Japanese Literature discussion

I hereby want to offer my help for those who need any edits to be done on Japanese literature titles (Japanese language material is fine too).

If you have requests for edits to be made to books on GR and you're looking for a GR librarian, feel free to post here. I'll try to make the edits asap.

Thanks, Carola. What are your thoughts on this problem?

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...

"Ō no Yasumaro" is of course family name Ō and personal name Yasumaro. But in an alphabetical listing by author, Goodreads then parses the name as "Yasumaro, Ō no".

Should the author's name be listed as "Ō, Yasumaro" to avoid this issue?

Japanese names are always an issue :( I can't count the number of times I've had to correct them, usually switching family name and first name around. Even on famous books.

I thiiiink I fixed this one. Can you check if it's showing up correctly on your shelf, if you've shelved it?

Goodreads automatically generates the display name for book shelves in a "last name, first name" format, but they do give the option to change this in the backoffice.

Cool. That did it. It's now "Ō no Yasumaro" alphabetically as well.

Thanks

I have another one:

The Japanese Sword: A Comprehensive Guide

the author's last name should be "Sato" not "Soto". ;)

(i would've noticed even if he didn't have the same last name as me. it's right on the cover. ;) )

thanks!

fixed it ;)

Excellent! Thanks so much, Christian.

Not so much a book edit, but some days I wish I could filter by language when looking at the full list of an author's works.

Bill wrote: "Not so much a book edit, but some days I wish I could filter by language when looking at the full list of an author's works."

I agree... same thing when searching among editions of the same work!

Same! :( GR doesn't seem too eager to change that, sadly...

I'm currently reading the Sanuki no Suke Nikki, and its listings on GR are a mess. The author's name is Fujiwara no Nagako, who is known by her court title Sanuki no Suke (The assistant palace attendant whose father was previously governor of sanuki). The title on the spine is The Emperor Horikawa Diary, which I don't think is a good title, since he didn't write the diary. The translator is Jennifer Brewster, who also wrote an excellent, long introduction to the work.

GR entry 1623432 is the same ISBN as my edition. The author's name displays wrong (Suke, Sanuki no), and the translator is uncredited.

GR entry 1623523 should be linked to it. It has the correct publisher and date of translation, so it must be the same edition.

Yes, I know. I find it hard not to be pedantic about pre-modern Japanese literature. My opinion is if we're not pedantic enough about things far outside our culture, descriptions of them can rapidly become incomprehensible.

Hi Bill, I tried to fix entry 1623432 as you pointed and based on what I could find about that ISBN. Can you confirm the cover corresponds? I opted for the tittle 'The Emperor Horikawa Diary', because that's what the cover says, but I added the original title in the original title field!

I'm not sure if entry 1623523 is the same or another edition. Seems like this one is from Australian National University, Research School of Social Sciences, with a different ISBN... but published in the same year?

Yes, that's the cover I have. IIRC Jennifer Brewster was at Australian National University. Perhaps it was printed by the university press and also had a wider release from the Hawaii publisher.

Thanks!

Could someone link these? They're the same book with different titles.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7...

Done!

Could someone merge these two authors?

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

Thanks

Done, Bill! The total number of distinct works doesn't appear to have changed though (and I didn't take note of any title from the Namba page, oops). Can you confirm that it worked?

All good. Someone had apparently added the second author (with a slightly different transliteration) for a translation of three of the author's books. All three books of those books were also under the first author.

I don't know if this is the place to post about this, but Otogizōshi: The Fairy Tale Book of Dazai Osamu is listed as first being published in 2011 (when the translation was published) instead of 1945.

Tim: what do you mean by "listed"?

Tim wrote: "I don't know if this is the place to post about this, but Otogizōshi: The Fairy Tale Book of Dazai Osamu is listed as first being published in 2011 (when the translation was published) instead of 1..."

Fixed!

Never mind. My apologies.

Here's another one (interestingly, one we read for the club). Some Prefer Nettles by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, is currently listed as being published in 1955. Every other site and resource I can find says 1929.

Also, I know A Quiet Place by Seicho Matsumoto was not published in 2013, but I can't find an exact date for that one (I know it was the 1970s, but I keep finding conflicting years).

Fixed. This site says A Quiet Place was published in 1975, so I used that.

Edit: nope, according to Japanese Wikipedia it was 1971.

Carola,

I am reading a paper copy of Shield of Straw by Kazuhiro Kiuchi. ISBN 978-1-941220-55-9. The page count here on GR, 320, is incorrect. It has 236 pages. Can you update the page #s when you gave time? Thank you!

On that same note, Shield of Straw was originally published in 2004, not 2016.

Tim wrote: "On that same note, Shield of Straw was originally published in 2004, not 2016."

Perhaps but this edition from Vertical was published in 2016, so the original pub date should be added in a parenthetical rather than changing the pub date of this release.

Carol wrote: "Tim wrote: "On that same note, Shield of Straw was originally published in 2004, not 2016."

Perhaps but this edition from Vertical was published in 2016, so the original pub date should be added i..."

Sorry I missed the latest posts: just fixed Shield of Straw.

Christian wrote: "Carol wrote: "Tim wrote: "On that same note, Shield of Straw was originally published in 2004, not 2016."

Perhaps but this edition from Vertical was published in 2016, so the original pub date sho..."

Thank you, Christian!

Kono Taeko (family name: Kono) is showing up as Taeko, Kono in My Books. It looks like she needs a name sort exception.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

Bill wrote: "Kono Taeko (family name: Kono) is showing up as Taeko, Kono in My Books. It looks like she needs a name sort exception.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show..."

Fixed!

The Dark Room was first published in 1970, but the goodreads entry says 1975.

Bill wrote: "The Dark Room was first published in 1970, but the goodreads entry says 1975."

Done!

I think I did something I shouldn't have... I added an edition to a book that is probably a clone of an edition already listed.

I added suki tte iwaseru houhou because I didn't see a Japanese language edition listed. It turns out suki-tte-iwaseru-h-h has the same ISBN as the copy I own in Japanese, so that second book must be in Japanese.

Please merge these two authors:

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

Fixed and fixed!

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

Whoever typed this author's name in put it family-name-first (family: Yasuoka, personal: Shotarou). I think it should be reversed so GR knows which is his family name, and so it sorts correctly.

Here's another: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

Same problem: family name listed first.

Yeah, I know, I'm repeating myself. After I found the first one I looked through My Books and keep seeing cases of this.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

Family name: Oda, personal name: Sakunosuke.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

Family name: Shimamoto, personal name: Kazuhiko

All done! Thanks Bill, those were all duplicate names as well, so they were merged in the process.

Thanks!

Interesting that they were all duplicates. I wonder how they all ended up on my shelf.

Bill wrote: "Thanks!

Interesting that they were all duplicates. I wonder how they all ended up on my shelf."

Probably just people not taking much time to see if the author already exists under a different spelling when creating a new book. It takes 5s to fix so keep em coming!

This author's name is backwards:
P & JK

I think these two entries need to be linked together, but I'm not sure how to tell if they are already except by looking at the various covers.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

Has the first one (P&JK) been fixed? It seems correct...
For the second one, I guess it's better not to merge them, because one has other stories included and the other does not (from what I can tell from the title)

The author of P&JK sorts as マキ, 三次 so the name must have been entered backwards.

You're probably right on the House of the Sleeping Beauties. I couldn't read the Spanish description to know if it contained "other stories".

Back for more...

This author's name is backwards:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

And should then be merged with this entry for the same author:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

Bill wrote: "Back for more...

This author's name is backwards:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

And should then be merged with this entry for the same author:
https://www.good..."

Sorry for the delay, I don't get notifications for this thread for some reason... anyway, fixed!

Hi! Hoping this is the right forum to bring this up.

Started the June read for Evil and the Mask today, and noticed that there's an error on the book description: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

It says the main character's name is Fuminori, but that's the author's name. The main character is Fumihiro.