scholarly/proper conventions for names?

[Tanya Calamoneri]

Hi there -

How have you all solved the Ono Kazuo and Ono Yoshito confusion when writing about both of them and only mentioning last name...do you include first names for clarity?  I started referring to Yoshito only as Yoshito but my Japanese professor keeps correcting me...

The Onos just use first names in Kazuo Ono's World but that doesn't seem to work in academia, no?

Same problem with the Tamanos - do you write Tamano Koichi and Tamano Hiroko every time just to be clear who you are talking about? 

Seems like a dumb question but it also seems really cumbersome to include their full names for the number of times I am mentioning them. 

Any advice??

thanks!
Tanya

--
PhD Candidate, Presidential Fellow
Temple University Department of Dance

Artistic Director, Company SoGoNo
www.sogono.org
718-207-3307

[Katherine Mezur]

I look forward to others' responses. In a chapter, I use the last name only after the first use of the whole name. When I need to clarify or after so many pages, I may use the full name again. When I know it might be confusing  (in one paragraph with both Ohno's)  you might have to use both full names, but in a section where you are clearly talking about Ohno Kazuo only then do Ohno only. You can also build it into your sentence, "the older Ohno...."  I do not know what Bruce did most recently in his book. In my onnagata book, I had the advantage of roman numerals, like Iwai Hanshirô V that became Hanshirô V...

You should do a "disclaimer" in first footnote or somewhere early on that says you are using the Japanese order of names except in certain circumstances were the artist prefers or is known by their "first name then last name" order. 

Note: I was told by one scholar that you can state in a footnote the method that you are using for the entire text, "with exceptions." Then when you have an exception you footnote it with your explanation.   

Look at Japanese texts too, like the history books by Ozasa Yoshio, Nihon gendai engeki-shi: Taisho, Showa shoki hen ... 1979), see what he did. 

best k

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From: Tanya Calamoneri <tcala...@gmail.com>
To: butos-corp...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sun, February 19, 2012 4:47:48 PM
Subject: scholarly/proper conventions for names?

[Tanya Calamoneri]

Very helpful, thanks Katherine!!

Sent from my iphone, sorry about typos

Tanya Calamoneri

www.sogono.org

718.207.3307

[Bruce Baird]

Sorry about being late replying to this, but whenever I talked to Yoshito, he asked that I call him Yoshito to distinguish between him and his father, and often in conversation with other people in the butoh world, I noticed the same practice, so when I wrote I adopted the same technique and called him Yoshito and reserved Ono for Kazuo.  I put a note in the beginning saying that i was using japanese order with family name first, and then the first time I used Yoshito, I flagged it in a footnote.

BB

PS.  About the Tamano's, I didn't have to deal with this, so I didn't come up with a solution, but in this case, I would assume that you just have to bite the bullet and use full names for them, because there is no established practice in Japan of referring to one of them by a given name and one of them a family name.  Without that precedent, the American academy would seem to require the usage of family names.  The same issue could come up with the Mikami's as well.

(btw, due to a felicitous mistake on my part, for ages everyone in Japan assumed that Bruce was my family name and called me Bruce-san.  I kind of liked that.)

PPS.  Please have your libraries order my book so that it can come out in paperback faster (and so you can benefit from my _remarkable_ erudition ;-).  Thanks.

Bruce Baird
Assistant Professor
Asian Languages and Literatures
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Butô, Japanese Theater, Intellectual History

717 Herter Hall
161 Presidents Drive
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Amherst, MA 01003-9312
Phone: 413-577-4992
Fax: 413-545-4975
ba...@asianlan.umass.edu

[Megan V Nicely]

Tanya, so exciting you are in the home stretch! Do it!!!

I have a related question, more on the culturally appropriate end. My own dissertation, while discussing butoh in one chapter, is more rooted in American postmodern dance. Because of this basis, I have been using Japanese names in the way people use them here conversationally...i.e., Akira Kiasai, not Kasai Akira. I was going to make a footnote indicating this choice on my part, but is this offensive in any way, or should I use the Japanese order? I was recently told to use "Asian" rather than "Eastern" by a Japanese scholar here and felt totally embarrassed, don't want to do that again!

Thanks, and Bruce I will ask the library here for sure to get your word on butoh.

Megan

-- 

Megan Nicely
mnd...@earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~mndance/

[Tanya Calamoneri]

I like that choice. Seems simple. Thanks for the thoughts!

Sent from my iphone, sorry about typos

Tanya Calamoneri

www.sogono.org

718.207.3307

[Tanya Calamoneri]

Haha - missed that end part. Ok Bruce-San, I will tell Temple to buy your book! ;)

Sent from my iphone, sorry about typos

Tanya Calamoneri

www.sogono.org

718.207.3307

[Rosemary Candelario]

Thanks for bringing this up, Megan. I've thought about this a lot, especially when people hand me those 2-sided business cards. On the English side, people almost always list their own names given then family. If they themselves are using that order in English, who am I to turn around and say I am using Japanese convention of family then given name when I am writing in english and not primarily for a japanese studies audience?

I think I would advocate for a system that followed self-identification and usage rather than a one-size fits all policy, but that's probably an academic no no. For example, I always write Hijikata Tatsumi no matter what, but think that Kazuo Ohno is more appropriate because that is how he's widely known in the US and Europe, and that's also how Yoshito talks about him, and it's what their English website uses. On that train of thought, that's why I always use butoh rather than buto with the diacritic - because that's the common spelling in the dance world. Of course for those of us who are more housed in area studies than dance, I understand the need to use correct and consistent Japanese practices and transliterations.

Just my 7.5 (probably ignorant) cents.

-R.

P.S. Go Tanya, go! Call me if you need some cheerleading to get you to the finish line!

Sent from my futuristic hand-held communication device

[Tanya Calamoneri]

Thanks Rosemary!!  I fedexed it to my advisor yesterday!!  I already know that one person on my committee - the Japanese philosophy dude - wants a bunch of revisions but it's ok, I'll do my best and it's up to my own advisor in the end. I'm so close!  Can't wait. 

Have a great workshop! I forwarded on to my student list. Hope you get a full house. I'm not able to come sadly. 

How much longer are you in town? We need to get coffee. I work at BAM full time now...but after work some time in bklyn would be grand!

Xoxo t

Sent from my iphone, sorry about typos

Tanya Calamoneri

www.sogono.org

718.207.3307

[Rosemary]

Yay!!! I'm doing a happy dance for you in my chair!

Thanks for forwarding my workshop info on. I'm looking forward to it.

And yes, let's grab a drink! I will buy you a celebratory drink. I'm staying at Nostrand on the A now, but am back and forth to Manhattan for work. Next week MW evenings are totally free, and Tuesday after 8. Do any of those work for you?

-R.

--

www.evesapple.blogspot.com

[Rosemary]

Oops, sorry everyone for doing social planning on the list! -R.

--

www.evesapple.blogspot.com

[Bruce Baird]

Rosemary and Megan,

I like the idea of avoiding a one-size fits all policy, but would want to make the following modulation to what you are saying.   I don't know that I would necessarily follow name card practice.  That can be based on something as ephemeral as "what someone told me," and not necessarily indicate much of a strong preference, or much self-identification.

I would want to consider several things.  One is of course cultural respect.  The second is primary area of activity.  The third is past usage.  Often, we are dealing with people who have been more active (and lived longer) outside of  Japan than in Japan.  Objectively speaking, the person I know primarily as Murobushi Ko, has probably spent far more of his career being known as Ko Murobushi.  So I feel much differently about Koichi Tamano and Ko Murobushi, than I do about Tatsumi Hijikata.

When I was trying to figure out how to treat Ono (with macron), vs Ohno, I sent out a bunch of related emails to a list serve for modern jpn art asking the same question, it turned out that the 'h' in these names follows from newspaper pronunciation conventions, but can be confusing in that if you had the name Ooi, and romanized it Ohi, it wouldn't be clear if the name should be pronounced Oh-i, or O-hi, and in the case of the prize winning author Oe, no one ever romanized as Ohe, even though that would be consistent with the usage.  Finally, I just wrote to the Ono's and asked them if they had a preference, or if they had specifically chosen Ohno, and I got back the response that I should do whatever I felt most comfortable with.  That was a strange response which didn't fully answer my original question, but did make me think that in fact, they hadn't been proactive about "Ohno" in the beginning, but just ended up there.  So I ended up going with Ono with the macron, because I have always felt that "Ohno" suggests too much Munch's The Scream.  That is, for me, the cultural respect argument trumped the past usage argument since they didn't seem committed to it, and saw a chance to sway practice. 

For butoh/buto, I went with butoh, because the east asian librarian here told me that otherwise people might not be able to find it.  And that is important too.  You want to be part of a debate, but if no one can find your contribution, your voice won't be heard.  In time, there will be robust library of congress headings and cross-headings, and the choice won't matter much.

BB

[Rosemary]

As always, really appreciate your input, Bruce! -R.

--

www.evesapple.blogspot.com

[Tanya Calamoneri]

Oh this shoots my whole justification Bruce! I wrote in my diss footnotes "following scholars Bruce Baird and Susan Blakely Klein, I use the buto (w macron) form.". It also used to say something about the correct Romanization, but I think Michael convinced me that was a little faulty. 

Maybe academic docs, buto w macron and books published for a wider audience butoh so they can be found...

Thanks for all the thoughts everyone. I'll sort it out, and hopefully I'll be able to send it to all of you sometime soonish. 

Best,

Tanya

Sent from my iphone, sorry about typos

Tanya Calamoneri

www.sogono.org

718.207.3307

[Tanya Calamoneri]

Thanks!!

Monday night could work at 6:30/:45? My office is right by the A at Jay st metro tech. I'm in a satellite office for the moment bc they are out of space. But I think we can find something around there.  Let me know!  Xo t

Sent from my iphone, sorry about typos

Tanya Calamoneri

www.sogono.org

718.207.3307

[Michael Sakamoto]

Oh, no, was it all my fault?! (he he, maybe...:)

I use Ohno and butoh spelling because my audience is/will be primarily American and Western, where both are the most common spellings.

I also use Japanese syntax names for practically everyone because those are their actual names, which I think personally and academically is always a sounder and more respectful way to go.

My two yen,

M.

 

Michael Sakamoto
Performance and media artist
Faculty Advisor, MFA-Interdisciplinary Arts, Goddard College
Adjunct Faculty, Department of Theatre, California Institute of the Arts
email: michael...@yahoo.com
site: www.michaelsakamoto.com
blog: anemptyroom1.blogspot.com

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From: Tanya Calamoneri <tcala...@gmail.com>

To: "butos-corp...@googlegroups.com" <butos-corp...@googlegroups.com>
Cc: "butos-corp...@googlegroups.com" <butos-corp...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Friday, February 24, 2012 8:07 PM
Subject: Re: scholarly/proper conventions for names?

[Katherine Mezur]

ok, just had a great talk with Megan last night at Kan Katsura/Katsura Kan's performance in SF. I just want to chime in and refer back to my first email. I also have gone with butoh for many reasons. Our conversation lead to using footnotes to explain choices and why, and to having an index with romanized names with correct kanji. I think we sometimes need to do the extra (using both names, footnoting, adding Kanji in indexes etc.) because we are doing transcultural studies and we have to reflect that enterprise in the extra work of clarifying translation and name use etc.  I also like how BB put cultural respect first and like his anecdote about the Ôno's, that your writing can be activist, in the sense of how the handling of names and naming is political and can change things. Even my Japanese "subjects" were impressed that I had their "real" Japanese kanji names listed in my first book. I also ran into this strange circumstance when I had to introduce my Japanese colleagues on a panel last year at PSi: here I was with Uchino Tadashi and Hayato Kosuge both with their different ways of being "international Japanese" so then, the audience had to come up afterwards and ask me for the "real" last names....because on their powerpts they had done the reverse order of their preferred introduction.....and frankly, sometimes I do not know the correct first or family name for many male names... 

In writing, consistency rules, but with "explained" exceptions....

best K
 

Dr. Katherine Mezur
Research Fellow
International Research Center
"Interweaving Performance Cultures"
Freie University Berlin

Residence
1100 Miller Ave.
Berkeley, CA 94708
Tel. and Fax: 510-845-0554

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From: Bruce Baird <ba...@asianlan.umass.edu>
To: butos-corp...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Fri, February 24, 2012 7:16:14 PM

Subject: Re: scholarly/proper conventions for names?

[Katherine Mezur]

Hi, I am working on panel on female bodies undoing traditions... for CORD, of course we can interpret this wildly..... due the 27th. Get back to me asap if interested in presenting, chairing, or discussing.  K 

[Bruce Baird]

Sorry to be so long with the thread.  

Tanya,  You can always cite Miryram Sas as your authoritative source.  (Oddly, Miryam and I flip-flopped on buto/h and O/hno, with her opting for the recent library of congress heading buto (with macron--which maybe indicates that over time, people won't have a problem finding buto) and going with Ohno, while I chose to be "activist" (to use Katherine's word) about Ono, and not about butoh.  

I don't know about your conversation with Michael, but it is true that there is no such thing as correct romanization.  The modified Hepburn system we currently use in much of American studies of Japan, is designed for english speakers so does things like sa, shi, su, se so, and ta, chi, tsu, te, to, but if you look at the Japanese, its not clear why in the case of shi, chi, and tsu, there should be three letters while there is only two for all the rest, so some romanization systems just write out sa, si, su, se, so, ta, ti, tu, te, to.  To native english speakers, this looks weird, but if you don't start out with English as your first language, then you will find the second more intuitive.  

Counter to my point about people possibly not knowing about their options, there are also some creative Romanizations out there.  I ran into a photographer at the Ono studio whose card read, Lieu-ichi.  Normally, I would have expected, Ryu-ichi, but he dealt with foreigners a lot and got sick of people trying to pronounce his name Reeyuu-ichi, and realized that the the French 'lieu' as in 'in lieu of" was a much closer approximation for english speakers (as well as French speakers).  I have seen other people also play with the r/l in their own romanization because the Japanese that we romanize as 'r' under the modified Hepburn is somewhere in the middle (almost like rolling your r once in spanish)

bb