Talk:International marriage (Japan)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 1 September 2020 and 14 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Perperwtl.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 00:39, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wikify

I notice someone tagged this with wikify. I can tell it needs work, but that said, I don't really know what specifically, so if the tagger could come forward for some suggestions as to the main areas that need amending? Tyciol (talk) 20:42, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Merger proposal

I propose that Japan foreign marriage be merged into International marriage (Japan). I think that the content in the 'Japan foreign marriage' article can easily be explained in the context of International marriage (Japan), and the International marriage (Japan) article is of a reasonable size that the merging of 'Japan foreign marriage' will not cause any problems as far as article size or undue weight is concerned. 78.148.77.86 (talk) 14:36, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

• Support: I proposed this at the Japan Wikiproject talk page six months ago, but I am embarrassed to say I did not do anything to follow up after that. In that link I discuss other moves and mergers surrounding the topic of marriage in Japan. AtHomeIn神戸 (talk) 04:34, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
• Support - Summoned by bot. The pages should be merged (I'm actually surprised they haven't been already) but Japan foreign marriage needs to be trimmed down significantly by removing the unencyclopedic content, which has been addressed with the essay tag. Meatsgains (talk) 02:24, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
• Support - Agree with the above. Hirumeshi (talk) 03:40, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
• Strong oppose - International marriage (Japan) deals with regulations and procedures for international marriage in Japan; Japan foreign marriage (an awkwardly titled article) is about a recent marriage trend of Japanese men importing foreign brides. These are totally seperate subjects and should remain so. If anything, maybe Japan foreign marriage could be merged into Mail-order bride. ミーラー強斗武 (StG88ぬ会話) 08:39, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

Also, an editor back in 2009 noted that the other article was poorly named and was confused with this article (see Talk:Japan foreign marriage#Title change). ミーラー強斗武 (StG88ぬ会話) 07:32, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

• Strong oppose "Japan foreign marriage" as it is known refers to a phenomenon where Japanese farmers began marrying foreign Asian brides and was supported and orchestrated by the local governments of the Japanese prefectures. It is not similar to "International marriage in Japan" apart from the fact that it involves Japanese nationals marrying foreigners. Should not be merged. (121.220.76.187 (talk) 05:40, 5 August 2017 (UTC))

Suspicious edits by ShinyAlbatross

ShinyAlbatross recently removed a lot of well sourced material from the article, including citations from Appleby (2014) and Asahiro Editorial Board; which he describes as "unsubstantiated".

These citations include verifiable HTML links, and a page number for Appleby. This content has been subject to groundless removal before; it was repeatedly yanked from the article by IP spammers even though it was repeatedly reviewed by other editors; e.g. AbsoluteWissen

With that in mind, we may very well have a bad faith editor on our hands. I suggest keeping a closer eye on this article and others frequented by ShinyAlbatross. 2603:8080:1F00:518:FC41:3866:EC40:EA86 (talk) 02:25, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

@AbsoluteWissen, Mojo Hand, and JeffSpaceman: 2603:8080:1F00:518:FC41:3866:EC40:EA86 (talk) 02:37, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Hello, I have explained my edits and there is nothing sneaky about them. The numbers I replaced were based on official Japanese government statistics, and there are more up-to-date numbers available from the official government site. I have done my research and I don't appreciate being accused of acting in bad faith.

I will give you some examples.

"Since 1965, the percentage of marriages to American women has declined precipitously, from 6% to 1%, which can be attributed to the long-term decline of the Japanese economy."

The number of marriages to American women has gone up. The percentage of marriages to American women has also gone up. You can verify this plainly for yourself using official statistics. The 6% -> 1% figure is when foreign marriages are the denominator — in other words, marriages to American women have not increased at the same pace as other foreign marriages. I don't see the point this is trying to make. What is "attributed to"?

"Since 2012, the number of marriages between Japanese citizens has declined every year, while the number of international marriages has remained stable."

This may have been true at the time of the article, but it was not true for the year 2019, nor 2022. So you might say that it was true for the period 2012-2018. But that's a strangely narrow window to look at – why not look at a wider range? If you choose the year 2006 (the year international marriage peaked) and go to the most recent year available, it's actually completely false. Or even leave it starting at 2012 – it's still false.

Also, the divorce section:

This section uses a divorce-to-marriage ratio as the basis to opine about marriage success with several national combinations. If you read the linked description, it becomes obvious what's wrong with this. It's simply bad statistics. It would only be true if all couples got married and then divorced in the same year, and everyone who didn't stayed married until the end.

To illustrate this point, let's say that instead of getting married and divorced in the same year, all the divorces happened after exactly 6 years (divorce statistics can be found here). That's pretty ridiculous, but a little more believable than everyone getting divorced immediately. If you look at the divorce-to-marriage ratio with this time interval, you get:

• Japanese–Japanese couples: 28.5%
• Japanese husband, American wife: 24.4%
• American husband, Japanese wife: 30.8%

This doesn't mean anything. But it's about as valid as the divorce section currently reads. To actually find out, you would need a cohort study.

Please restore my edits as they were carefully made. If you disagree with specific points I have made, please say why. ShinyAlbatross (talk) 05:02, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

"Since 1965, the percentage of marriages to American women has declined precipitously, from 6% to 1%, which can be attributed to the long-term decline of the Japanese economy."

The number of marriages to American women has gone up

Please read very carefully. The text you quoted says that the percentage has declined. Not the number. It doesn't matter what you think about the statistics from the Japanese government. CIte a secondary source that disagrees with this research. You can't do it so don't delete these sources from the article.

On Wikipedia we do not post our own research. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and our only business here is to summarize research. The sources cited in this article are extremely high quality; such as from Rutgers University. They appear to be accurately summarized and are as recent as 2021 and 2022. You can't delete these high quality references because you looked at some statistics and you think you "got it all right". Realistically however it's obvious you're trying to delete stuff from Wikipedia that you don't like. 2603:8080:1F00:518:951A:7555:650F:B4D8 (talk) 10:18, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

I have read carefully. The source cited says the "number" of marriages to American women has gone down. This is obviously a mistake. This number has gone up. Obviously the author meant percentage – but as a percentage of all marriages, it has also gone up. I am amenable including this statistic if it is less ambiguous what it's saying. I will suggest this wording:

Since 1965, the proportion of American women among foreign brides has declined, from 6% to 1%, which coincides with the abrupt decline in the Japanese economy in the 1990's. However, the percentage of marriages that are American brides increased during this period, but at a slower rate than other foreign nationalities.

We need to square the contradictory statements "the percentage of marriages to American women has declined precipitously" (current article) and "the percentage of marriages to American women has increased" (plainly seen from from the government statistics). The Rutgers source, if we are reading words strictly, is provably wrong, but we know what the author meant to say and at the very least need to disambiguate and add context. Otherwise, this article reads as too zoomed-in on cherry-picked figures and neglects the larger perspective.

Primary sources are not original research, nor is dividing two numbers (WP:CALC). Claims on Wikipedia should be true to the present, which they are not in the latter two of my examples. Secondary sources are better, but not if they are outdated or contradicted by primary sources.

The sections relying on the Asiro-affiliated magazine should be removed, for reasons I have stated. The source is just a fluffy industry magazine article, and it makes an obvious error. Its sources are listed as the same government statistics on yearly marriage and divorce, where we can easily verify the error.

To the extent I'm deleting things I don't like — I don't like false, outdated, and misleading information! Attacks on me personally are not welcome. ShinyAlbatross (talk) 17:56, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

WP:CALC only allows for routine calculations from a single source; it doesn't permit you to "add context" using a different source (and a primary one, at that).

This is what the Rutgers University source says, on page 44:

One trend that is specific to Japan is the diverse backgrounds of female labor migrants, who came mainly as "entertainers” not only from neighboring Asia, but later also from east- ern European and FSU countries, and Latin American and Caribbean countries. Kumagai (2015, 68) highlights this change when she points out that in 1965 the nationalities of foreign brides "were mostly comprised of North and South Koreans (79%), followed by Chinese (11.3%), and Americans (6%). Today the ethnic background of foreign brides has altered significantly. In 2012, these foreign brides came primarily from three regions in Asia, namely, China (41.7%), the Philippines (20.5%), and North and South Korea (17.5%)." At the same time the number of American brides decreased; this "coincided with the abrupt decline in the Japanese economy" in the 1990s (Kumagai 2015, 68)

So this is a high quality secondary source quoting another expert. It is not "outdated" and you're in no position to "prove" it wrong. On Wikipedia we just summarize what the highest quality peer-reviewed research says; we don't do our own hairbrained analysis. Right now this source appears to be quite accurately summarized. If you have a secondary source that says this is wrong, please add it to the article. Otherwise you should not delete or modify this content (or the divorce content) if all you're bringing to the table is your analysis of census data.

Per WP:OR: Policy: Wikipedia articles usually rely on material from reliable secondary sources. Articles may make an analytic, evaluative, interpretive, or synthetic claim only if it has been published by a reliable secondary source.2603:8080:1F00:518:E5F1:674:823F:214A (talk) 22:39, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Not sure why you're quoting the article, I've read it multiple times.

At this point, you're just being stubborn — which is not surprising, considering you started this conversation by accusing me of sockpuppetry, bad faith, going to my user page and threatening me with a ban, trying to summon others to form a brigade against me, following me to another page, reverting all my work there, and telling me I haven't read the sources (which I had, and you had not).

The idea that a primary source can't be used to clarify an ambiguous/imprecise statement from a secondary source, especially when it's the same primary source that the secondary source is relying on, is ridiculous. You can prefer secondary sources, sure, but primary sources have a place here.

I never claimed my edits were perfect, and yes, I am a new editor. But you haven't engaged thoughtfully with that, instead you deployed this knee-jerk response and refused to budge at all. Since you don't own this article, I'm not going to refrain from improving this page on your objections. You can either change your attitude and work productively, or frankly, you should leave. ShinyAlbatross (talk) 16:48, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

@ShinyAlbatross:The idea that a primary source can't be used to clarify an ambiguous/imprecise statement from a secondary source, especially when it's the same primary source that the secondary source is relying on, is ridiculous.

Except it's not ridiculous, it's Wikipedia policy. I'm going to quote WP:NOR again for you:

Policy: Wikipedia articles usually rely on material from reliable secondary sources. Articles may make an analytic, evaluative, interpretive, or synthetic claim only if it has been published by a reliable secondary source.

The secondary source you've mentioned isn't vage or ambiguous, it says very clearly what is written in the Wikipedia article. And this content has been restored multiple times in 2024 after people like you tried to remove it on similar baseless grounds. So it's highly advisable that you do not remove or alter this content again, or you'll probably be banned like they were. That's not a threat -- it's a prediction. You're also not using the same sources cited by these authors; they cite other researchers not census data. A Rainbow Footing It (talk) 23:20, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Not exactly a third opinion, but...

• I removed this entry from the third opinion noticeboard because the dispute is between more than two editors. Consider opening a thread at WP:DRN.

(SN: I find it interesting that a brand new IP already knows how to start a talk page discussion, tag other users, etc.) Erpert ^{blah, blah, blah...} 03:52, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

thanks for the input, I believe it's actually one user with a rotating IP. Will continue with my work on this page. ShinyAlbatross (talk) 20:48, 10 September 2024 (UTC)