The Japanese Wikipedia (ウィキペディア日本語版) is the Japanese edition of Wikipedia, a free, open-source online encyclopedia. Started on 11 May 2001, the edition attained the 200,000 article mark in April 2006 and the 500,000 article mark in June 2008. As of January 2025, it has almost 0 articles with active contributors, ranking fourth behind the English, French and German editions. As of September 2024, the Japanese Wikipedia is the world's second most visited Wikipedia language edition after the English Wikipedia; it has been the second most viewed Wikipedia during most periods since at least 2008. It has a high proportion of anonymous contributors and one of the lowest admin-to-user ratios of any language Wikipedia. The Japanese Wikipedia has been accused of historical revisionism by a number of scholars, especially its pages on World War II. Its culture has been described as hostile and heavily influenced by the right-wing textboard 2channel.

History

In March 2001, three non-English editions of Wikipedia were created, namely, the German, Catalan and Japanese Wikipedias. The original site address of the Japanese Wikipedia was http://nihongo.wikipedia.com and all pages were written in the Latin alphabet or romaji, as the software did not work with Japanese characters at the time. The home page also showed an early attempt at creating a vertical text. The first article was named "Nihongo no Funimekusu" (meaning "Phonemics of the Japanese language"). Until late December in that year, there were only two articles.

Awards

In September 2004, the Japanese Wikipedia was awarded the "2004 Web Creation Award Web-Person Special Prize" from the Japan Advertisers Association. This award, normally given to individuals for great contributions to the Internet in Japanese, was accepted by a long-standing contributor on behalf of the project.

Characteristics

The Japanese Wikipedia is different from the English Wikipedia in a number of ways.

Editing

Community

Policies

Culture

Andrew Lih has written that influence from 2channel resulted in many Japanese Wikipedia editors being unregistered and anonymous. Because of the lack of registered editors, Japanese Wikipedia editors as a whole interact less with the international Wikipedia community and the Wikimedia Foundation than editors of other Wikipedias do. Lih also wrote that Japanese Wikipedia editors are less likely to engage in edit wars than editors on Wikipedias of Western languages, and typically they would instead make alternative drafts of articles on their own userspaces. Jimmy Wales has pointed out at a conference that the Japanese Wikipedia is significantly more dominated by articles about pop culture than other Wikipedia projects, and according to one of his slides, "barely 20 percent" of the articles on the Japanese Wikipedia were about anything else. The Japanese Wikipedia is known to have relatively few moderators as of early March 2010. Nobuo Ikeda, a known public policy academic and media critic in Japan, has suggested an ongoing "2channel-ization" phenomenon on the Japanese Wikipedia. Ikeda argues that by allowing anonymous editing, the community spawns a type of culture seen in anonymous message boards such as 2channel, where hate speech, personal attacks and derogatory expressions are common, and also the source of entertainment. He also remarks on the "emotional-outlet" and "get rid of stress" aspects of Japanese Internet culture, where 90% of blogs are anonymous, a complete opposite of the U.S. where 80% of blogs are expressed under one's real name. Ikeda's arguments are not the only sources hinting cultural correlation, influence, overlapping users from 2channel. In 2006, Naoko Kizu (木津 尚子), a Japanese Wikipedian, stated that on the Japanese Wikipedia most people start out as page editors and uploaders of images, and that the majority of people continue to serve in those roles. Some people apply to become administrators. Kizu said "Unfortunately, some apply for this role out of a desire for power! And then are surprised when they get rejected." There are threads of textboards named "【百科事典】ウィキペディア第d刷【Wikipedia】" (lit. '[Encyclopedia] Wikipedia Part d Edition [Wikipedia]') related to the Japanese Wikipedia on 2channel. In these textboards, the Japanese Wikipedia community informally discuss with other editors anonymously. On Twitter, they use accounts associated with their username and "#jawp" for mentioning the Japanese Wikipedia.

Controversies

Attention was drawn to the Japanese Wikipedia article on Kozo Iizuka, which used to describe his accomplishments in detail, with no mention of how he killed a woman and her young daughter in the Higashi-Ikebukuro runaway car accident that made him a household name in Japan. An administrator applied protection to the article and later explained that the Japanese Wikipedia community takes legal risks arising from potential privacy violations very seriously, as there is no local chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation to support them in court.

Allegations of historical revisionism

In a 2018 book, Florian Schneider of Leiden University compared and contrasted Chinese (Wikipedia and Baidu) and Japanese articles on the Nanjing Massacre. Schneider was critical of some aspects of each version, but noted that a 2015 version of the Japanese article attempted to justify the rape and murder of Chinese civilians by claiming Japanese soldiers were doing it in the context of apprehending Chinese defectors. Schneider also noted that there were also few to no images on the article; instead it contained a single image of Japanese soldiers checking Chinese prisoners of war for weapons. In a 2019 paper, Karl Gustafsson of Stockholm University compared various Chinese and Japanese Wikipedia articles. Gustafsson was critical of aspects of both versions. For the Nanjing Massacre article, Gustafsson noted that the first paragraph of the Japanese version expressed doubt about the details of the incident and "thereby portrays the Japanese military less negatively". For the article on the Battle of Shanghai, Gustafsson noted that the Japanese article generally emphasized violence by the Chinese combatants against both Japanese soldiers and civilians, while omitting mentions of civilian deaths from Japanese air raids. Gustafsson described the Japanese article as framing the Japanese invasion of the city as a reaction to Chinese aggression. In a 2021 article published in Slate magazine, Yumiko Sato argued that several Japanese Wikipedia articles contained historical revisionism and whitewashing. Notable articles mentioned included the Japanese Wikipedia articles on the Battle of Hong Kong, comfort women , the Nanjing Massacre , and Unit 731. A Wikipedia editor and academic, Sae Kitamura, responded to Sato's article. While acknowledging that historical revisionism is indeed an issue on the Japanese Wikipedia, she pointed out factual errors in Sato's argument that centered around Wikipedia policy. In a talk sponsored by the Wikimedia Foundation, Kitamura argued that the revisionism was, in part, the result of a severe shortage of administrators. Kitamura argued that, to combat this, more competent users needed to be attracted and the toxicity of the website needed to be controlled. In a 2021 article, professor Chelsea Szendi Schieder of Aoyama Gakuin University described Japanese Wikipedia's coverage of World War II as right-wing revisionism, and argued there was a divergence between right-wing narratives that are popular online in Japan and academic writings in English.

Studies

2022 study on IP editing

In 2022, a report on IP editing on the Japanese Wikipedia was submitted to the Wikimedia Foundation. The report, based on interviews with Japanese Wikipedians, claimed that the Japanese Wikipedia's culture was seen as antagonistic, hostile, and susceptible to being manipulated by cliques. One Japanese Wikipedian interviewed said, "I think the Wikipedia community is similar to 2Chan in a negative way; it's just as hostile. You can get viciously attacked for what you write". An interviewee alleged that an editor and administrator collaborated to manipulate the website, which resulted in the Wikimedia Foundation investigating the situation. Some users felt that having an account created more vectors for being antagonized and thus avoided logging in. One interviewee claimed to mainly make minor edits, as large edits were more likely to invite attacks. Interviewees felt that IP users had significant sway over the website's content and toxic atmosphere. The community reportedly held numerous discussions on if and how to regulate IP users, but failed to reach consensus due to polarized opinions. Most of the interviewees felt that IP editing was not an issue on the site.

2023 study on historical revisionism

At the 10th Wiki Workshop on 11 May 2023 hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, Taehee Kim, David Garcia, and Pablo Aragón analyzed which articles were controversial on the Japanese Wikipedia. They found that articles on the "Historical recognition and post-war settlement" portal were particularly reverted, and that of the top 20 most controversial articles, 11 were related to Japanese war crimes and topics commonly associated with Japanese right-wing ideology. They also performed a network analysis of editors who mutually reverted other edits in general, and found that those editors were more likely to be editors of articles discussing topics susceptible to right-wing revisionist narratives.

Sources