "-ng" unless otherwise constrained. Hokkyō would be the reading of 北京 when used to mean the "northern capital" of the Northern Court in Kyoto as opposed to the "southern capital" (南京 Nankyō) of the Southern Court in Yoshino in the south of present-day Nara prefecture, in times past. As the municipality known for having at times been the southern capital of China, 南京 will be Nanking, Nanching, or Nanjing, according to the preferences or implications of the received text. Similarly, in reference to the dynasty and its government, 清 will be Ching, Ch'ing, or Qing -- but Shin when transliterated from Japanese texts. JapaneseJapanese has generally been transliterated according to the New Hepburn system (shinbun) of romanization rather than the older and more popular Hepburn system (shimbun) or Kunreishiki system (sinbun). However, other romanizations are shown as required. Historical kana orthography has been romanized as received, i.e., literally. Romanizations reflecting present-day kana orthography may be shown in parentheses or brackets when necessary for clarification, e.g., iro ha nihoheto . . . wehi mo sesu (iro wa nihoeto . . . ei mo sezu). Vowel lengthening is not always marked, especially in older articles. In more recent articles, lengthening is shown by a macron or by doubling as required (aa ii uu ū ee oo ou ō). Note that "ō" will always represent "ou" and not "oo". A final "-e" (mine, Fuse) will not be marked with an acute accent unless received that way (miné, Fusé). "e" and "ga"When two or more characters are used to represent the same sounds and meanings in linguistically (phonologically and semantically) identical expressions, the graphic (scriptual, calligraphic) differences may be represented in the romanization. A good example, which frequents the News Nishikie site, is the use of both 絵 and 画 to represent "e". Because these two graphs contrast in many otherwise identical expressions, including titles of prints, 絵 will be shown as "e" and 画 will be shown as "ga" in such expressions, with the understanding that both are read "e" and mean "picture". nishikie (錦絵) In other words, "nishikie" and "nishikiga" are intended as graphic and not linguistic distinctions. In these cases, both 絵 and 画 are graphic synonyms of "e", and hence both 錦絵 and 錦画 would be pronounced "nishikie". KoreanKorean is generally romanized in McCune-Reischauer (MR). However, other romanizations are shown as received, including those based on the system introduced in 2000 by ROK's Ministry of Culture and Tourism (MCT). For example, where MR would have Kim Il Sŏng for 김일성 (金日成), MCT would have Gim Il Seong. Place and personal names better known in other spellings are usually shown as such, e.g., Seoul rather than Sŏul (MR) for 서울, and Kim Il Song or Kim Il Sung for Kim Il Sŏng (MT). The breve used in MR to differentiate some vowels is sometimes omitted, especially in common words like hangul (한글 MR hangŭl, MCT hangeul). When romanized from Japanese texts, Korean place and personal names will be shown first in Sino-Japanese, hence Keijyau (けいじゃう in older kana orthography) or Keijō (けいじょう in present kana orthography) for 京城 (경성 MR Kyŏngsŏng, MCT Gyeongseong), and Kin Nissei (金日成) or Kimu Iruson (キム・イルソン). The personal names of Koreans in Japan, or of Japanese or others who prefer the Sino-Japanese or mixed Sino-Japanese and Japanese readings of their putatively Korean names, will be shown as such. For example, Tei Taikin (鄭大均 てい・たいきん Tei Taikin), except when Tei himself used Chung Daekyun or another spelling, and Cho Yoshinori or Yoshinori Cho (張賢徳 ちょう・よしのり Chō Yoshinori). VietnameseOnly a few Vietnamese expressions appear on this site. Most are personal and place names with linguistic roots in Chinese. The Chinese characters historically used to write them have at times been shown. When transliterating from Japanese sources, the received or implied Sino-Japanese readings are shown first. For example, from 761 to 767, Abe no Nakamaro (阿倍仲麻呂 698-770), who went to China in 717 and became an official of the Tang court, was posted for six years to the city in Annam that was later called Tonkin (東京 C. Tongking, Tonking, V. Dong Kinh, Đông Kinh), and still later Hanoi (河内 C. Hanoi, V. Ha Noi, Hà Nội). As the Annamese city was still referred to as 東京 in 1868 when Edo become Tōkyō, written with the same characters, which mean "eastern capital", some writers and publishers apparently used 東亰, a graphic variation of 東京, to differentiate Japan's new capital from Tonkin (see Tonichi mastheads: The character of calligraphy in the Articles section of News Nishikie. |
TechnicalAll files on Yosha Bunko have been compiled on a text editor. I do not use an html editor or webpage builder. Though I continue to use some tags that most webpage designers have long since abandoned, the script is simple and organized and will be recognized by all browsers capable of handling legacy script. Most large tables of statistics were first created as Excel spreadsheets then converted to html using Excel's html converter. The table components of the converted files were then cut and pasted into my own article templates and sometimes otherwise modified. Cascading style sheets (css)The earliest versions of the original Yosha Research website used frames. The next designs used frames with cascading style sheets. The present design uses only flat files controlled by a single cascading style sheet. Some of the files appear to have frames, but they are really flat files made to appear like frames. All html files on Yosha Bunko websites are controlled by a single css style sheet on the root directory of the website. An article served as an html file will properly display only it is properly associated with this style sheet. Image filesAn image related to an html file will display with the file only if it is in an "images" folder properly associated with folder containing the html file. Pdf filesIn principle I do not serve pdf or other self-contained files from Yosha Bunko websites. However, a pdf files of scans of pages from newspapers have been provided as downloaded from other, attributed sources. These files require only an Adobe Reader to view. Scripting, validation, and stylingScriptingAll Yosha Bunko webpages have been produced with UltraEdit -- a code editor which at its core is a plain text editor for programmers and writers -- which I began using from one of its earliest versions in the late 1990s. I also compose all my notes, and drafts of articles and stories, and otherwise work almost exclusively with plain text files. I used Word only if I am writing for someone who requires a formatted manuscript, and then only after I have substantially drafted the manuscript in UltraEdit. All the webpage designs are mine. All hypertext markup language (html) scripting -- except for the scripting of a few tables, charts, and graphs created by Excel, and a couple of JavaScript widgets -- is mine. The page that serves as the entry to each website includes a JavaScript mouse-over image changer. The documentation on these pages attributes the JavaScript to its author and discloses that I have modified the script for my own purposes, ValidationAll but a few of the pages with the following icon at the bottom have been validated through W3C's Markup Validation Service for HTML 4.01 Transitional.
The exceptions are pages with higher level markup not included in XHTML 1.0 Transitional, such as Excel-generated script, and pages that include non-Shift JIS characters. When I am able to identify non-Shift JIS characters, I enter the characters in Unicode. Otherwise, the page remains unvalidated. Browsers are robust, however, and will render non-validated older or later script if not corrupted. Currently, I validate Yosha Bunko pages as follows.
StylingThe cascading style sheet (css), which controls all elements of style in a webpage design, is mine. Most of the classes, which define the elements of style, are mine, though many have been inspired by styles I've seen and adapted from other websites. All the designs of all pages are controlled by the same style sheet, which has been validated by W3C's CSS Validation Service at Level 3. Languages and codingMost articles on Yosha Bunko websites are in English. The default script for all Yosha Bunko web files, however, is Shift JIS (Japan Industrial Standard). Characters not included in Shift JIS -- including older Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese characters; simplified Chinese graphs, Korean hangŭl, and Vietnamese romanization; Thai and Myanmar scripts; alphabetic letters with diacritics; and various non-linguistic symbols -- are embedded in html files using the following kinds of script. Sequences like &#name; where "name" is a group of letters representing a symbol or graph. For example, the string &#amp; generates an "ampersand" (&). Unicode numeric character references (NCRs) like &#N; where N is a number -- written N when a decimal number but xN when a hexadecimal number. I have generally converted hexadecimal Unicode formulations like U+N to decimal. For example, since Shift JIS does not include the second-person pronoun 你, the graph U+4F60 (你) could be produced with an NCR string written 你 (hexadecimal), but I have generally used the formulation 你 (decimal). If characters do not appear on your browser, go to the Encoding submenu on the View menu and look for either Japanese Auto-Select or Japanese Shift-JIS. If such options do not appear, or do not seem to work, then you may need to download and/or install appropriate multilingual add-on features. MyanmarThe standard Japanese version of Firefox which I use includes fonts for all of the above East and Southeast Asian languages except Myanmar. For Myanmar I installed the Myanmar TrueType font set provided by Myanmar Unicode & NLP Research Center [dead link]. Whereas strings of complex Thai script properly render on my browser, for some reason Myanmar graphs -- such as ေ (-e) သ (th-) ွ (-w-) း (first tone), representing "thwe" (thway) and meaning "blood" -- remain discrete. Browsers and monitorsThe visual appearance of all Yosha Bunko webpages has been confirmed using Firefox and a wide-screen monitor. I have personally confirmed some content through Internet Explorer but not Safari. A few files include JavaScript slide shows and other dynamic features. Since these are client-side programs, you must enable your browser to run JavaScript in order to view their effects. All Yosha Bunko webpages are designed to stretch or shrink to fit a screen. Most tables, too, will flow, but some are fixed-width. Some older pages are best viewed on a monitor set to 800 x 600 pixels. More recent pages are best viewed at 1600 x 900. DisclaimersAll Yosha Bunko websites are publicly accessible sites. By entering and exploring any Yosha Bunko site, visitors understand and accept the following principles. (1) Anyone who visits a publicly accessible website assumes all responsibility for personal intellectual and emotional consequences of viewing the content. (2) Providing a link to an external website (a) does not certify the legality of the website in the visitor's local community, (b) does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information found on the website, and (c) does not imply endorsement or approval of the viewpoints, products, or services reflected or offered by the website. ContactCritiques, corrections, suggestions and other feedback, and queries concerning any Yosha Bunko content, are always welcome. Please click the Contact button for how to contact Yosha Bunko. |
