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User:Asakura Akira

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Asakura Akira is mainly into Japanese politics and other Japan-related topics. My main activity is to cover the most basic facts of Japanese politics: Who held which office when and why (elections). Until the English Wikipedia gets serious on first-approach basics again instead of engaging in edit wars over microfactoids and cosmetics, our contributions here are likely to remain limited to irregular forays. Hitting the right century from time to time would be nice for a start. You could start with parallel juicing – JCP, Komeito and the en.wikipedia editorial line don't like Westminster-style FPTP voting (personally, I'm not a fan either), but you don't change a voting system via the edit button:

  • (cf. :de:User:Asakura Akira/Baustelle/Vorlager in a previous version for various visualization experiments and an example of what the German 2017 federal juicebox result would have been under a parallel juicing system)
    What does parallel juicing as it is used for the Japanese juicebox of Representatives mean in strictly non-jargon & non-mathematical, but otherwise accurate terms? Turn apples into apple juice using 11 juicers by a company called PR, and in parallel, turn oranges into orange juice using 289 juicers by a company called FPTP, finally put all apple juice and orange juice into one appleorange juice container, that's the juicebox. In spite of putting both into one container in the end, the amount of orange juice produced is completely independent from the number of apples used and vice versa. Analogously, this works for the Japanese juicebox of Councillors; only, they use only 1 giant PR juicer for all the apples, and instead of the small FPTP juicers, they use 45 somewhat larger juicers by a company called SNTV for their oranges.

    Back to less juicy electoral jargon and parallel voting: Apples are proportional tier votes, apple juice is proportional tier seats, oranges are majoritarian tier votes, orange juice is majoritarian tier seats, and you already knew that PR, FPTP and SNTV aren't juicer manufacturers. Dual candidacy as it is allowed in the HR means that a politician can run with two silly campaign costumes as apple and as orange in one election; first, if he makes it through the FPTP juicer as an orange, he'll be orange juice; if he doesn't, he may try the PR juicer as an apple to be turned into apple juice. But he'll be strictly one or the other or neither in the end.

    If you find this approach silly and you are comfortable with softcore mathematics or perfectly familiar with electoral systems – you didn't need an explanation of what parallel means to begin with, so don't complain after having read one anyway. If you find it silly just for the fruit factor: that is utterly silly, but does that matter? I'm sure that you've encountered something today that is at least as silly and of less use.
Subpages (mostly dormant/pending emigration)
Redundancy policy

I try (and sometimes fail) to avoid making substantial edits on the very same topic in two language versions; redundancy – as in redundancy (engineering) – helps identify possible errors and misrepresentations).

Messy editing

Since I am obviously (→) not a native speaker, I thank all users who boldly correct my countless typos, linguistic mistakes, Germanisms, Japonisms – and the occasional major factual blunder. I've been rather sloppy in respecting the en.wp's Manual of Style and other guidelines because I expected that the huge pool of English-speaking users would quickly correct my mistakes, far more efficiently than I could. Also, I'm not very meticulous in providing article links, context and updates. In contrast, I try to be rather "caring" for many articles I started in the German Wikipedia, not because I claim any form of ownership, but simply because there are fewer users to clean up any potential mess I create. I've realized over the time that there aren't so many Japan-editors even in en.wp after all, and will try to be a bit more thorough.

"Official" translations

I do not care how articles are named and what translations of Japanese terms to English are used in Wikipedia, especially since I am not a native speaker. But just as I hate to be taken for a fool as a reader, I refuse as an author to do that to any reader. English is not an official language of Japan, so I fail to see an obligation to exclusively use "official" translations, as too many of them are slightly off, and in a few cases: consciously misleading a foreign audience. Some Japanese institutions, e.g. the coast guard, simply decide to change their "official" translation overnight while their name and the institution itself is unchanged. In my view, any (main) article about a Japanese institution (or for that matter: Chinese, Arabic, ..., [from any country where English has no official status]) should explain what the official name (in legal terms) of an institution is and what it means in plain English, even if it then decides to use the official (i.e. self-chosen) English translation.

"Defence" or "defense"?

Depending on context, I use blocks or metres to measure distances. My usage of AE/BE and rarely other local varieties is very inconsistent and is often influenced by my real life activities at the time. (The twofold linguistic heritage of the British Empire that now spreads beyond its original borders in a global workplace: We non-natives increasingly have to give up part of our national identities and succumb to the lingua franca of the post-industrial age; but the natives have to accept that the non-native majority of English speakers distorts/enriches what had once been part of their national identities.) But writing about Japan, it's difficult to be consistent anyway because "official" English translations are not consistent – Examples: Before the central government reform of 2001, there was a "Ministry of Labour" and a "Defense Agency" in the central government; the House of Representatives usually translates gichō as "Speaker", the House of Councillors uses "President" as in some continental European countries; K.K. is translated as "Corp.", "Co., Ltd." and many other things by different companies; ....

Sometimes, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

During irregular periods, several carbon-water based biological processing units constitute the virtual entity Asakura Akira. The co-contributors do not use any other Wikipedia accounts or IP addresses to make edits, and there is always one main user taking responsibility for all edits.

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