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Edit warring

@ 79.65.101.219: Please explain why you are removing sourced information repeatedly. Your edit summary applies to only a tiny fraction of what you are removing, and is therefore unacceptable. ··· 日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 00:54, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm afraid I agree with the IP on this one: there's way too much detail already and it needs pruning. Remember that you are aiming this at ordinary readers, not fans (sometimes it helps to look at a page for a person in whom you don't have a particular interest to judge the amount of detail you would feel comfortable with). Btljs ( talk) 08:49, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
  • It's an altogether ridiculous amount of trivia. This is a general purpose encyclopedia. It is not the place for a blow-by-blow list of her every move. Nobody cares when her father set up his Twitter account, or what songs she considered performing at a particular concert. Some of this stuff might be ok for page 6 of this week's teen magazines, but not for here. We do not care which particular website was hosting a song for download. I would expect the record company to update their webpage with details of her single. I would NOT expect to read about it here. It is not notable that "fans could text to join Utada's mobile list to receive future news updates". What are we even trying to say with lines such as "a track was reported to be released as a Japanese single at a then-unspecified date"?? What about "she expressed she could be planning to do a cover album, or just take a break to get some new ideas". It's so vague as to be pointless. This is not myspace. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.65.101.219 ( talk • contribs) 13:36, 27 December 2015‎ (UTC)
    • I don't so much care about what you removed as why. The edit summary is there for that reason, and your edit summaries were extremely vague:
      • "none of this was notable"
      • "<blank>"
      • "Are you sure the general reader needs to know the date that her father set up his Twitter account?!"
      • "Removing trivia. This is not the place for a minute-by-minute account of her every musing. Also, blogs are not a reliable source."
    • Only the last summary was acceptable. "Notability" is only applicable to the article topic in determining whether the article can remain on Wikipedia, or whether it should be deleted. Once notability has been established for the topic of the article, it is irrelevant for anything else in the article. Non-notable information (meaning information about topics which would not have their own article) is regularly used in all Wikipedia articles, so using that as a reason for removing content is not acceptable. Having a blank edit summary is also not acceptable or useful as it give no indication regarding why the content was removed or changed.
    • Per WP:BOLD, once your edit had been reverted, you should have immediately brought the discussion to the talk page here and explained why you were removing the information, especially since your edit summaries (until the very last one) really gave no valid reason for removing the content.
    • Also, if you plan to regularly contribute, I recommend creating an account so that you can better keep track of your contributions, and so your privacy is protected. Sharing your IP address can reveal a lot more than you may want to be revealed. ··· 日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 17:39, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Requested move 22 January 2016

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved. Jenks24 ( talk) 10:36, 1 February 2016 (UTC)


Hikaru Utada → Utada Hikaru – Per MOS:IDENTITY and MOS:JA, and consistent use in academic and other high-quality sources. Detailed rationale and source pile given in separate post below, so the WP:RM page isn't clogged with a huge entry.  —  SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:54, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

  • Nominator's evidence in support: The subject's albums (other than those released under stage names) all uniformly use "Utada Hikaru" in the Latin alphabet) [1], [2], including her English-language releases. Even our own articles know this, resulting in the absurd and reader-confusing situation of us having articles at Utada Hikaru Single Collection Vol. 1 and Utada Hikaru Single Collection Vol. 2 for an artist we're calling "Hikaru Utada". Utada's own website, http://www.utadahikaru.jp/, is clearly titled "HIKKI'S WEBSITE: Utada Hikaru Official Website", in both the English- and Japanese-language page sets, and this name order is preferred throughout the site. Some instances of "Hikaru Utada" appear, but they're small minority, and do not appear to have been authored by her but by site staff. Of especial importance is one such post from from ~12 years ago, "[2003/03/13] Thank you very much!" [3] explicitly stating she was temporarily officially using the name "Hikaru Utada" but would be returning to "Utada Hikaru" later. She actually returned to using simply "Utada" with the next two releases, and then did in fact switch to "Utada Hikaru", starting with the first single collection and the Utada Hikaru in Budokan 2004 DVD (both in 2004), and continuing with Heart Station (2008), then Wild Life and second singles collection (both 2010). A few releases reverted to the mononym "Utada" (in 2009 with This Is the One, and on DVD releases in 2004 and 2010). Further evidence of the artist's "official" use of U.H. name order is provided by All for You: UH Premium Single Box Set (Korean compilation, 2005), and the various volumes of the Utada Hikaru Single Clip Collection DVDs, up through 2006. Zero releases bear the name "Hikaru Utada", even during the approx. 1-year period that adoption of this name had been announced by her staff blog, a plan that was self-evidently abandoned pretty quickly (though the 2006 book Gods of Rock seems to confirm that she was using the H.U. name order in the US in 2004 [4]). Also, the artist is Japanese American and bilingual, with fanbases both Western and Eastern, and it is not plausible that these name choices and their changes over time are ignorant, accidental or random.

    The previous RM in 2008, which moved this article away from the earlier Utada Hikaru title, was based (albeit in good faith) on essentially nothing but the then-current wording of MOS:JA, which at that time strongly favored Western name order regardless of other considerations. I think the above MOS:IDENTITY and WP:ABOUTSELF argument is actually entirely sufficient for a move. However, a notable amount of debate was had about MOS:JA's wording throughout 2015 and perhaps earlier (I wasn't tracking it the whole time) and Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Japan-related articles#Personal names now provides a checklist of points to consider.

    The #1 point on that list is: "Use the form personally or professionally used by the person, if available in the English/Latin alphabet (this can include the spelling appearing on their official website or official social media profile, but do not rely on a URL when the actual text is all Japanese)", and the evidence presented above perfectly complies with this. The previous RM noted a 7:1 Google hits ratio in favor of "Utada Hikaru" over "Hikaru Utada". A more carefully constructed search today still results in a 4.8:1 preference for "Utada Hikaru" [5], [6]. While [7]. While the original RM showed a slight favoritism toward "Hikaru Utada" in a Google News search, Western news sources are notoriously bad for this kind of question, as they routinely force Western name order for lowest-common-denominator expediency reasons (this is also why we don't use stats about them in various other human-name-rendering RMs, such as those dealing with diacritics). Nevertheless, some use U.H. name order, including Time magazine, despite that publication's American conservatism [8], and them same could be said of New Statesman [9]; however, plenty of news sources use H.U. order.

    The next MOS:JA naming criterion: #2, appearance in other encyclopedias: "Utada Hikaru" is used in Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World [10] which is professionally edited, but the opposite result was found in Encyclopedia.com [11], which seems to be pro-edited (and which has information we are missing, including on Utada's early bi-national life, BTW). I did also find "Hikaru Utada" in World Heritage Encyclopedia [12], but this is a false hit because its content is derived in part directly from our own (and it's very obvious in their article on this subject, which even has the same headings from an earlier version of our article). The Guinness Book of World Records uses U.H. order (she has a WR? why doesn't our article say so?) [13] [note: if the content is not visible at that link, it is here, 2nd entry: [14]], and in another of their publications [15] (if not visible, see top entry here: [16]]. Another tertiary source, The Children's Book of Music, gives the U.H. name order [17]. The Encyclopedia of World Pop Music, 1980-2001 gives all names in the form "Utada, Hikaru", so is of no help [18]; same goes for Contemporary Musicians: Profiles of the People in Music [19]. The "Hikaru UTADA" or "UTADA Hikaru" formats [20] are also of little relevance to WP. Other search results looking for such topical encyclopedia entries just turn up blogs and wikis and such [21].

    Back to MOS:JA, #3 & #4 "Use the form publicly used on behalf of the person in the English-speaking world ... [or] in any other popular Latin-alphabet-using language": Utada's record/video labels consistently publish her material as "Utada Hikaru" or "Utada", never "Hikaru Utada"; there seems to be no other relevant party to consult, since no one else is using her name on her behalf. The 5th point only applies to diacritics.

    The cited MOS:JA section also says: "Follow the usage of academic texts or a widely used reference such as a published encyclopedia in matters of spelling, macron usage, and name order. Such sources generally give Japanese names family name first." There are few academic-journal sources with which to work. The industry (not academic) journal Perfect Beat has U.H. name order [22], as does the German-language academic journal Digitale Jugendkulturen ('Digital Youth-culture') [23], the Journal of the Society for Asian Music [24], and the Journal of Japanese Trade & Industry [25]. Same U.H. results in similar Japan-oriented trade journals, including Japan Spotlight [26], Look Japan [27], and many others; but this was not entirely consistent (I found three exceptions in this class of trade publication: [28], [29], [30]). Academic books favor U.H. order, such as the media-studies volume Popular Culture Co-Productions and Collaborations in East and Southeast Asia [31], Globalization and Popular Music in South Korea [32], and Japan After Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present [33] (I can't find any that use H.U. order). Not sure Managing Media Companies counts as academic, except in an MBA sense, but it, too, has U.H. order, in a list with "Janet Jackson", etc. [34] Non-academic English-language materials on Japanese pop culture naturally lean toward native Japanese name ordering, like Anime Reign [35], etc., but this is not universal, as shown by Giant Robot [36]. The above seems to be about the best we can do for a recent pop-culture figure.

    Google N-grams and Books: An N-grams search produces results for "Utada Hikaru" but zero for "Hikaru Utada" (in a corpus that only has data up to 2008, and which I constrained to 1997 at the lower bound, to weed out any historical people with this name) [37]. A Google "Books" search is useless statistically (though was how many of the cited sources were found, using a search string of "Utada Hikaru" OR "Hikaru Utada" -wikipedia [38]); the majority of the results are Billboard Magazine (i.e., low-quality [added: namely, tertiary and with close fiduciary ties to the music industry] news material, not books) which seems to have a policy of forcibly westernizing names; self-published crap ("e-study guides", "mini-bios", etc.) that has to be ignored; and sheet music (which naturally follows the labels in using "Utada Hikaru"). Not all of the entertainment press is as jingoistic as Billboard: [39], [40]. Two pieces of professionally-published fiction that turned up (one in French) give U.H. name order when mentioning her in an in-context way [41], [42]. I stopped trawling these entries after about 10 or 12 screenfuls of results. The majority of the sources using H.U. order were either unreliable, or were newssources, and we already have GNews stats showing that they tend to favor that order, so I need not link them all here; I did include notable cases of "anti-U.H." results in the data above.

    Overall, I think the case for a move back to Utada Hikaru is overwhelming, both on the basis of current WP:POLICY and per a preponderance of reliable, high-quality, non-news sources.

    PS: Note that various of these sources can be WP:MINEd for additional information to use in this article, beyond the two I already highlighted for this purpose.  —  SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:54, 22 January 2016 (UTC) Updated with additional rationale.  —  SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:55, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

  • Support move. Given the substantial changes in Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Japan-related articles#Personal names since 2008, I find the evidence that SMcCandlish has compiled seems to, point by point, suggest that a move is needed here. I find the evidence in relation to Follow the usage of academic texts or a widely used reference such as a published encyclopedia in matters of spelling, macron usage, and name order. Such sources generally give Japanese names family name first and Use the form publicly used on behalf of the person in the English-speaking world ... [or] in any other popular Latin-alphabet-using language to be most convincing here. I, JethroBT drop me a line 08:31, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Support move. Apart from the MOS guidelines cited by nom, it should be moved per the WP:COMMONNAME policy. The guidelines cited here elaborate on that policy for specialized cases; but even without that elaboration, COMMONNAME would call for the move. TJRC ( talk) 15:19, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Opposeper WP:MOS-JA and WP:ENGLISH. Any media that would use Utada Hikaru would also put their other artists in Eastern order of names. The result would be a mishmash of artists half of whom would use Eastern order as their stage name and others with Western order as stage name. Is that the plan going forward? What if the artist primarily uses a Japanese name in their works, but when they print album covers they use Eastern order? Same with Korean singers, who like to use their given name as a singularity. Also, why would Billboard magazine be suddenly thrown among the low-quality works when it is one of the main secondary sources for appeal of artists to the English-speaking world. Is NPR a low-quality work as they preferred Western order as well? [43] And why are you looking at French magazines, they aren't English-speaking world either. I also suspect WP:JTITLE #2 "Use the form found in an encyclopedia entry from a generally accepted English encyclopedia;" would still list Utada under U and not H. AngusWOOF ( bark • sniff) 17:11, 22 January 2016 (UTC), updated 17:38, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
    @ AngusWOOF: I know you changed your !vote, but wanted to address your questions: I relegated Billboard to low-quality on this, because it's a tertiary source, of statistics not content-analytic material (except where it includes actual articles, and none that I saw were specifically about Utada). Billboard is a high-quality tertiary source – encyclopedic, essentially – of statistics on American music sales and airplay, of course. Sources that are great for one thing may be useless for another. As a news source, it wasn't considered in any detail, since I glossed over those in bulk as being in favor of H.U. order. The main issue with Billboard was that it badly polluted the GBooks search results. Your point about #2 I already covered, and specifically noted the cases of "Utada, Hikaru" as not counted among "Utada Hikaru". The "Utada Hikaru" examples were from encyclopedias that would not have had "Presley, Elvis". I don't recall citing a French magazine, but a German journal, and French and English fiction. I included them per "any other popular Latin-alphabet-using language"; because the journal was an academic source and those were scarce but high-quality; the French bit was one of two non-trivial references in fiction showing contextually how fans refer to her (I guess this is trivial, on reflection; and because German, French and English have the same Westernized-order tendencies with Asian names, so it stands out that these non-Eng. sources used the preference of the subject. I don't understand what you mean by "What if the artist primarily uses a Japanese name in their works, but when they print album covers they use Eastern order?" What works (in English) does this refer to other than the albums? I'm not sure we care about latinized names tacked onto Japanese-only releases. Utada's case was unusual specifically because she puts out jp and en and mixed-language material, and has a large English-speaking following (I confess I'm a fan of her non-pop material, despite being a middle-aged white guy with near-zero interest in Asian pop culture – I don't even like anime much). As for the random J-pop and K-pop stars, I think WP:COMMONNAME will keep them all at Westernized name order, due to the lack of, well, all the Utada-specific sort of evidence.  —  SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:30, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
    Thank you for all the research that you have presented for Utada's case. It really goes a long way above the "I don't like it." or that the Japanese printed it this way so you have to use that despite the official English adaptation with the different name arguments I've been having to read at other talk pages. You're right in that she did use Western order for a few years, and that might have skewed some of the search results. Also Billboard tends to arbitrarily translate some of the album and single names. I was merely objecting to that as that, along with Rolling Stone, Variety and other English-language magazines are fair game for treatment of the subject among mainstream English language sources. They may not be as strong as the academic sources of course, but I wanted to make sure the academic sources that use Eastern order aren't pushing their bias for that format towards every subject originally from Asia. As a hypothetical example, some academic sources might insist on naming their subject "Chan Kong-sang" over "Jackie Chan".
    Kumi Koda vs. Koda Kumi should be next to use Eastern order for overwhelming self-identifying marketing. That one's been at contention for years.
    Nami Tamaki uses Eastern order English on her Asian albums, but when marketed in the US (Tofu Records) they have used Western order. This should stay Western as her notability in English comes from her marketing with her Western name at anime conventions. Other stars have yet to cross over so their names aren't determined. These are the cases I was concerned about as well as artists whose albums stay mainly in Asia and go with whatever order their companies push. AngusWOOF ( bark • sniff) 16:35, 24 January 2016 (UTC) updated AngusWOOF ( bark • sniff) 16:47, 24 January 2016 (UTC) and 16:57, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
@ AngusWOOF: Got it. I'd like to be in on the K.K. RM when that comes up. I intended this one to be a model for how to do this. I'm not certain it's 100% a success. The consensus so far is going with it, but without much interest in the MOS:JA arguments. I think they may have to be tied more specifically (in MOS:JA's actual wording, I mean) to precisely what parts of naming and other WP:POLICY (including MoS in that sense) that they're relying upon. As for the music press, a common problem with them is that they are not really a reliable source for name style. They have WP:INDY problems, because almost all their revenue comes from sales of advertising to the music industry, and as a result they basically "do what they're told" (i.e. closely follow label press releases, artist websites, typography on release covers, etc.) when it comes to how to stylize artists' names, how to capitalize titles, etc. I don't know whether this issue extents to name order (judging from the above, you'd know better than I would), nor how many of these publications it affects, but we have seen at RM a strong trend for over-capitalization crap like "Do It Like A Dude", and over-stylization crap like "P!nk", almost entirely coming from the music press (and associated online sources that are the Web side of music journalism, with the exact same fiduciary bias). Part of the problem of dealing with such sources is that people who don't have much experience with or haven't thought very hard about, sourcing questions are under the mistaken impression that every newspaper/magazine/journal/news-site is a secondary source for every single thing it publishes in every context. No sources are or can be treated categorically this way. The average publication of that sort is a primary, secondary and tertiary source for different things in different contexts, all at the same time. The average newspaper journalism article (but not editorial, op-ed, column, or endpiece) is a secondary source for most material in it, absent a reason to suspect otherwise, and that's about as far as we can generalize.  —  SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:58, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
    • Comment See also WP:DIVIDEDUSE. It's not clear going one way or the other. For Utada's case, common name may override as with Chow Yun-Fat where they insist on going by English Eastern order for name. But I'm more concerned with the bevy of Asian pop stars that use mainly the Asian name and then choose Eastern or Western orders on a whim. AngusWOOF ( bark • sniff) 17:38, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
      • Yeah, I'd thought about citing Chow as precedent, but wanted to keep this a "pure" test of the new MOS-JA approach.  —  SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:05, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
    • This is a case where the artist insists on the Eastern ordering on all her high profile albums and credits, also having that American background. Even on the English closing credits for Kingdom Hearts all the regular translated Japanese names are in western order but music is listed as Utada Hikaru. AngusWOOF ( bark • sniff) 00:21, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose per WP:MOS-JA and WP:ENGLISH. This reminds me of how the English and American date systems are different, seeing there is a WP:PRECEDENT to use an English name order we should stick by that. - Knowledgekid87 ( talk) 20:04, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
    • This is one case where she wants it her way so support. - Knowledgekid87 ( talk) 05:32, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
      @ Knowledgekid87: I know you changed your mind on this, but wanted to ask what you meant by "Oppose per WP:MOS-JA", when the majority of the basis of the RM is point-by-point compliance with the analysis steps laid out in that guideline? What in MOS-JA did you think was contradicting the nomination? If there is something, it may suggest that the guideline needs revision to not contradict itself. As I noted on its talk page, I think the personal names section does have at least a focus problem.  —  SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:49, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Support per overwhelming evidence presented by nom. If the WP:MOS-JA and WP:ENGLISH guidelines disagree with the WP:COMMONNAME policy, then they need to be brought in line with it. ··· 日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 20:33, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
    @ Nihonjoe: I've asked Knowledgekid87 for clarification on where they think MOS-JA might have such a conflict, as I couldn't detect one. MOS-JA's section on this appears to be a Japanese-subject-specific rubric for how to apply COMMONNAME and the other WP:AT criteria (among which COMMONNAME is not supreme, just one of several). There are frequent complaints that WP:ENGLISH conflicts with AT, especially COMMONNAME. There are also frequent complaints that COMMONNAME is over-relied upon and misapplied. I suspect that resolution of this will take several more years and will not be entirely in the manner of forcing guidelines to comply with COMMONNAME, but also involve adjusting COMMONNAME to be interpreted less frequently as a hammer that treats everything as a nail. That said, the core basis of this RM is COMMONNAME, when it comes to the source pile, though I prefer the IDENTITY argument. I think it's ethically wrong and contravenes the spirit of BLP policy to side, for nothing but convenience, with sources that try to force a name on people that they do not prefer or accept.  —  SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:49, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
    • I'm not seeing where we disagree. It is extremely unlikely that reliable sources will be overwhelming in their use of a name not preferred by someone. If we stick to WP:COMMONNAME, which requires us to use reliable sources to determine the most common usage, then there should be no problem. Most (if not all) of the media refer to people using their preferred name or moniker. ··· 日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 01:10, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
      • This tends not to be true of sportspeople. Most Western sports organizations push First Last on Asians in English, and also drop diacritics. They may even declare it an "organizational standard" and whatever. The issue AngusWOOF highlights above is also relevant - an an Asian artist may have releases using both orders, and we often have no idea what their own preference is. (I agree that, then, we have little choice but to go with common name in English sources, having no identity argument to weigh).  —  SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:06, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Support per WP:Commonname and a clear choice made by the artist and/or her publishing companies. In my experience Japanese artists usually use western order in latin script on their releases, so to consistently use eastern order on all materials says rather a lot. It also seems to be reflected in sources. SephyTheThird ( talk) 23:54, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
    • It helps that she has American ties so it's not just the Japanese marketing companies that are pushing the Eastern order. AngusWOOF ( bark • sniff) 00:21, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
      • Good point! I added that to the rationale pile.  —  SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:55, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Support; strong evidence from nominator.   InsertCleverPhraseHere  InsertTalkHere  04:15, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Support She has had English press written about her for over 15 years now, and while press in 2000-2002 might have referred to her as Hikaru Utada more often, I don't think that's the case now at all. -- Prosperosity ( talk) 09:31, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Support Done deal. Btljs ( talk) 10:17, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

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Article image

Can someone please find a better (current) picture of Utada for use on the article? The last one(s) used are almost, if not more, than 10 years old. I'd do it myself, but I'd fear the wrath of not getting an appropriate, loyalty-free image. ( Jeimii ( talk) 21:02, 21 August 2016 (UTC))

I see three images over at Commons [44], one of which is dated 2009. AngusWOOF ( bark • sniff) 23:12, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
Those and more at Commons:Category:Hikaru Utada. I rather like Commons:File:Utada Hikaru 2004.jpg, and I think of the photos there it comes closest to the height of her career, and is a moderately flattering shot. It was on the article until recently, so I gather that mine is the minority viewpoint, though. TJRC ( talk) 04:59, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

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Wtyd on here

Im not sure make a decision Freackk ( talk) 22:19, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

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Badly outdated

There's all kinds of "an announcement was made that [something in the future]" stuff in this article about stuff that was in the future in, say, 2010, but which is now way in the past. This material needs to be rewritten to say what did happen rather than what was once planned to happen, or it's simply unencyclopedic "old news".  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:10, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

This isn't a B-class article in my opinion

I like Utada, but I find this article to be hell to read because of the choppy prose and one section (2010–15) being overly long. The article doesn't even elaborate further on her musical styles, such as the types of sounds her albums convey or her lyrical topics. There's also no awards section whatsoever, and I can imagine with how big she is in Japan that'd she be nominated for several awards. (if hadn't not won any) Let's not forget the missing references in some sections either. Because of these reasons, I think that this article should be reduced to a C-class. 100cellsman ( talk) 05:40, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Standardizing use of last name as subject (MOS)

This article needs a review to standardize referencing the performer by last/family name as the subject of sentences throughout.
Ref: Katy Perry and Kevin Hart are referenced by last name ("Perry did this"; "Hart did that") in standard encyclopedia/journalistic style.
Currently the article switches back and forth between her fist and last name. It should be "Utada" throughout.-- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 09:11, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 9 October 2019

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. Typically, although Eastern name order is preferred by Japanese people when Romanizing their names, there isn't a general consensus on which name order to use in WP:JTITLE – hence, we have the article at Shinzo Abe, not Abe Shinzo. One could compare this to Qazaqstan vs. Kazakhstan or Chornobyl vs Chernobyl, where the natural transliteration isn't the one in common English usage. If the Western name order for Utada – or, indeed, the Eastern name order for other figures – garners greater usage, the matter can be revisited. However, in the case of Utada, the links provided by TJRC indicate her releases tend to be attributed to "Utada" or "Utada Hikaru". ( closed by non-admin page mover) Sceptre ( talk) 20:29, 16 October 2019 (UTC)


Utada Hikaru → Hikaru Utada – Her english name have to be "Hikaru Utada" as well as other japanese english names, like " Shinzo Abe," " Seiji Ozawa," " Takeshi Kaneshiro," " Kohei Uchida," " Ayumu Hirano," " Shizuka Arakawa," " Satomi Ishihara, " Yoko Ono." Moreover, up to now, her official website in english language has been calling her "Hikaru Utada." See Hikaru Utada Official Website NEWS and amazon.com. Her japanese name is "宇多田ヒカル," therefore, "Utada Hikaru" is just her japanese name's romanization. This means that "Utada Hikaru" cannot be her english name, even if some people have mistaken so. And then, I cannot help but think that nobody can discuss this critical mistake constructively, because this rule about japanese people's english name is already traditional rule and self-evident truth. Nobody, except nuts, can insist "Utada" is her first name. Nobody, except nuts, can insist her first name "Hikaru" should be placed at the position of english last name "Utada," ignoring english name's traditional rule and her will.  Beaver4100 ( talk) 22:30, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

This is a contested technical request ( permalink). Steel1943 ( talk) 23:50, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
The current title is a result of consensus formed via discussion at Talk:Utada Hikaru/Archive 4#Requested move 22 January 2016. For that reason alone, this move request is controversial. (Ping Beaver4100.) Steel1943 ( talk) 23:50, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
I have to say again. If there can be a consensus on current title "Utada Hikaru," the consensus is only a fake consensus fabricated by romanaization nuts. I have already explained it above. Beaver4100 ( talk) 02:43, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Per my experiences, as well as the evidence presented in the previous move discussion, the current title is evidently the subject's WP:COMMONNAME. Steel1943 ( talk) 23:54, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
I don't know what you are talking about. Please give us a concrete explanation. You haven't explain nothing. Beaver4100 ( talk) 02:05, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
Eastern name order??? Eastern name??? Who doesn't understand Eastern name order? It's you. You don't even know that English name of Japanese person differs greatly from that of other asian person. Beaver4100 ( talk) 01:57, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose - As per WP:COMMONNAME, Utada Hikaru is her stage name and is used majority of Utada's articles and in sources. Stage name over English name. TheDeviantPro ( talk) 00:29, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
Her stage name for Japanese people over English name? Why??? What are you talking about? Her English name is the best for English Wikipedia and all of the persons in the English-speaking world. And, you seems to be lying. Show us all of the evidences that her stage name is always "Utada Hikaru." Beaver4100 ( talk) 01:36, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
Just because it's an English wikipedia doesn't mean we should dismiss WP:COMMONNAME. The fact your ignoring that there's been a long lasting consensus on the article since 2016 and reverting anyone who revert your bold edits shows that you're edit warring on the article. TheDeviantPro ( talk) 02:56, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Defaultsort

I recently copied the defaultsort from here and added it to Template:Utada Hikaru songs to keep them consistent, but my edit was reverted. I found that the defaultsort here was changed on April 23, 2019, [45], and it currently sorts in categories by Hikaru, while the template, Template:Utada Hikaru, Utada Hikaru discography, List of songs recorded by Utada Hikaru and List of awards received by Utada Hikaru. I wanted to make sure which sorting was correct and make the articles and template consistent in their use. Aspects ( talk) 05:28, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

Since no one has commented, I am going to revert back to the previous defaultsort to keep the articles and templates consistent. Aspects ( talk) 04:55, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

"mononym"?

I couldn't figure out how I should word this to cover both problems, but I placed the tag where it was because ... well, this strikes me as similar to this: I've been trying, in the above discussion, to avoid all pronouns pending a "consensus" on how we should refer to our subject, and so I've been overusing our subject's surname, but I don't think it's not a "mononym" any more than "Biden". Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 02:43, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Associated acts

Considering the Wikipedia guidelines for associated acts contained in the infobox:
1. Should Teruzane Utada be removed? (cite: "producers, managers, etc." are in the "to be avoided" category)
2. Should Shiina Ringo be added since she and Utada have more than one single together?
3. Are there any other artists who would qualify under these guidelines?
-- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 18:59, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Without weighing in on 2 or 3, 1 strikes me as having been included because he is an "act" that is "associated" (more visibly as the subject's father than as a "producer" or "manager", neither of which are "acts" to begin with) rather than a bona fide "associated act". If consensus isn't reached on 2 or 3, I'd say just remove the parameter. Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 01:00, 18 August 2021 (UTC)
Just noticed this, but Teruzane Utada lists both his ex-wife and daughter as "associated acts". Our subject's parents' professional relationship to each other is probably a bit greyer, but the article body says he composed the melodies for three of her songs, without mentioning his daughter. If this article is updated, the Teruzane article should be updated too. Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 01:19, 18 August 2021 (UTC)
@ Hijiri88: I think the Teruzane Utada content is a leftover from fan-based updates a decade ago. He was still listed as Utada's "attendant" until a recent change. -- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 07:54, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Pronouns?

Has Utada announced which pronouns are correct? Given the Instagram post complaining about "Miss/Mrs/Ms" being used, it might be they/them? 2A02:8109:A33F:F27C:150A:8BDE:B6C2:17CC ( talk) 17:20, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Utada has not yet provided any preferred pronouns, and the "Miss/Mrs/Ms" thing was also (and primarily) about marital status. I say that until Utada confirms pronouns, the article should continue to use "she/her" for consistency's sake. Non-binary does not automatically mean that the person goes by they/them, and automatically assuming that could also be misgendering. I have also brought this issue up with the Manual of Style team because Wikipedia does not currently have guidelines for how to handle this situation. - Wohdin ( talk) 17:53, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
The article should use they/them pronouns until Utada specifies their preferences explicitly. In their Instagram post they say that they feel that using "Miss/Mrs/Ms" misrepresents them, and that they want to be referred to using a word "that anybody of any gender or social standing could use". They/them pronouns would most accurately reflect this. I would also like to see if the Manual of Style could address this, though. 〜 ♥ (˘꒳˘ ) Teafed, (she/her) ( talk) 22:16, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
Rephrasing to avoid pronouns entirely is tedious and leaves the article somewhat clunky, but is a possibility in a case like this. I would prefer "they/them" over "she/her" on the grounds that "they/them" is a perfectly fine gender-neutral pronoun (not just a pronoun some non-binary people use), but "she/her" is not. Ultimately, we're in a very tough situation without elaboration by the subject. — Bilorv ( talk) 11:45, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
If the person hasn't specified any preferred pronouns, changing to "they" is misgendering. ... discospinster talk 02:29, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
If the subject hasn't specified what their pronouns are, then using she/her pronouns for them could potentially be misgendering them. Conversely, they/them pronouns can be used when the pronouns of the person being referred to are unknown (see the singular they article for more details). Additionally, I would note that the subject wrote in their Instagram post about wanting to be referred to with a word that "anybody of any gender or social standing could use". GreenComputer ( talk) 17:34, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
No. Unless she has explicitly said that she prefers they/them pronouns, it is inappropriate to change them. Not all NB people like to be referred to as they/them as there are other gender-neutral pronouns. Wait until she says one way or the other. ... discospinster talk 18:07, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
Discospinster is correct here. Certainly if Utada expresses a preference it should be followed; but in the absence of that, Wikipedia cannot presume to know her preferences. TJRC ( talk) 18:18, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
I agree that we cannot presume to know what Utada's pronouns are until they explicitly state their pronouns. However, this also means that we should not use she/her pronouns for Utada unless they say otherwise. I was suggesting we use they/them pronouns as they can be used as gender-neutral pronouns to refer to anyone, however avoiding pronouns entirely is also an option. I would note that most reliable sources appear to have used they/them pronouns when referring to Utada (e.g. [46] [47] [48] [49] [50] [51] [52]). GreenComputer ( talk) 23:18, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
Just because so-called reliable sources refer to her with they/them pronouns, that does not mean she prefers those, especially since Japanese doesn't have gender-exclusive pronouns I believe (I believe watashi is gender-dominant for female, but I've seen it used by males referring to themselves). Like people have said above, several non-binary people use grammatically correct pronouns (see Rebecca Sugar and Miley Cyrus), and thus Utada should be referred to with her last known preferred pronouns until she officially and directly says she prefers grammatically incorrect ones. Unnamed anon ( talk) 19:02, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
Agreed (except for the implication that singular they is not grammatically correct - though it can be more ambiguous). Indeed, if the BLP has not said anything about pronouns, we should presume until it is stated otherwise that that is itself a choice, and remain with the status quo. Crossroads -talk- 23:21, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
Half of those sources are coming from LGBT-related websites. AngusW🐶🐶F ( bark • sniff) 22:46, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
Singular they is an acceptable pronoun. Also my preferred pronoun (they/them) for myself on Wikipedia. As an aside, you can use {{ pronoun}} on other Wikipedia users to find their prefs, although updating preferences to newer pronouns has yet to be done. AngusW🐶🐶F ( bark • sniff) 23:32, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
Hi! My apologies if I'm not entering this conversation correctly. I just edited the pronouns used in Utada's Discography page before realizing there was a whole discussion here about whether to use they/them or she/her. Personally, I believe that, in order to avoid misgendering a person who has already professed that "Mrs./Ms." do not reflect their identity, it would be best to use they/them exclusively in their main biography page as well, though I will leave that decision to more experienced editors to make. Even if Utada uses she/they, they would still be correct, but since Utada does not use Mrs. or Ms, the chance that they use she/her and never they is unlikely. Agreitzer ( talk) 18:56, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

An IP editor today reinstated the plural they/them pronouns, but this time with a source. [1] Assuming todayonline.com is a WP:RS (I'm not familiar with it, so cannot opine either way), I think that's sufficient to support the change. TJRC ( talk) 03:17, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

I haven't reverted it, but given the obscurity of this source, that it isn't new so it isn't like there was something just said, the fact that other and better sources don't say that, and the fact that thus one just asserts it, I am inclined to doubt they actually have information other sources don't. Anyone else have thoughts on this? Crossroads -talk- 20:55, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
It's an obscure source that quotes her Instagram post and adds further subjective context. But that post specifically reference her marriage status, not pronoun usage. -- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 22:28, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
For an out nonbinary person, "they-them" pronouns are much less likely to be "wrong" than gendered pronouns, in cases where sources conflict or are unclear. The argument "we don't know for sure, so we should stick to the gendered pronouns from before he/she came out as nonbinary" strikes me as special pleading, and directly contrary to the spirit (if not the letter) of MOS:GENDERID. The balance of probabilities for "what is most likely to misgender the BLP subject" seems pretty clear in this case. Newimpartial ( talk) 21:53, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Lee, Wei Lin (July 5, 2021). "Utada Hikaru Comes Out As Non-Binary". Today Online. Retrieved August 5, 2021. Utada, who now uses the pronouns they/them...

Until Hikaru states explicitly that she wants a specific pronoun, standard English rules apply to this article. The quote attributed to her is not a definitive statement, and a commentary on marital status more than sexuality -- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 22:05, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

No, that isn't the way MOS:GENDERID works. The article must defer to the most recently announced gender identity professed by the subject: in this case, nonbinary. Granted, some nonbinary people use gendered pronouns, either alone or alongside they/them. But is it possible to misgender a nonbinary person by using "they/them"? Not really. Is it possible to misgender a nonbinary person by using gendered pronouns? Definitely, yes. And, perhaps most importantly, in standard English, what pronouns does one use when they do not know what a person's pronoun preference is (or doesn't known the gender of a person at all)? They/them. So the correct choice, per policy, is pretty dang obvious. Newimpartial ( talk) 22:29, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
Wikipedia doesn't deal in "possible" or "perhaps" or "pretty dang obvious". If there is not a factual reference for changing an existing use of the pronoun, we have to default to standard past usage until there is something definitive. I'm sure if you're patient, Utada will come up with a new pronoun just for herself. -- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 22:32, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
MOS:GENDERID has site-wide consensus, and requires that we respect the most recently expressed gender self-identification. We have that; it is nonbinary. Since we have that, we do not need a factual reference for a pronoun choice before changing the pronouns. Since we do not know for sure the subject's preference, we use standard English they/them far he than past usage gendered pronouns - the past usage simply no longer applies after a gender identity announcement. Newimpartial ( talk) 22:40, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
The missing piece here is the actual gender announcement from a reliable, cited source. The articles with non-binary headlines are copies of each other based on a subjective recollection of a livestream. Let's be patient and wait until we have something reliable. At such time, this artist may choose an existing non-binary pronoun, state a preference to remain a "she", or create a new pronoun just for her. Waiting for such reference is an acceptable compromise, I think. -- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 22:53, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
Animenewsnetwork looks editorially sound (and therefore RS) to me. Newimpartial ( talk) 22:58, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
But the person has also not said anything about pronouns or gave any indication the pronouns should change from the ones already in use for the person even though that could easily have been done. This is a very borderline case and seems ripe for an RfC. Crossroads -talk- 22:44, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
Agree on need for RfC. -- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 22:49, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
RfC if you like, but in English we use "they/them" if we don't know the pronouns, and most "out" nonbinary people prefer "they/them" anyway. The attempt to retain gendered pronouns in the face of a nonbinary gender announcement, and with no more support than "wE cAnT bE sUrE", is a clear thumb to the nose directed at MOS:GENDERID. Newimpartial ( talk) 22:52, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
No one is thumbing their nose at anyone. That's a presumptive assessment. If consensus is reached, we can all move forward. We're all working together to maintain a fact-based page for the artist.-- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 22:58, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
Futhermore Newimpartial , please refrain from personal accusations such as "stop trying to distended nonbinary people" or "clear thumb in the nose" -- there have been no aggressive statements directed at you or any group of people, and reciprocal respect would be appreciated while we have debate among editors with contrasting points of view. -- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 23:11, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
RFC and wait for reliable sources that Utada has explicitly declared pronouns. Mys. or whatever is more like an honorific to deal with marital status and the "what makes you think i'm 'straight'?" statement is as vague as the pride flag postings. It's becoming a practice in conference call introductions for speakers to list out or state preferred pronouns. You can de-genderize the pronouns for now, replacing them with Utada. AngusW🐶🐶F ( bark • sniff) 23:04, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
Do you see anything in MOS:GENDERID that would support waiting until the subject has explicitly declared pronouns? We have a reliable source reporting a gender identity declaration as nonbinary; that is enough to require us to strip out all gendered pronouns for now. Newimpartial ( talk) 23:31, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
Anyway, I have gone ahead and removed all personal pronouns for the time being, which is incontestibly compliant with WP policy. Newimpartial ( talk) 00:16, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
And User:TJRC has reverted the strictly NPOV version that used neither "she" nor "they", and re-inserted four misgendering categories (which is a transparently clear BLP vio). Make it stop! Please, for the love of all that is holy, make it stop! Newimpartial ( talk) 00:44, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
I have reinstated a version without pronouns, for now, as several editors with different perspectives have suggested. Newimpartial ( talk) 20:17, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
Newimpartial There is a lot of "I have done this" and not enough of "We have agreed on that" in your updates. Please try working with other editors in reaching a consensus on this point instead of instantaneous revisions. -- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 20:36, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
The policy WP:CONLEVEL mandates that site-wide consensus, as embodied in MOS:GENDERID, takes priority over local consensus. Your revert is not compliant with this community-wide consensus. Newimpartial ( talk) 20:40, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
Newimpartial - Please help us locate a direct reliable source for the quote that's at the root of this change, and we'll all support your changes. Unitl the source is verified, this issue will keep coming up. The multiple copies of copies of the same citation (of a subjective recollection of a livestream) won't help us. -- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 20:56, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
Multiple, reliable sources have been provided at ANI, as you should know. Drop the horse carcass, please. Newimpartial ( talk) 21:01, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
@ GimmeChoco44: we are not independent researchers, it's not our job to "verify" the work of reliable sources and publish our own original research on the matter. Regardless, the source of the clip is here: [53], at 2:32. That took me about a minute or so to find, so I'm sure if you cared to look you would've found it too. ‑‑ Volteer1 ( talk) 21:06, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
@ GimmeChoco44: The burden of proof is on you to show that she/her are Hikaru's pronouns and should be used instead of the neutral singular they. Even if it is debated that Hikaru is non-binary, we would still use singular they, as that is gender neutral, so it can be applied to anyone. Usage of gendered-pronouns require reliable sources because they imply a gender identity, whereas gender-neutral pronouns do not. –– 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗗𝘂𝗱𝗲 talk 22:03, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
On the same point, the video which ANN is citing is a fan upload of the livestream found here: [54]. So I feel that the issue can now be resolved by shifting the article to non-binary pronouns.
-- And Volteer1 -- saying things like "if you cared" falls into the same category of inappropriate discourse that Newimpartial's comments fall into. We can arrive at a group decision a lot easier by keeping cool heads and being polite. -- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 21:14, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
@ GimmeChoco44: So you support switching to non-binary pronouns in the article? If so I think we're quite close to resolving this dispute. –– 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗗𝘂𝗱𝗲 talk 22:08, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
That's correct. My issue had been identifying the "independent, reliable source". Now that it's been identified, we can secure this new version with non-binary pronouns and protect the article from further debate. --23:51, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
  • There have been 3RR violations going on. Might it be that some editors care more about Utada's pronouns than Utada does? This is, again, only a dispute because Utada has never said anything on the question. Crossroads -talk- 23:21, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Isn't they or them, plural pronouns? GoodDay ( talk) 20:01, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
    • Not necessarily - see the singular they. Newimpartial ( talk) 20:10, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
      • Oh jeez. After having read the linked-article, I think I'll bow out of this discussion. GoodDay ( talk) 21:30, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Support changing the pronouns I've seen no valid reasons not to use the singular 'they' pronoun for this article. –– 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗗𝘂𝗱𝗲 talk 21:35, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Support changing the pronouns I have no further objection to the pronouns being changed to the format proposed by Newimpartial. -- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 23:43, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
    • This !voting style will be slightly confusing for at least the short-term, as the article is currently using singular they pronouns and is fully protected for a week. Firefangledfeathers ( talk) 23:50, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
      • Well, I don't disagree, but this isn't an RfC so I think people can figure things out, given time. Newimpartial ( talk) 23:53, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Support gender-neutral pronouns, as a straightforward reading of MOS:GNL. Firefangledfeathers ( talk) 23:56, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose they/them pronouns unless/until a reliable source indicates that the use of such pronouns is Utada's preference. It's Utada's preference that matters. TJRC ( talk) 01:02, 10 August 2021 (UTC)
    • Well, fortunately for your preferences, the currently frozen version of the article has no personal pronouns. But this is English Wikipedia, and in English the default pronouns where gender is unknown or at question are "they/them". See also the discussion at ANI.

Newimpartial ( talk) 01:12, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

  • I've already commented above about the pronouns, but we should not be using any gendered categories at this time—that includes non-binary categories. Mountain out of a molehill anyway, as readers very rarely actually use the categories. — Bilorv ( talk) 20:22, 10 August 2021 (UTC)
    • Just for the record, I neither added nor removed any nonbinary cats. Newimpartial ( talk) 20:30, 10 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose they/them pronouns. The independent source, while reliable, says nothing about pronouns, and to claim it foes would be original research. It does reliably claim that Utada is non-binary, but that is independent of pronouns. I'd like to point once again to Rebecca Sugar, a non-binary who uses female pronouns. Until Utada herself says something about pronouns, and not just non-binary status, stick with the status quo. Newimpartial keeps pointing us to MOS:GENDERID to have the pronouns be they/them, but MOS:GENDERID quotes Refer to any person whose gender might be questioned with gendered words (e.g. pronouns, "man/woman", "waiter/waitress") that reflect the person's latest expressed gender self-identification as reported in the most recent reliable sources, even if it does not match what is most common in sources.. By this logic, pronouns should be she/her until Utada directly addresses her pronouns, not just her gender. Unnamed anon ( talk) 23:14, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
    • But Utada's last expressed gender self-identification is non-binary, not female. While some non-binary AFAB people use female or female/neutral pronouns, others use male pronouns (e.g., Elliot Page, many more prefer neutral pronouns, and it would be EXTRAORDINARY to claim that Utada prefers female pronouns at this time, particularly since we have reliable sources stating the opposite.
    • However, the frozen version of the article used neither female nor neutral pronouns fo3 Utada, so we have time to wait and accumulate sources before contemplating change. There should certainly be no change back to female pronouns without a supporting source that postdates Utada's nonbinary announcement. Newimpartial ( talk) 01:12, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

Has a formal RfC been opened? The !votes above suggest yes, but there is no indication of such having happened despite what looks like a general agreement for one. In the interim, the version without any pronouns at all does feel to be an adequate compromise—and a valid alternative overall per AngusWoof. ~Cheers, Ten Ton Parasol 20:58, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

@ TenTonParasol: There is not a formal request for comment open. I'd be willing to start one though, I have a knack for formalities 😉 –– 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗗𝘂𝗱𝗲 talk 21:01, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose gender-neutral pronouns for now Put simply, this comment is very difficult to read as a statement of gender-identity, at least to me (as a cisgender, unmarried male who speaks English natively and has near-native proficiency in Japanese). It is specifically about titles (presumably Utada has been required to circle/tick one or another option on English-language forms), not pronouns. Somewhat tellingly, Utada's official Twitter account does not list any preferred pronouns despite recent Twitter trends [55]; there's a lot of speculation (which I won't link to) among random Twitter-denizens about her pronouns, with some insisting, as others have done above here, that she "is non-binary" and "uses they/them pronouns now" and others saying they've been unable to find evidence of such.
We have no evidence that the subject has a problem with female-gendered pronouns. The Instagram post is about honorifics (something we don't need to worry about at all, per MOS:SURNAME), and given that Utada is a native speaker of Japanese (wherein common honorifics, with the partial exception of -kun, are mostly gender-neutral, almost no honorifics relate to marital status, and it's pretty rare to refer to a married woman as -fujin), it is likely very difficult for most editors of English Wikipedia, even those with a focus on J-Pop, to interpret her statements correctly in their original context (even if such "interpretations" were generally acceptable with Anglo-American subjects). Extrapolating from the above-linked Instagram post (which says It makes me uncomfortable to be identified so markedly by my marital status or sex, and I don’t relate to any of those prefixes.) that Utada self-identifies as non-binary, not female is very, very problematic and I would say violates BLP: indeed, the post actually refers to "female" as "my ... sex", and just says that the subject doesn't like using "prefixes" based on sex and marital status.
To make a hypothetical comparison, if a Japanese popstar was biologically male and had been universally identified as male for decades, and if traditional English titles identified both men and women, or just men, by their marital status (but Japanese honorifics were identical to how they are in the real world), and said popstar posted in English on social media that he didn't want to use a title that is based on a combination of sex and marital status, we would almost certainly not be asking the questions of whether he should be called "non-binary" and whether we should change the pronouns (which are different from titles, in that our articles use the former but not the latter). Another comparison, perhaps easier-to-understand for non-bilingual editors, would be that if, say, Judi Dench said she didn't want to be identified as "Dame", such a comment could very easily be interpreted as indicating discomfort with traditional titles of nobility, or with how such traditional titles are gender-exclusive in some cases but not others, and anyone claiming that such a comment constituted a statement of gender identity would likely be laughed at. (Just to be clear, Judi Dench was just the first name that came to mind; I have no evidence that she would ever make such a comment, and I'm sure there are better examples I could have given of people who might make, or even have made, such comments.)
All that being said, if Utada does make an explicit statement of non-binary gender identity or gives "preferred pronouns" in some form, then I would be happy to change my !vote. All I am saying is that for now, we simply don't have any reliable sources that support the proposed change, and the source that has been cited is apparently being misinterpreted by those supporting the proposed change.
Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 03:12, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
@ Hijiri88: I think you've done a good job explaining why we should use gender neutral pronouns. At the very least we know Utada does not prefer to be labeled based on their sex. That alone is good enough reason to use gender neutral pronouns, which are commonplace in English language. If there is ever any contention on a subject's gender identity, we should use gender-neutral pronouns, as they are usable for anyone, including cisgender people.
P.S. Are you aware the article already describes Utada as non-binary in the Personal Life section? –– 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗗𝘂𝗱𝗲 talk 03:30, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
Arrgh. I did not see that, no. Hmm... I'll have to reconsider my stance, then; is the archive of the livestream in question still accessible? The ANN article in question includes a direct quote, but it also opens by saying Singer Hikaru Utada announced on Instagram on Friday that they are nonbinary., with a link to the aforementioned Instagram post that definitely does not constitute by itself an "announce[ment] ... that they are nonbinary". I will admit that I am editing somewhat outside my wheelhouse here: if a non-specialist wrote an article for a news website that said that such-and-such pre-modern male waka poet's writing in the persona of a woman (for example) constituted an "announcement" of "being nonbinary", such a source could be easily dismissed as having been written by someone who had no idea what they are talking about (and such things have definitely happened many, many times with people citing ANN and other such sources in Wikipedia articles on academic topics, which has somewhat biased me against such sources), but I rarely edit either J-Pop (or pop culture in general) articles or articles on LGB or gender identity topics, so in this case I'm the non-specialist (and I know I'm in the minority regarding the "general reliability" of pop culture sources). This is, of course, not a "vote", so my comment can be taken for what it's worth in light of the fact that I hadn't noticed that our article already explicitly calls her non-binary, citing a source that I personally consider to be sub-par but others probably don't. Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 03:43, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
I agree that looking at that livestream directly may be a good idea. And that is a good point that ANN inferring that from the mere Instagram post is a bad sign for them as a source. If the livestream said it, then Utada is non-binary. FormalDude, while perhaps it is technically true that singular they is usable for anyone, including cisgender people, the fact is that in the general culture, use of "they" for a specific known person strongly implies that the person identifies as non-binary. Going without pronouns is definitely the safest option in this case. Crossroads -talk- 04:00, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
I disagree with the notion that the Singular they has any implication of a person's gender identity. It is explicitly gender neutral, which can be confusing, because it sounds similar to "non-binary", but it is not at all the same as being "non-binary". Gender neutral means a lack of gender definition, or that it can be applied to all genders indiscriminately. –– 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗗𝘂𝗱𝗲 talk 04:11, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
Addendum: I just saw this. By the way, perhaps the bit about Mx. should be cut? It's sourced to ANN and Instagram, but we shouldn't be implying that dislike of English female honorifics necessarily means that someone is nonbinary. Only the self-declaration establishes that. Crossroads -talk- 04:05, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
I'd agree with cutting or moving the Mx. portion, so as not to imply that is the reason they are non-binary. –– 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗗𝘂𝗱𝗲 talk 04:17, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
No worries, I am not an expert in this field either–I think few Wikipedians are. It seems like you're more concerned with the gender identity claim rather than the use of particular pronouns, which I agree is a secondary but relative matter to the subject's gender identity. I found another corroborating source for the non-binary claim, which I added to the article. It will probably be hard to find an archive of the Instagram live stream, which is probably why we're using third-party sources (a primary source would be acceptable for gender identity, but we don't have one other than the unarchived live stream). –– 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗗𝘂𝗱𝗲 talk 04:06, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
It's kinda-off-topic (hence small text), since if our subject were unambiguously cisgender we probably would not be having this discussion, but in contemporary standard English usage, usable for anyone, including cisgender people is only really applicable in certain circumstances, such as an unspecified person whose gender is not known, a hypothetical person who doesn't have a known gender, or someone whose gender is being consciously hidden. As dated as season 7 of the American sitcom Friends is in many ways (the following season contained a very dated/cringeworthy reference to intersex individuals), it is somewhat telling that, when Rachel was pretending to have hired, as her assistant, a qualified elderly woman rather than an attractive young man with no experience, she repeatedly referred to "my new assistant" and avoided pronouns of any kind: "they/them" would, in the standard American English speech of the early 2000s, have given her away as deliberately concealing something; this "standard American English speech of the early 2000s" has changed somewhat in recent years, and people who were yet to be born as of 2000 might be surprised by this, but for the vast majority of cisgender article subjects who are as old as me or older, referring to them as "they/them" within their own articles (as opposed to speaking about them in general, as I am doing now), without any apparent reason, would come across as questioning their gender identity. Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 05:36, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
There you have it–I was born in 98', so I am most familiar with modern 21st century English. (I've never even seen a full episode of Friends!) –– 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗗𝘂𝗱𝗲 talk 05:43, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

@ Hijiri88: @ FormalDude: To clarify for those editors who commented above, the Instagram livestream which contains Utada's declaration of being non-binary is publicly available here. -- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 05:15, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! Now is when I'd appreciate @ Hijiri88's translation skills. Does it match what the sources quote Utada as having said? –– 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗗𝘂𝗱𝗲 talk 05:26, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
Thanks! I'll watch it (and check on the Wikipedia policy for people who have self-identified as non-binary but have not specified preferred pronouns -- I suspect there might be non-binary people who don't mind using the pronouns that were assigned to them at birth, and, given how many people I've seen on Twitter talking about pronouns but not what Utada called "prefixes", it seems somewhat telling that Utada specifically stated a dislike of "Miss/Mrs./Ms." and said nothing about pronouns) later. Someone in the comments seems to have asked Utada what pronouns to use, only to be met with several people (probably trolls) referring to "Utada-sama" (how our subject is likely to be addressed in formal Japanese emails) as a "pronoun" and one person (likely also a troll) talking about Jesus. Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 05:36, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
BTW, -sama is not English, but Japanese, and pronouns are quite rare in Japanese. The commonest Japanese "pronouns" translated "he"/"him"/"his" and "she"/"her"/"her" literally mean "that one" and "that woman" respectively, and are often used as nouns meaning "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" respectively. These "pronouns" are also not inherently subjective/objective/possessive/etc. -- they are accompanied by postpositions such as wa, ga, o, ni, e, no, etc. that serve those purposes. Languages code things differently (my French is rusty, but IIRC French possessives do not specify the gender of the possessor as English and even Japanese, but does distinguish plural pronouns for all-female groups from all-male/mixed groups): given our subject's having been born and partially raised in the United States, it seems reasonable to assume our subject is familiar with both English and contemporary trends in usage among progressive American youth, but for the majority of our subject's -- a J-Pop artist's -- audience, for whom English is a special way of encoding Japanese that they are taught in secondary school (rather than a separate, living language), such concepts are (probably? again, not a specialist) quite alien. Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 05:48, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
  • @ FormalDude: the quote comes from her speaking English, at 2:32, not Japanese. It's not translated. ‑‑ Volteer1 ( talk) 06:04, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
Okay, well I guess that resolves it for me as far as content goes. I still really wish we could get a better source than ANN; I just noticed that they seem to confuse sexual orientation with gender identity, and do exactly what I referred to above (i.e., assume a song written in the persona of a fictional gay woman who can't be with her female friend romantically is a "tease" as to Utada's real-world sexual orientation and/or gender identity). Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 07:02, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
This just came to my attention, but the English version of Utada's official website still uses "she" twice and "her" well over a dozen times, while not using "they", "them" or "their" at all. [56] Is this because Utada, as a non-binary Japanese, sees masculine and feminine singular pronouns (or adjectives?) as a part of the English language rather than a statement of gender identity? Or just a failure to update the website since March? Given that Utada's official Twitter profile doesn't give preferred pronouns and Utada's official website continues to use "she" and "her" almost two months after Utada "came out as non-binary", I think it would be inappropriate for us to speculate on the reason or reasons for these discrepancies; we should probably just continue to use the pronouns used on Utada's official website. Honestly, it seems like either Utada might have been talking to a monolingual American friend about a preference for Japanese third-person pronouns and honorifics that don't put so much emphasis on gender or marital status, said American friend might have said "Oh, are you non-binary?", and things went from there, or Utada initially expressed a dislike for the "Mr."/"Miss"/"Mrs." trichotomy in English (I'm pretty sure I've heard of Japanese EFL learners being told that "Mrs." means -fujin, which is technically true in Japanese but no one would think referring to a married woman as "[married surname]-fujin" and never as "[preferred name]-san" is acceptable, so the translation is less than ideal; marital status, of course, has nothing to do with gender identity, and indeed in a lot of places and times it has had very little to do with sexual orientation or even romantic affinity) on Instagram or elsewhere and non-japonophone fans started extrapolating that Utada had self-identified as non-binary -- this is exactly what the opening line of the ANN article does, and it's what many people in this thread were doing for more than a month until Volteer finally posted the CQqsEK3JwaG link (wherein Utada actually does self-identify as "non-binary" in both English and Japanese) on 7 August. Given all of this, I think we should just say "Utada self-identified as non-binary in an Instagram livestream" without explicit comment on pronouns, and just continue to use feminine pronouns, with maybe a WP:COMMENT telling people not to change the pronouns to conform to how they think non-binary people should be referred to. Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 02:08, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
Okay, now that I see the official website that I did not know about, I now fully support changing to female pronouns. That has to be taken into account per MOS:GENDERID. She has had more than enough time to update that site. If that site's continued use of she/her is not meaningful now because 'maybe it just hasn't been updated', then how long must we wait?
On a side note, if what you suggest was what happened, it wouldn't be the first time that someone unfamiliar with progressive youth culture inadvertantly said something that was taken to mean they are non-binary. See Talk:Billy Dee Williams#Pronouns. He said something about having a feminine side a certain way and as a result had the media tripping over themselves to say he was "genderfluid". That all was clarified eventually. Crossroads -talk- 04:35, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
But it's not like this is a personal website that's updated by Utada. It's a generic record label site, and even says "© Sony Music Labels Inc. All Right Reserved." in the footer. The bio and updates were very likely written by some nameless, faceless Sony employee—after all, they only include details about single and record releases, lyric books, awards, etc. Music stuff. (Kind of ironic for a page named "BIOGRAPHY", no?)
I get that we generally consider official websites to be ABOUTSELF sources, but there's no indication that Utada is directly involved here. Now compare that to the official Twitter and Instagram accounts, which include plenty of selfies and personal notes, and generally appear to be run by Utada personally. Of course, it's entirely possible that everything's run by a team of nameless, faceless Sony employees—but the near-real-time updates of the social media accounts suggest a closeness to Utada that the website does not. Woodroar ( talk) 07:57, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
it's not like this is a personal website that's updated by Utada I know that (you have no idea how intimately I know that... I recall pointing out the same thing with regard to whether a certain Japanese actor's talent agency's profile on him was a strong indication of his personal preference for how his name is romanized), but so far we have no reliable sources remotely connected to our subject herself that say she prefers different pronouns: just speculation by mostly straight, cisgender fans on various fansites saying that since she "is non-binary" she probably prefers this or that pronoun set (or -- while I doubt any of them would say this -- that she should prefer this or that pronoun set). Regardless of who curates these official social media profiles and official websites, they are the closest thing we have to our subject's personal preferences. It would be better if we had a neutral, third-party source (preferably a major newspaper or an academic work on LGBTQ+ studies or contemporary Japanese music) that discusses the discrepancy between how her website refers to her and how Wikipedia and various fansites like ANN refer to her, and the fact that her official Twitter account (no idea if it's actually our subject's Twitter account or an officially curated page actually operated by a nameless employee, although the fact that tweets are quite infrequent -- if someone was getting paid to tweet for me, I'd want them to do so at least once a week -- and the existence of this page indicate the former) notably does not specify "preferred pronouns" like seemingly the majority non-binary celebrities and many thousands of other Twitter users (seemingly mostly cisgender people showing solidarity), but at present it seems that we do not. We don't have any such source, and we don't even have anything closer to our subject (and therefore more likely to reflect our subject's personal preferences) than the above-linked website and Twitter profile; we just have third-party sources (seemingly mostly written by straight, cisgender, non-Japanese) speculating on how non-binary people like our subject "should" be referred to without any regard for our subject's actual personal preferences. (I'd be willing to accept that Utada's personal Twitter account, which seems to have been used no more than three or four times since 26 June, just hasn't been updated yet, but we don't have any evidence of that, and speculation would be inappropriate.) Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 08:36, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
Off-topic and apropos of nothing since I took the article out, hence small text. Hilariously, I looked at the ANN article again, and I think the point of contention about its adequacy is... a copy-paste linking error. Because the first paragraph article quotes and describes the livestream, but links to the Mx. post. It weakens the source regardless, but I don't think the source was trying to purposefully claim "supporting Mx. === non-binary", they simply linked to the incorrect post. They were correctly attributing the non-binary claim to the correct Instagram thing, just apparently copied the wrong link. ~Cheers, Ten Ton Parasol 17:49, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Not being that familiar with her work, I needed to Google this, and I may be missing some context (and it was a few years ago), but Utada apparently alternated between the gender-neutral (but somewhat more female than male) first-person pronoun wata[ku]shi (the most basic Japanese word for "I", but men also commonly use ore and boku, whereas women mostly use wata[ku]shi and its variants) and the female-only variant atashi to refer to herself here. ("私" might actually be read atashi, but "あたし" can only be read atashi; it's possible she only referred to herself as atashi.) Her official blog (which unfortunately has not been updated since 2017) has also used atashi, [57] and in 2014 her blog described her as her then-fiancé's "special person", with "person" being pointedly written as 女 ("woman"). [58] These are, of course, likely out of date (certainly more than the above-linked English profile), but here is a tweet from last year in which she refers to the Japanese that her half-Italian son uses as "women's speech" due to her influence (he refers to himself as watashi rather than, presumably, boku). Lacking some explicit statement that she no longer identifies as "more female than male" and therefore prefers gender-neutral third-person pronouns in English, I don't think we should use gender-neutral third-person pronouns to describe someone who seems to use female-coded first-person pronouns to refer to herself. Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 04:17, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
    • According to policy, though, we should not be paying attention to Utada's gender identity or pronoun choices prior to the nonbinary announcement. What do we have since then? Newimpartial ( talk) 04:20, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
I'll have to re-watch the stream (and check for other videos, interviews, etc.) later. Japanese speaking Japanese (as opposed to westerners speaking pidgin Japanese based on English) generally use personal pronouns when specificity is required and otherwise omit them, which makes it difficult, Utada's official blog hasn't been updated since 2017, the Twitter page is ... well, it's not "bare", but there's a lot more images and videos than written words. That being said, Utada's "coming out" video said that she/they had felt non-binary for several years. Anyway, I was curious what you meant by "according to policy", so I checked both WP:NONBINARY and MOS:IDENTITY, both of which favour prioritizing the subject's most recent personal preference, which we don't know outside of making assumptions either that the subject's personal website and Twitter profile are waiting to be updated or that they are not waiting to be updated. Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 04:54, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
And then I went and checked the Instagram livestream; she refers to herself as atashi multiple times in the fourth minute of the stream (i.e., immediately after coming out as non-binary). A person who uses female-only first-person pronouns to refer to themselves should not be assumed to prefer gender-neutral third-person pronouns unless we have a very specific statement that "X is how I refer to myself in Japanese, but I would prefer if people speaking or writing about me in English use Y". Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 05:01, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
Waiting for new information is not at all the same as making assumptions ... that the subject's personal website and TWitter profile are waiting to be updated. Rather, waiting for new informarion is the only way to avoid making assumptions one way or the other. We know the subject's latest self-declared identity, and unless you have seen something since then, we don't have a subsequent declaration on pronouns - we cannot assume that the prior pronoun usage does, or does not, now reflect the subject's current preference. We certainly cannot assume that because the subject already felt nonbinary before the announcement, that therefore nothing changed at the announcement so the pronouns should be assumed to stay the same. That really would be EXTRAORDINARY.
And just so that we are clear: I do not assume that the subject prefers non-gendered pronouns in English. What I pointed out earlier is that they/them are the correct pronouns in English when gender, or pronoun preference, is unknown. But I am fine to do without personal pronouns in the article entirely until we have more information. Newimpartial ( talk) 05:05, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
Someone changed the pronouns used in the article based on the assumption that "coming out as non-binary" meant that she doesn't want to be referred to by female pronouns. [59] I am not sure if this person was a Japanese-speaker who had seen the video in which she came out and repeatedly referred to herself with the female pronoun atashi, and was trolling (or had not stopped to think about the edit before making it), but it seems safer to guess that they were a non-Japanese-speaker who heard the portion of the stream that was in English (or read it on a fansite) and made an assumption. Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 05:12, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
This is English wikipedia. In English, if you don't know a nonbinary person's pronouns, you use they/them; you do not continue with pre-transition pronouns unless you have a reliable source that does so. I haven't seen any RS in English since Utada's announcement that use she/her. Newimpartial ( talk) 05:59, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
What a BLP says about themselves as indicative of preference for gendered terms is relevant no matter what language they said it in. It factors in vis a vis MOS:GENDERID. The personal website is an RS incidentally. Crossroads -talk- 06:06, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
You place great faith in the personal website, but even the work of the best publicists isn't as good a source as an independent RS. Honestly, editors should be holding back from OR and simply base the article on what the sources say. The only thing the subject gets to define for themselves is what gender they are and what pronouns they prefer - and I'm still waiting for a statement on the latter. For the rest, we should simply follow the sources. Newimpartial ( talk) 06:10, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
This is English wikipedia. The fact that you do not speak Utada's native language and the language of most of Utada's songs, and therefore have to rely on dubious readings of Wikipedia articles to tell you how to interpret the way Japanese people refer to themselves, is irrelevant. This is a Japanese topic, so most of the reliable sources (and virtually all of the first-party sources) are in Japanese (and therefore do not use third-person pronouns anywhere near as frequently as English sources). We use pronouns for non-binary people in accordance with their stated preference (not some prescriptive "rule" that non-binary individuals "should" use one or another set of pronouns), without making assumptions one way or the other. Since our subject does not have a (clearly) stated preference, we need to weigh the evidence; said evidence includes the use of female-only first-person pronouns by the subject after having come out as non-binary. It is not Wikipedia's place to be telling non-binary people (and certainly not English Wikipedia's place to be telling Japanese non-binary people) how they "should" be referred to.
even the work of the best publicists isn't as good a source as an independent RS You have not located such an RS. We have an Instagram livestream given by the subject of the article and some fansites speculating on the "meaning" of said livestream. The closest I've found to a reliable third-party source is this, which mixes "she" with "their" and makes a general statement that Non-binary people often use the pronouns "they/them".
Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 06:24, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure if this clouds the issue or makes it clearer. Utada mentions "not identifying that much with either being 'male' or 'female'", but says "I never felt like my gender was a disadvantage" and says that "what being a woman means to me" means "being myself". Needless to say, a promotional video for Shiseido is not the best source for this, but for me at least, I am getting a stronger and stronger impression that this is about our subject not wanting to be "defined" by gender labels, including the "non-binary" label that has attracted so much attention to this article in the last few weeks. At present, I think Utada underwent surgery after being diagnosed with a benign ovarian tumor, causing them to put promotional activities on hold (which to most readers who don't specifically know about Utada as "an example of a non-binary celebrity" probably looks, with no reference to gender identity until the end of the article and no reference to preferred pronouns anywhere, like it's referring to "Utada and her retinue") seems (by forcing our readers to stop and Ctrl+F "gend...", "non-bi..." or some other keyword) like shouting "Utada is non-binary", which definitely goes against the spirit of ... just about everything our subject has said on the matter. Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 08:47, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Rewording Mx. sentence

Adding a break bc long section and also separate topic coming out of this. On what to do about the Mx. portion, mentioned way above, would it be possible to reword to separate the concepts? Because they feel both to be important as far as personal identity, just not necessarily related. There's likely a more elegant way to do this, but something like: "In discussing dislike for prefixes such as "Ms." and "Mrs.", Utada expressed support for the gender neutral prefix Mx. and also suggested Mys., a shortening of "mystery". On June 26, 2021, Utada came out as non-binary during an Instagram livestream."

Or, even leveraging the sentence about same-sex marriage: "On June 26, 2021, Utada came out as non-binary during an Instagram livestream. Utada has expressed support for same-sex marriage and for usage of the gender neutral prefix Mx., having also suggested a prefix Mys., a shortening of "mystery"." ~Cheers, Ten Ton Parasol 16:50, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks @ TenTonParasol, I think either of those are good ideas for wording the sentence. –– 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗗𝘂𝗱𝗲 talk 19:01, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
"prefix[es]" is incorrect. Utada used it, presumably either as a simple error or because Japanese equivalents like -san, -sama, -dono, etc. are classified as postfixes in Japanese. Can we say "titles"? Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 00:01, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
"Titles" works fine for me. –– 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗗𝘂𝗱𝗲 talk 00:41, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm also not a big fame of "came out"; Utada did not say "I am proud to announce that" or anything to that effect, and in Japanese この数年で知って「あっ、それなんだ！」って思ったけど、日本でどれぐらい広まっていることかわからないけど「non-binary」に該当するなって最近知ったので it sounds even less like "coming out". The currently cited secondary source is definitely not sufficient to solve this, since they clearly did not ask Utada for clarification and seem to go as far as misidentifying "non-binary" with being gay or bisexual (by referencing a song apparently written shortly after Utada gave birth to a child with her/their then-husband, to whom she/they would remain married for another two years). Could we say Utada self-identified as non-binary during an Instagram livestream instead? Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 02:08, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

We should just remove the "Mx." thing. The proposals above don't seem to change the implication, and frankly it is WP:INDISCRIMINATE trivia only sourced to Instagram and ANN, both poor sources. I also support the rewording you propose. Crossroads -talk- 04:18, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
Also, out of curiosity, what does the Japanese you are quoting translate to? Crossroads -talk- 04:23, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
I would support rewording to titles and "came out". Given there seems to be minimum consensus for that so far, I'm going to leave the sentences structured as is for now but swap those phrases and words. I'm also going to swap the ANN reference to a Kotaku article, bc the Kotaku article doesn't make the same mistake about gender identity vs. sexuality. I don't really think the Mx. thing is indiscriminate if at least because it's noted in multiple sources; the Instagram is lessened in how poor or questionable it would be otherwise given that the claim is about the subject made by the subject. I wonder if stronger Japanese-language sources exist? ~Cheers, Ten Ton Parasol 17:25, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
Oh! I'll also say that I want to retract my first rewording proposal. If consensus lands that the bit about Mx. should remain, I would prefer to reorder it so that the clause about support for same-sex marriage comes between them to further separate and add context for the discussion on titles were in the context of Ms. and Mrs. being related to martial status and sex. I support nixing Mys. from the article though. ~Cheers, Ten Ton Parasol 17:45, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Please stop mangling the reference citations

This is not rocket science. The |publisher= parameter is for THE PUBLISHING COMPANY, only, ever. The |work= parameter (and its aliases like |website=, |newspaper=, |journal=, |magazine=) are for THE PUBLICATION, regardless of medium. Do not put website names in |publisher=, either in title form (Salon) or domain name form (Salon.com). Do not add the |publisher= parameter when it is redundant, i.e. identical or nearly identical to the publication. Every time you garble a citation, which makes it emit incorrect citation meta-data as well as show up with incorrect formatting, you waste the time of other editors who have to clean up after you. At least 30% of the citations in this article were incorrect. That's not okay, especially since a couple of years ago I had already cleaned them up before. I.e., someone went through and mucked them up again. If you are using a script that incorrectly puts website names as |publisher=, stop using it, you are breaking things. Report the error to the author and ask them to fix it.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:58, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Nationality/Citizenship?

Utada having been at one time theoretically eligible for US citizenship by virtue of having been born there is not a valid reason for asserting US citizenship in the article, and American ( jus soli, expatriate) (in the infobox) reeks of WP:OR. The lead is even worse, linking to the article Japanese Americans (which is about Americans of Japanese ancestry) -- if our subject were under the age of 22 (and therefore likely possessing dual citizenship under the laws of both countries), hyphenating without linking to that article might be okay, but our article does not do that, and Utada lost the theoretical ability to possess dual citizenship 16 years ago. Utada is (universally?) considered to be a Japanese singer, and (while this is OR, it is part of a talk page comment and therefore explicitly permitted by policy, unlike the OR currently in the article) Japanese law does not allow people over the age of 22 to possess dual citizenship.

Does anyone have a source addressing these concerns? Because none are currently cited in the article.

Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 01:35, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

There is a 2020 tweet by her stating she managed to register for the election. https://twitter.com/utadahikaru/status/1313979277843537921
Be sure to archive-url that; her article's source material is subject to an unusual level of link rot.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:00, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Japanese naming order?

No comment on the various RMs, but Utada Hikaru [is] the only child of Teruzane Utada is obviously problematic. Since the article title uses Japanese order, can we use Japanese naming order for all Japanese people named in the article? Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 10:19, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

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Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4 Archive 5


Edit warring

@ 79.65.101.219: Please explain why you are removing sourced information repeatedly. Your edit summary applies to only a tiny fraction of what you are removing, and is therefore unacceptable. ··· 日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 00:54, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm afraid I agree with the IP on this one: there's way too much detail already and it needs pruning. Remember that you are aiming this at ordinary readers, not fans (sometimes it helps to look at a page for a person in whom you don't have a particular interest to judge the amount of detail you would feel comfortable with). Btljs ( talk) 08:49, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
  • It's an altogether ridiculous amount of trivia. This is a general purpose encyclopedia. It is not the place for a blow-by-blow list of her every move. Nobody cares when her father set up his Twitter account, or what songs she considered performing at a particular concert. Some of this stuff might be ok for page 6 of this week's teen magazines, but not for here. We do not care which particular website was hosting a song for download. I would expect the record company to update their webpage with details of her single. I would NOT expect to read about it here. It is not notable that "fans could text to join Utada's mobile list to receive future news updates". What are we even trying to say with lines such as "a track was reported to be released as a Japanese single at a then-unspecified date"?? What about "she expressed she could be planning to do a cover album, or just take a break to get some new ideas". It's so vague as to be pointless. This is not myspace. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.65.101.219 ( talk • contribs) 13:36, 27 December 2015‎ (UTC)
    • I don't so much care about what you removed as why. The edit summary is there for that reason, and your edit summaries were extremely vague:
      • "none of this was notable"
      • "<blank>"
      • "Are you sure the general reader needs to know the date that her father set up his Twitter account?!"
      • "Removing trivia. This is not the place for a minute-by-minute account of her every musing. Also, blogs are not a reliable source."
    • Only the last summary was acceptable. "Notability" is only applicable to the article topic in determining whether the article can remain on Wikipedia, or whether it should be deleted. Once notability has been established for the topic of the article, it is irrelevant for anything else in the article. Non-notable information (meaning information about topics which would not have their own article) is regularly used in all Wikipedia articles, so using that as a reason for removing content is not acceptable. Having a blank edit summary is also not acceptable or useful as it give no indication regarding why the content was removed or changed.
    • Per WP:BOLD, once your edit had been reverted, you should have immediately brought the discussion to the talk page here and explained why you were removing the information, especially since your edit summaries (until the very last one) really gave no valid reason for removing the content.
    • Also, if you plan to regularly contribute, I recommend creating an account so that you can better keep track of your contributions, and so your privacy is protected. Sharing your IP address can reveal a lot more than you may want to be revealed. ··· 日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 17:39, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Requested move 22 January 2016

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved. Jenks24 ( talk) 10:36, 1 February 2016 (UTC)


Hikaru Utada → Utada Hikaru – Per MOS:IDENTITY and MOS:JA, and consistent use in academic and other high-quality sources. Detailed rationale and source pile given in separate post below, so the WP:RM page isn't clogged with a huge entry.  —  SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:54, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

  • Nominator's evidence in support: The subject's albums (other than those released under stage names) all uniformly use "Utada Hikaru" in the Latin alphabet) [1], [2], including her English-language releases. Even our own articles know this, resulting in the absurd and reader-confusing situation of us having articles at Utada Hikaru Single Collection Vol. 1 and Utada Hikaru Single Collection Vol. 2 for an artist we're calling "Hikaru Utada". Utada's own website, http://www.utadahikaru.jp/, is clearly titled "HIKKI'S WEBSITE: Utada Hikaru Official Website", in both the English- and Japanese-language page sets, and this name order is preferred throughout the site. Some instances of "Hikaru Utada" appear, but they're small minority, and do not appear to have been authored by her but by site staff. Of especial importance is one such post from from ~12 years ago, "[2003/03/13] Thank you very much!" [3] explicitly stating she was temporarily officially using the name "Hikaru Utada" but would be returning to "Utada Hikaru" later. She actually returned to using simply "Utada" with the next two releases, and then did in fact switch to "Utada Hikaru", starting with the first single collection and the Utada Hikaru in Budokan 2004 DVD (both in 2004), and continuing with Heart Station (2008), then Wild Life and second singles collection (both 2010). A few releases reverted to the mononym "Utada" (in 2009 with This Is the One, and on DVD releases in 2004 and 2010). Further evidence of the artist's "official" use of U.H. name order is provided by All for You: UH Premium Single Box Set (Korean compilation, 2005), and the various volumes of the Utada Hikaru Single Clip Collection DVDs, up through 2006. Zero releases bear the name "Hikaru Utada", even during the approx. 1-year period that adoption of this name had been announced by her staff blog, a plan that was self-evidently abandoned pretty quickly (though the 2006 book Gods of Rock seems to confirm that she was using the H.U. name order in the US in 2004 [4]). Also, the artist is Japanese American and bilingual, with fanbases both Western and Eastern, and it is not plausible that these name choices and their changes over time are ignorant, accidental or random.

    The previous RM in 2008, which moved this article away from the earlier Utada Hikaru title, was based (albeit in good faith) on essentially nothing but the then-current wording of MOS:JA, which at that time strongly favored Western name order regardless of other considerations. I think the above MOS:IDENTITY and WP:ABOUTSELF argument is actually entirely sufficient for a move. However, a notable amount of debate was had about MOS:JA's wording throughout 2015 and perhaps earlier (I wasn't tracking it the whole time) and Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Japan-related articles#Personal names now provides a checklist of points to consider.

    The #1 point on that list is: "Use the form personally or professionally used by the person, if available in the English/Latin alphabet (this can include the spelling appearing on their official website or official social media profile, but do not rely on a URL when the actual text is all Japanese)", and the evidence presented above perfectly complies with this. The previous RM noted a 7:1 Google hits ratio in favor of "Utada Hikaru" over "Hikaru Utada". A more carefully constructed search today still results in a 4.8:1 preference for "Utada Hikaru" [5], [6]. While [7]. While the original RM showed a slight favoritism toward "Hikaru Utada" in a Google News search, Western news sources are notoriously bad for this kind of question, as they routinely force Western name order for lowest-common-denominator expediency reasons (this is also why we don't use stats about them in various other human-name-rendering RMs, such as those dealing with diacritics). Nevertheless, some use U.H. name order, including Time magazine, despite that publication's American conservatism [8], and them same could be said of New Statesman [9]; however, plenty of news sources use H.U. order.

    The next MOS:JA naming criterion: #2, appearance in other encyclopedias: "Utada Hikaru" is used in Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World [10] which is professionally edited, but the opposite result was found in Encyclopedia.com [11], which seems to be pro-edited (and which has information we are missing, including on Utada's early bi-national life, BTW). I did also find "Hikaru Utada" in World Heritage Encyclopedia [12], but this is a false hit because its content is derived in part directly from our own (and it's very obvious in their article on this subject, which even has the same headings from an earlier version of our article). The Guinness Book of World Records uses U.H. order (she has a WR? why doesn't our article say so?) [13] [note: if the content is not visible at that link, it is here, 2nd entry: [14]], and in another of their publications [15] (if not visible, see top entry here: [16]]. Another tertiary source, The Children's Book of Music, gives the U.H. name order [17]. The Encyclopedia of World Pop Music, 1980-2001 gives all names in the form "Utada, Hikaru", so is of no help [18]; same goes for Contemporary Musicians: Profiles of the People in Music [19]. The "Hikaru UTADA" or "UTADA Hikaru" formats [20] are also of little relevance to WP. Other search results looking for such topical encyclopedia entries just turn up blogs and wikis and such [21].

    Back to MOS:JA, #3 & #4 "Use the form publicly used on behalf of the person in the English-speaking world ... [or] in any other popular Latin-alphabet-using language": Utada's record/video labels consistently publish her material as "Utada Hikaru" or "Utada", never "Hikaru Utada"; there seems to be no other relevant party to consult, since no one else is using her name on her behalf. The 5th point only applies to diacritics.

    The cited MOS:JA section also says: "Follow the usage of academic texts or a widely used reference such as a published encyclopedia in matters of spelling, macron usage, and name order. Such sources generally give Japanese names family name first." There are few academic-journal sources with which to work. The industry (not academic) journal Perfect Beat has U.H. name order [22], as does the German-language academic journal Digitale Jugendkulturen ('Digital Youth-culture') [23], the Journal of the Society for Asian Music [24], and the Journal of Japanese Trade & Industry [25]. Same U.H. results in similar Japan-oriented trade journals, including Japan Spotlight [26], Look Japan [27], and many others; but this was not entirely consistent (I found three exceptions in this class of trade publication: [28], [29], [30]). Academic books favor U.H. order, such as the media-studies volume Popular Culture Co-Productions and Collaborations in East and Southeast Asia [31], Globalization and Popular Music in South Korea [32], and Japan After Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present [33] (I can't find any that use H.U. order). Not sure Managing Media Companies counts as academic, except in an MBA sense, but it, too, has U.H. order, in a list with "Janet Jackson", etc. [34] Non-academic English-language materials on Japanese pop culture naturally lean toward native Japanese name ordering, like Anime Reign [35], etc., but this is not universal, as shown by Giant Robot [36]. The above seems to be about the best we can do for a recent pop-culture figure.

    Google N-grams and Books: An N-grams search produces results for "Utada Hikaru" but zero for "Hikaru Utada" (in a corpus that only has data up to 2008, and which I constrained to 1997 at the lower bound, to weed out any historical people with this name) [37]. A Google "Books" search is useless statistically (though was how many of the cited sources were found, using a search string of "Utada Hikaru" OR "Hikaru Utada" -wikipedia [38]); the majority of the results are Billboard Magazine (i.e., low-quality [added: namely, tertiary and with close fiduciary ties to the music industry] news material, not books) which seems to have a policy of forcibly westernizing names; self-published crap ("e-study guides", "mini-bios", etc.) that has to be ignored; and sheet music (which naturally follows the labels in using "Utada Hikaru"). Not all of the entertainment press is as jingoistic as Billboard: [39], [40]. Two pieces of professionally-published fiction that turned up (one in French) give U.H. name order when mentioning her in an in-context way [41], [42]. I stopped trawling these entries after about 10 or 12 screenfuls of results. The majority of the sources using H.U. order were either unreliable, or were newssources, and we already have GNews stats showing that they tend to favor that order, so I need not link them all here; I did include notable cases of "anti-U.H." results in the data above.

    Overall, I think the case for a move back to Utada Hikaru is overwhelming, both on the basis of current WP:POLICY and per a preponderance of reliable, high-quality, non-news sources.

    PS: Note that various of these sources can be WP:MINEd for additional information to use in this article, beyond the two I already highlighted for this purpose.  —  SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:54, 22 January 2016 (UTC) Updated with additional rationale.  —  SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:55, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

  • Support move. Given the substantial changes in Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Japan-related articles#Personal names since 2008, I find the evidence that SMcCandlish has compiled seems to, point by point, suggest that a move is needed here. I find the evidence in relation to Follow the usage of academic texts or a widely used reference such as a published encyclopedia in matters of spelling, macron usage, and name order. Such sources generally give Japanese names family name first and Use the form publicly used on behalf of the person in the English-speaking world ... [or] in any other popular Latin-alphabet-using language to be most convincing here. I, JethroBT drop me a line 08:31, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Support move. Apart from the MOS guidelines cited by nom, it should be moved per the WP:COMMONNAME policy. The guidelines cited here elaborate on that policy for specialized cases; but even without that elaboration, COMMONNAME would call for the move. TJRC ( talk) 15:19, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Opposeper WP:MOS-JA and WP:ENGLISH. Any media that would use Utada Hikaru would also put their other artists in Eastern order of names. The result would be a mishmash of artists half of whom would use Eastern order as their stage name and others with Western order as stage name. Is that the plan going forward? What if the artist primarily uses a Japanese name in their works, but when they print album covers they use Eastern order? Same with Korean singers, who like to use their given name as a singularity. Also, why would Billboard magazine be suddenly thrown among the low-quality works when it is one of the main secondary sources for appeal of artists to the English-speaking world. Is NPR a low-quality work as they preferred Western order as well? [43] And why are you looking at French magazines, they aren't English-speaking world either. I also suspect WP:JTITLE #2 "Use the form found in an encyclopedia entry from a generally accepted English encyclopedia;" would still list Utada under U and not H. AngusWOOF ( bark • sniff) 17:11, 22 January 2016 (UTC), updated 17:38, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
    @ AngusWOOF: I know you changed your !vote, but wanted to address your questions: I relegated Billboard to low-quality on this, because it's a tertiary source, of statistics not content-analytic material (except where it includes actual articles, and none that I saw were specifically about Utada). Billboard is a high-quality tertiary source – encyclopedic, essentially – of statistics on American music sales and airplay, of course. Sources that are great for one thing may be useless for another. As a news source, it wasn't considered in any detail, since I glossed over those in bulk as being in favor of H.U. order. The main issue with Billboard was that it badly polluted the GBooks search results. Your point about #2 I already covered, and specifically noted the cases of "Utada, Hikaru" as not counted among "Utada Hikaru". The "Utada Hikaru" examples were from encyclopedias that would not have had "Presley, Elvis". I don't recall citing a French magazine, but a German journal, and French and English fiction. I included them per "any other popular Latin-alphabet-using language"; because the journal was an academic source and those were scarce but high-quality; the French bit was one of two non-trivial references in fiction showing contextually how fans refer to her (I guess this is trivial, on reflection; and because German, French and English have the same Westernized-order tendencies with Asian names, so it stands out that these non-Eng. sources used the preference of the subject. I don't understand what you mean by "What if the artist primarily uses a Japanese name in their works, but when they print album covers they use Eastern order?" What works (in English) does this refer to other than the albums? I'm not sure we care about latinized names tacked onto Japanese-only releases. Utada's case was unusual specifically because she puts out jp and en and mixed-language material, and has a large English-speaking following (I confess I'm a fan of her non-pop material, despite being a middle-aged white guy with near-zero interest in Asian pop culture – I don't even like anime much). As for the random J-pop and K-pop stars, I think WP:COMMONNAME will keep them all at Westernized name order, due to the lack of, well, all the Utada-specific sort of evidence.  —  SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:30, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
    Thank you for all the research that you have presented for Utada's case. It really goes a long way above the "I don't like it." or that the Japanese printed it this way so you have to use that despite the official English adaptation with the different name arguments I've been having to read at other talk pages. You're right in that she did use Western order for a few years, and that might have skewed some of the search results. Also Billboard tends to arbitrarily translate some of the album and single names. I was merely objecting to that as that, along with Rolling Stone, Variety and other English-language magazines are fair game for treatment of the subject among mainstream English language sources. They may not be as strong as the academic sources of course, but I wanted to make sure the academic sources that use Eastern order aren't pushing their bias for that format towards every subject originally from Asia. As a hypothetical example, some academic sources might insist on naming their subject "Chan Kong-sang" over "Jackie Chan".
    Kumi Koda vs. Koda Kumi should be next to use Eastern order for overwhelming self-identifying marketing. That one's been at contention for years.
    Nami Tamaki uses Eastern order English on her Asian albums, but when marketed in the US (Tofu Records) they have used Western order. This should stay Western as her notability in English comes from her marketing with her Western name at anime conventions. Other stars have yet to cross over so their names aren't determined. These are the cases I was concerned about as well as artists whose albums stay mainly in Asia and go with whatever order their companies push. AngusWOOF ( bark • sniff) 16:35, 24 January 2016 (UTC) updated AngusWOOF ( bark • sniff) 16:47, 24 January 2016 (UTC) and 16:57, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
@ AngusWOOF: Got it. I'd like to be in on the K.K. RM when that comes up. I intended this one to be a model for how to do this. I'm not certain it's 100% a success. The consensus so far is going with it, but without much interest in the MOS:JA arguments. I think they may have to be tied more specifically (in MOS:JA's actual wording, I mean) to precisely what parts of naming and other WP:POLICY (including MoS in that sense) that they're relying upon. As for the music press, a common problem with them is that they are not really a reliable source for name style. They have WP:INDY problems, because almost all their revenue comes from sales of advertising to the music industry, and as a result they basically "do what they're told" (i.e. closely follow label press releases, artist websites, typography on release covers, etc.) when it comes to how to stylize artists' names, how to capitalize titles, etc. I don't know whether this issue extents to name order (judging from the above, you'd know better than I would), nor how many of these publications it affects, but we have seen at RM a strong trend for over-capitalization crap like "Do It Like A Dude", and over-stylization crap like "P!nk", almost entirely coming from the music press (and associated online sources that are the Web side of music journalism, with the exact same fiduciary bias). Part of the problem of dealing with such sources is that people who don't have much experience with or haven't thought very hard about, sourcing questions are under the mistaken impression that every newspaper/magazine/journal/news-site is a secondary source for every single thing it publishes in every context. No sources are or can be treated categorically this way. The average publication of that sort is a primary, secondary and tertiary source for different things in different contexts, all at the same time. The average newspaper journalism article (but not editorial, op-ed, column, or endpiece) is a secondary source for most material in it, absent a reason to suspect otherwise, and that's about as far as we can generalize.  —  SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:58, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
    • Comment See also WP:DIVIDEDUSE. It's not clear going one way or the other. For Utada's case, common name may override as with Chow Yun-Fat where they insist on going by English Eastern order for name. But I'm more concerned with the bevy of Asian pop stars that use mainly the Asian name and then choose Eastern or Western orders on a whim. AngusWOOF ( bark • sniff) 17:38, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
      • Yeah, I'd thought about citing Chow as precedent, but wanted to keep this a "pure" test of the new MOS-JA approach.  —  SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:05, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
    • This is a case where the artist insists on the Eastern ordering on all her high profile albums and credits, also having that American background. Even on the English closing credits for Kingdom Hearts all the regular translated Japanese names are in western order but music is listed as Utada Hikaru. AngusWOOF ( bark • sniff) 00:21, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose per WP:MOS-JA and WP:ENGLISH. This reminds me of how the English and American date systems are different, seeing there is a WP:PRECEDENT to use an English name order we should stick by that. - Knowledgekid87 ( talk) 20:04, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
    • This is one case where she wants it her way so support. - Knowledgekid87 ( talk) 05:32, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
      @ Knowledgekid87: I know you changed your mind on this, but wanted to ask what you meant by "Oppose per WP:MOS-JA", when the majority of the basis of the RM is point-by-point compliance with the analysis steps laid out in that guideline? What in MOS-JA did you think was contradicting the nomination? If there is something, it may suggest that the guideline needs revision to not contradict itself. As I noted on its talk page, I think the personal names section does have at least a focus problem.  —  SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:49, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Support per overwhelming evidence presented by nom. If the WP:MOS-JA and WP:ENGLISH guidelines disagree with the WP:COMMONNAME policy, then they need to be brought in line with it. ··· 日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 20:33, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
    @ Nihonjoe: I've asked Knowledgekid87 for clarification on where they think MOS-JA might have such a conflict, as I couldn't detect one. MOS-JA's section on this appears to be a Japanese-subject-specific rubric for how to apply COMMONNAME and the other WP:AT criteria (among which COMMONNAME is not supreme, just one of several). There are frequent complaints that WP:ENGLISH conflicts with AT, especially COMMONNAME. There are also frequent complaints that COMMONNAME is over-relied upon and misapplied. I suspect that resolution of this will take several more years and will not be entirely in the manner of forcing guidelines to comply with COMMONNAME, but also involve adjusting COMMONNAME to be interpreted less frequently as a hammer that treats everything as a nail. That said, the core basis of this RM is COMMONNAME, when it comes to the source pile, though I prefer the IDENTITY argument. I think it's ethically wrong and contravenes the spirit of BLP policy to side, for nothing but convenience, with sources that try to force a name on people that they do not prefer or accept.  —  SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:49, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
    • I'm not seeing where we disagree. It is extremely unlikely that reliable sources will be overwhelming in their use of a name not preferred by someone. If we stick to WP:COMMONNAME, which requires us to use reliable sources to determine the most common usage, then there should be no problem. Most (if not all) of the media refer to people using their preferred name or moniker. ··· 日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 01:10, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
      • This tends not to be true of sportspeople. Most Western sports organizations push First Last on Asians in English, and also drop diacritics. They may even declare it an "organizational standard" and whatever. The issue AngusWOOF highlights above is also relevant - an an Asian artist may have releases using both orders, and we often have no idea what their own preference is. (I agree that, then, we have little choice but to go with common name in English sources, having no identity argument to weigh).  —  SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:06, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Support per WP:Commonname and a clear choice made by the artist and/or her publishing companies. In my experience Japanese artists usually use western order in latin script on their releases, so to consistently use eastern order on all materials says rather a lot. It also seems to be reflected in sources. SephyTheThird ( talk) 23:54, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
    • It helps that she has American ties so it's not just the Japanese marketing companies that are pushing the Eastern order. AngusWOOF ( bark • sniff) 00:21, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
      • Good point! I added that to the rationale pile.  —  SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:55, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Support; strong evidence from nominator.   InsertCleverPhraseHere  InsertTalkHere  04:15, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Support She has had English press written about her for over 15 years now, and while press in 2000-2002 might have referred to her as Hikaru Utada more often, I don't think that's the case now at all. -- Prosperosity ( talk) 09:31, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Support Done deal. Btljs ( talk) 10:17, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

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Article image

Can someone please find a better (current) picture of Utada for use on the article? The last one(s) used are almost, if not more, than 10 years old. I'd do it myself, but I'd fear the wrath of not getting an appropriate, loyalty-free image. ( Jeimii ( talk) 21:02, 21 August 2016 (UTC))

I see three images over at Commons [44], one of which is dated 2009. AngusWOOF ( bark • sniff) 23:12, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
Those and more at Commons:Category:Hikaru Utada. I rather like Commons:File:Utada Hikaru 2004.jpg, and I think of the photos there it comes closest to the height of her career, and is a moderately flattering shot. It was on the article until recently, so I gather that mine is the minority viewpoint, though. TJRC ( talk) 04:59, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

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Wtyd on here

Im not sure make a decision Freackk ( talk) 22:19, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

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Badly outdated

There's all kinds of "an announcement was made that [something in the future]" stuff in this article about stuff that was in the future in, say, 2010, but which is now way in the past. This material needs to be rewritten to say what did happen rather than what was once planned to happen, or it's simply unencyclopedic "old news".  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:10, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

This isn't a B-class article in my opinion

I like Utada, but I find this article to be hell to read because of the choppy prose and one section (2010–15) being overly long. The article doesn't even elaborate further on her musical styles, such as the types of sounds her albums convey or her lyrical topics. There's also no awards section whatsoever, and I can imagine with how big she is in Japan that'd she be nominated for several awards. (if hadn't not won any) Let's not forget the missing references in some sections either. Because of these reasons, I think that this article should be reduced to a C-class. 100cellsman ( talk) 05:40, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Standardizing use of last name as subject (MOS)

This article needs a review to standardize referencing the performer by last/family name as the subject of sentences throughout.
Ref: Katy Perry and Kevin Hart are referenced by last name ("Perry did this"; "Hart did that") in standard encyclopedia/journalistic style.
Currently the article switches back and forth between her fist and last name. It should be "Utada" throughout.-- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 09:11, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 9 October 2019

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. Typically, although Eastern name order is preferred by Japanese people when Romanizing their names, there isn't a general consensus on which name order to use in WP:JTITLE – hence, we have the article at Shinzo Abe, not Abe Shinzo. One could compare this to Qazaqstan vs. Kazakhstan or Chornobyl vs Chernobyl, where the natural transliteration isn't the one in common English usage. If the Western name order for Utada – or, indeed, the Eastern name order for other figures – garners greater usage, the matter can be revisited. However, in the case of Utada, the links provided by TJRC indicate her releases tend to be attributed to "Utada" or "Utada Hikaru". ( closed by non-admin page mover) Sceptre ( talk) 20:29, 16 October 2019 (UTC)


Utada Hikaru → Hikaru Utada – Her english name have to be "Hikaru Utada" as well as other japanese english names, like " Shinzo Abe," " Seiji Ozawa," " Takeshi Kaneshiro," " Kohei Uchida," " Ayumu Hirano," " Shizuka Arakawa," " Satomi Ishihara, " Yoko Ono." Moreover, up to now, her official website in english language has been calling her "Hikaru Utada." See Hikaru Utada Official Website NEWS and amazon.com. Her japanese name is "宇多田ヒカル," therefore, "Utada Hikaru" is just her japanese name's romanization. This means that "Utada Hikaru" cannot be her english name, even if some people have mistaken so. And then, I cannot help but think that nobody can discuss this critical mistake constructively, because this rule about japanese people's english name is already traditional rule and self-evident truth. Nobody, except nuts, can insist "Utada" is her first name. Nobody, except nuts, can insist her first name "Hikaru" should be placed at the position of english last name "Utada," ignoring english name's traditional rule and her will.  Beaver4100 ( talk) 22:30, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

This is a contested technical request ( permalink). Steel1943 ( talk) 23:50, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
The current title is a result of consensus formed via discussion at Talk:Utada Hikaru/Archive 4#Requested move 22 January 2016. For that reason alone, this move request is controversial. (Ping Beaver4100.) Steel1943 ( talk) 23:50, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
I have to say again. If there can be a consensus on current title "Utada Hikaru," the consensus is only a fake consensus fabricated by romanaization nuts. I have already explained it above. Beaver4100 ( talk) 02:43, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Per my experiences, as well as the evidence presented in the previous move discussion, the current title is evidently the subject's WP:COMMONNAME. Steel1943 ( talk) 23:54, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
I don't know what you are talking about. Please give us a concrete explanation. You haven't explain nothing. Beaver4100 ( talk) 02:05, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
Eastern name order??? Eastern name??? Who doesn't understand Eastern name order? It's you. You don't even know that English name of Japanese person differs greatly from that of other asian person. Beaver4100 ( talk) 01:57, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose - As per WP:COMMONNAME, Utada Hikaru is her stage name and is used majority of Utada's articles and in sources. Stage name over English name. TheDeviantPro ( talk) 00:29, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
Her stage name for Japanese people over English name? Why??? What are you talking about? Her English name is the best for English Wikipedia and all of the persons in the English-speaking world. And, you seems to be lying. Show us all of the evidences that her stage name is always "Utada Hikaru." Beaver4100 ( talk) 01:36, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
Just because it's an English wikipedia doesn't mean we should dismiss WP:COMMONNAME. The fact your ignoring that there's been a long lasting consensus on the article since 2016 and reverting anyone who revert your bold edits shows that you're edit warring on the article. TheDeviantPro ( talk) 02:56, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Defaultsort

I recently copied the defaultsort from here and added it to Template:Utada Hikaru songs to keep them consistent, but my edit was reverted. I found that the defaultsort here was changed on April 23, 2019, [45], and it currently sorts in categories by Hikaru, while the template, Template:Utada Hikaru, Utada Hikaru discography, List of songs recorded by Utada Hikaru and List of awards received by Utada Hikaru. I wanted to make sure which sorting was correct and make the articles and template consistent in their use. Aspects ( talk) 05:28, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

Since no one has commented, I am going to revert back to the previous defaultsort to keep the articles and templates consistent. Aspects ( talk) 04:55, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

"mononym"?

I couldn't figure out how I should word this to cover both problems, but I placed the tag where it was because ... well, this strikes me as similar to this: I've been trying, in the above discussion, to avoid all pronouns pending a "consensus" on how we should refer to our subject, and so I've been overusing our subject's surname, but I don't think it's not a "mononym" any more than "Biden". Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 02:43, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Associated acts

Considering the Wikipedia guidelines for associated acts contained in the infobox:
1. Should Teruzane Utada be removed? (cite: "producers, managers, etc." are in the "to be avoided" category)
2. Should Shiina Ringo be added since she and Utada have more than one single together?
3. Are there any other artists who would qualify under these guidelines?
-- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 18:59, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Without weighing in on 2 or 3, 1 strikes me as having been included because he is an "act" that is "associated" (more visibly as the subject's father than as a "producer" or "manager", neither of which are "acts" to begin with) rather than a bona fide "associated act". If consensus isn't reached on 2 or 3, I'd say just remove the parameter. Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 01:00, 18 August 2021 (UTC)
Just noticed this, but Teruzane Utada lists both his ex-wife and daughter as "associated acts". Our subject's parents' professional relationship to each other is probably a bit greyer, but the article body says he composed the melodies for three of her songs, without mentioning his daughter. If this article is updated, the Teruzane article should be updated too. Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 01:19, 18 August 2021 (UTC)
@ Hijiri88: I think the Teruzane Utada content is a leftover from fan-based updates a decade ago. He was still listed as Utada's "attendant" until a recent change. -- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 07:54, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Pronouns?

Has Utada announced which pronouns are correct? Given the Instagram post complaining about "Miss/Mrs/Ms" being used, it might be they/them? 2A02:8109:A33F:F27C:150A:8BDE:B6C2:17CC ( talk) 17:20, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Utada has not yet provided any preferred pronouns, and the "Miss/Mrs/Ms" thing was also (and primarily) about marital status. I say that until Utada confirms pronouns, the article should continue to use "she/her" for consistency's sake. Non-binary does not automatically mean that the person goes by they/them, and automatically assuming that could also be misgendering. I have also brought this issue up with the Manual of Style team because Wikipedia does not currently have guidelines for how to handle this situation. - Wohdin ( talk) 17:53, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
The article should use they/them pronouns until Utada specifies their preferences explicitly. In their Instagram post they say that they feel that using "Miss/Mrs/Ms" misrepresents them, and that they want to be referred to using a word "that anybody of any gender or social standing could use". They/them pronouns would most accurately reflect this. I would also like to see if the Manual of Style could address this, though. 〜 ♥ (˘꒳˘ ) Teafed, (she/her) ( talk) 22:16, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
Rephrasing to avoid pronouns entirely is tedious and leaves the article somewhat clunky, but is a possibility in a case like this. I would prefer "they/them" over "she/her" on the grounds that "they/them" is a perfectly fine gender-neutral pronoun (not just a pronoun some non-binary people use), but "she/her" is not. Ultimately, we're in a very tough situation without elaboration by the subject. — Bilorv ( talk) 11:45, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
If the person hasn't specified any preferred pronouns, changing to "they" is misgendering. ... discospinster talk 02:29, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
If the subject hasn't specified what their pronouns are, then using she/her pronouns for them could potentially be misgendering them. Conversely, they/them pronouns can be used when the pronouns of the person being referred to are unknown (see the singular they article for more details). Additionally, I would note that the subject wrote in their Instagram post about wanting to be referred to with a word that "anybody of any gender or social standing could use". GreenComputer ( talk) 17:34, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
No. Unless she has explicitly said that she prefers they/them pronouns, it is inappropriate to change them. Not all NB people like to be referred to as they/them as there are other gender-neutral pronouns. Wait until she says one way or the other. ... discospinster talk 18:07, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
Discospinster is correct here. Certainly if Utada expresses a preference it should be followed; but in the absence of that, Wikipedia cannot presume to know her preferences. TJRC ( talk) 18:18, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
I agree that we cannot presume to know what Utada's pronouns are until they explicitly state their pronouns. However, this also means that we should not use she/her pronouns for Utada unless they say otherwise. I was suggesting we use they/them pronouns as they can be used as gender-neutral pronouns to refer to anyone, however avoiding pronouns entirely is also an option. I would note that most reliable sources appear to have used they/them pronouns when referring to Utada (e.g. [46] [47] [48] [49] [50] [51] [52]). GreenComputer ( talk) 23:18, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
Just because so-called reliable sources refer to her with they/them pronouns, that does not mean she prefers those, especially since Japanese doesn't have gender-exclusive pronouns I believe (I believe watashi is gender-dominant for female, but I've seen it used by males referring to themselves). Like people have said above, several non-binary people use grammatically correct pronouns (see Rebecca Sugar and Miley Cyrus), and thus Utada should be referred to with her last known preferred pronouns until she officially and directly says she prefers grammatically incorrect ones. Unnamed anon ( talk) 19:02, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
Agreed (except for the implication that singular they is not grammatically correct - though it can be more ambiguous). Indeed, if the BLP has not said anything about pronouns, we should presume until it is stated otherwise that that is itself a choice, and remain with the status quo. Crossroads -talk- 23:21, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
Half of those sources are coming from LGBT-related websites. AngusW🐶🐶F ( bark • sniff) 22:46, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
Singular they is an acceptable pronoun. Also my preferred pronoun (they/them) for myself on Wikipedia. As an aside, you can use {{ pronoun}} on other Wikipedia users to find their prefs, although updating preferences to newer pronouns has yet to be done. AngusW🐶🐶F ( bark • sniff) 23:32, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
Hi! My apologies if I'm not entering this conversation correctly. I just edited the pronouns used in Utada's Discography page before realizing there was a whole discussion here about whether to use they/them or she/her. Personally, I believe that, in order to avoid misgendering a person who has already professed that "Mrs./Ms." do not reflect their identity, it would be best to use they/them exclusively in their main biography page as well, though I will leave that decision to more experienced editors to make. Even if Utada uses she/they, they would still be correct, but since Utada does not use Mrs. or Ms, the chance that they use she/her and never they is unlikely. Agreitzer ( talk) 18:56, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

An IP editor today reinstated the plural they/them pronouns, but this time with a source. [1] Assuming todayonline.com is a WP:RS (I'm not familiar with it, so cannot opine either way), I think that's sufficient to support the change. TJRC ( talk) 03:17, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

I haven't reverted it, but given the obscurity of this source, that it isn't new so it isn't like there was something just said, the fact that other and better sources don't say that, and the fact that thus one just asserts it, I am inclined to doubt they actually have information other sources don't. Anyone else have thoughts on this? Crossroads -talk- 20:55, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
It's an obscure source that quotes her Instagram post and adds further subjective context. But that post specifically reference her marriage status, not pronoun usage. -- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 22:28, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
For an out nonbinary person, "they-them" pronouns are much less likely to be "wrong" than gendered pronouns, in cases where sources conflict or are unclear. The argument "we don't know for sure, so we should stick to the gendered pronouns from before he/she came out as nonbinary" strikes me as special pleading, and directly contrary to the spirit (if not the letter) of MOS:GENDERID. The balance of probabilities for "what is most likely to misgender the BLP subject" seems pretty clear in this case. Newimpartial ( talk) 21:53, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Lee, Wei Lin (July 5, 2021). "Utada Hikaru Comes Out As Non-Binary". Today Online. Retrieved August 5, 2021. Utada, who now uses the pronouns they/them...

Until Hikaru states explicitly that she wants a specific pronoun, standard English rules apply to this article. The quote attributed to her is not a definitive statement, and a commentary on marital status more than sexuality -- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 22:05, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

No, that isn't the way MOS:GENDERID works. The article must defer to the most recently announced gender identity professed by the subject: in this case, nonbinary. Granted, some nonbinary people use gendered pronouns, either alone or alongside they/them. But is it possible to misgender a nonbinary person by using "they/them"? Not really. Is it possible to misgender a nonbinary person by using gendered pronouns? Definitely, yes. And, perhaps most importantly, in standard English, what pronouns does one use when they do not know what a person's pronoun preference is (or doesn't known the gender of a person at all)? They/them. So the correct choice, per policy, is pretty dang obvious. Newimpartial ( talk) 22:29, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
Wikipedia doesn't deal in "possible" or "perhaps" or "pretty dang obvious". If there is not a factual reference for changing an existing use of the pronoun, we have to default to standard past usage until there is something definitive. I'm sure if you're patient, Utada will come up with a new pronoun just for herself. -- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 22:32, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
MOS:GENDERID has site-wide consensus, and requires that we respect the most recently expressed gender self-identification. We have that; it is nonbinary. Since we have that, we do not need a factual reference for a pronoun choice before changing the pronouns. Since we do not know for sure the subject's preference, we use standard English they/them far he than past usage gendered pronouns - the past usage simply no longer applies after a gender identity announcement. Newimpartial ( talk) 22:40, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
The missing piece here is the actual gender announcement from a reliable, cited source. The articles with non-binary headlines are copies of each other based on a subjective recollection of a livestream. Let's be patient and wait until we have something reliable. At such time, this artist may choose an existing non-binary pronoun, state a preference to remain a "she", or create a new pronoun just for her. Waiting for such reference is an acceptable compromise, I think. -- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 22:53, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
Animenewsnetwork looks editorially sound (and therefore RS) to me. Newimpartial ( talk) 22:58, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
But the person has also not said anything about pronouns or gave any indication the pronouns should change from the ones already in use for the person even though that could easily have been done. This is a very borderline case and seems ripe for an RfC. Crossroads -talk- 22:44, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
Agree on need for RfC. -- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 22:49, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
RfC if you like, but in English we use "they/them" if we don't know the pronouns, and most "out" nonbinary people prefer "they/them" anyway. The attempt to retain gendered pronouns in the face of a nonbinary gender announcement, and with no more support than "wE cAnT bE sUrE", is a clear thumb to the nose directed at MOS:GENDERID. Newimpartial ( talk) 22:52, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
No one is thumbing their nose at anyone. That's a presumptive assessment. If consensus is reached, we can all move forward. We're all working together to maintain a fact-based page for the artist.-- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 22:58, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
Futhermore Newimpartial , please refrain from personal accusations such as "stop trying to distended nonbinary people" or "clear thumb in the nose" -- there have been no aggressive statements directed at you or any group of people, and reciprocal respect would be appreciated while we have debate among editors with contrasting points of view. -- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 23:11, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
RFC and wait for reliable sources that Utada has explicitly declared pronouns. Mys. or whatever is more like an honorific to deal with marital status and the "what makes you think i'm 'straight'?" statement is as vague as the pride flag postings. It's becoming a practice in conference call introductions for speakers to list out or state preferred pronouns. You can de-genderize the pronouns for now, replacing them with Utada. AngusW🐶🐶F ( bark • sniff) 23:04, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
Do you see anything in MOS:GENDERID that would support waiting until the subject has explicitly declared pronouns? We have a reliable source reporting a gender identity declaration as nonbinary; that is enough to require us to strip out all gendered pronouns for now. Newimpartial ( talk) 23:31, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
Anyway, I have gone ahead and removed all personal pronouns for the time being, which is incontestibly compliant with WP policy. Newimpartial ( talk) 00:16, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
And User:TJRC has reverted the strictly NPOV version that used neither "she" nor "they", and re-inserted four misgendering categories (which is a transparently clear BLP vio). Make it stop! Please, for the love of all that is holy, make it stop! Newimpartial ( talk) 00:44, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
I have reinstated a version without pronouns, for now, as several editors with different perspectives have suggested. Newimpartial ( talk) 20:17, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
Newimpartial There is a lot of "I have done this" and not enough of "We have agreed on that" in your updates. Please try working with other editors in reaching a consensus on this point instead of instantaneous revisions. -- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 20:36, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
The policy WP:CONLEVEL mandates that site-wide consensus, as embodied in MOS:GENDERID, takes priority over local consensus. Your revert is not compliant with this community-wide consensus. Newimpartial ( talk) 20:40, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
Newimpartial - Please help us locate a direct reliable source for the quote that's at the root of this change, and we'll all support your changes. Unitl the source is verified, this issue will keep coming up. The multiple copies of copies of the same citation (of a subjective recollection of a livestream) won't help us. -- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 20:56, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
Multiple, reliable sources have been provided at ANI, as you should know. Drop the horse carcass, please. Newimpartial ( talk) 21:01, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
@ GimmeChoco44: we are not independent researchers, it's not our job to "verify" the work of reliable sources and publish our own original research on the matter. Regardless, the source of the clip is here: [53], at 2:32. That took me about a minute or so to find, so I'm sure if you cared to look you would've found it too. ‑‑ Volteer1 ( talk) 21:06, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
@ GimmeChoco44: The burden of proof is on you to show that she/her are Hikaru's pronouns and should be used instead of the neutral singular they. Even if it is debated that Hikaru is non-binary, we would still use singular they, as that is gender neutral, so it can be applied to anyone. Usage of gendered-pronouns require reliable sources because they imply a gender identity, whereas gender-neutral pronouns do not. –– 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗗𝘂𝗱𝗲 talk 22:03, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
On the same point, the video which ANN is citing is a fan upload of the livestream found here: [54]. So I feel that the issue can now be resolved by shifting the article to non-binary pronouns.
-- And Volteer1 -- saying things like "if you cared" falls into the same category of inappropriate discourse that Newimpartial's comments fall into. We can arrive at a group decision a lot easier by keeping cool heads and being polite. -- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 21:14, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
@ GimmeChoco44: So you support switching to non-binary pronouns in the article? If so I think we're quite close to resolving this dispute. –– 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗗𝘂𝗱𝗲 talk 22:08, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
That's correct. My issue had been identifying the "independent, reliable source". Now that it's been identified, we can secure this new version with non-binary pronouns and protect the article from further debate. --23:51, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
  • There have been 3RR violations going on. Might it be that some editors care more about Utada's pronouns than Utada does? This is, again, only a dispute because Utada has never said anything on the question. Crossroads -talk- 23:21, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Isn't they or them, plural pronouns? GoodDay ( talk) 20:01, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
    • Not necessarily - see the singular they. Newimpartial ( talk) 20:10, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
      • Oh jeez. After having read the linked-article, I think I'll bow out of this discussion. GoodDay ( talk) 21:30, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Support changing the pronouns I've seen no valid reasons not to use the singular 'they' pronoun for this article. –– 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗗𝘂𝗱𝗲 talk 21:35, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Support changing the pronouns I have no further objection to the pronouns being changed to the format proposed by Newimpartial. -- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 23:43, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
    • This !voting style will be slightly confusing for at least the short-term, as the article is currently using singular they pronouns and is fully protected for a week. Firefangledfeathers ( talk) 23:50, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
      • Well, I don't disagree, but this isn't an RfC so I think people can figure things out, given time. Newimpartial ( talk) 23:53, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Support gender-neutral pronouns, as a straightforward reading of MOS:GNL. Firefangledfeathers ( talk) 23:56, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose they/them pronouns unless/until a reliable source indicates that the use of such pronouns is Utada's preference. It's Utada's preference that matters. TJRC ( talk) 01:02, 10 August 2021 (UTC)
    • Well, fortunately for your preferences, the currently frozen version of the article has no personal pronouns. But this is English Wikipedia, and in English the default pronouns where gender is unknown or at question are "they/them". See also the discussion at ANI.

Newimpartial ( talk) 01:12, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

  • I've already commented above about the pronouns, but we should not be using any gendered categories at this time—that includes non-binary categories. Mountain out of a molehill anyway, as readers very rarely actually use the categories. — Bilorv ( talk) 20:22, 10 August 2021 (UTC)
    • Just for the record, I neither added nor removed any nonbinary cats. Newimpartial ( talk) 20:30, 10 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose they/them pronouns. The independent source, while reliable, says nothing about pronouns, and to claim it foes would be original research. It does reliably claim that Utada is non-binary, but that is independent of pronouns. I'd like to point once again to Rebecca Sugar, a non-binary who uses female pronouns. Until Utada herself says something about pronouns, and not just non-binary status, stick with the status quo. Newimpartial keeps pointing us to MOS:GENDERID to have the pronouns be they/them, but MOS:GENDERID quotes Refer to any person whose gender might be questioned with gendered words (e.g. pronouns, "man/woman", "waiter/waitress") that reflect the person's latest expressed gender self-identification as reported in the most recent reliable sources, even if it does not match what is most common in sources.. By this logic, pronouns should be she/her until Utada directly addresses her pronouns, not just her gender. Unnamed anon ( talk) 23:14, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
    • But Utada's last expressed gender self-identification is non-binary, not female. While some non-binary AFAB people use female or female/neutral pronouns, others use male pronouns (e.g., Elliot Page, many more prefer neutral pronouns, and it would be EXTRAORDINARY to claim that Utada prefers female pronouns at this time, particularly since we have reliable sources stating the opposite.
    • However, the frozen version of the article used neither female nor neutral pronouns fo3 Utada, so we have time to wait and accumulate sources before contemplating change. There should certainly be no change back to female pronouns without a supporting source that postdates Utada's nonbinary announcement. Newimpartial ( talk) 01:12, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

Has a formal RfC been opened? The !votes above suggest yes, but there is no indication of such having happened despite what looks like a general agreement for one. In the interim, the version without any pronouns at all does feel to be an adequate compromise—and a valid alternative overall per AngusWoof. ~Cheers, Ten Ton Parasol 20:58, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

@ TenTonParasol: There is not a formal request for comment open. I'd be willing to start one though, I have a knack for formalities 😉 –– 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗗𝘂𝗱𝗲 talk 21:01, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose gender-neutral pronouns for now Put simply, this comment is very difficult to read as a statement of gender-identity, at least to me (as a cisgender, unmarried male who speaks English natively and has near-native proficiency in Japanese). It is specifically about titles (presumably Utada has been required to circle/tick one or another option on English-language forms), not pronouns. Somewhat tellingly, Utada's official Twitter account does not list any preferred pronouns despite recent Twitter trends [55]; there's a lot of speculation (which I won't link to) among random Twitter-denizens about her pronouns, with some insisting, as others have done above here, that she "is non-binary" and "uses they/them pronouns now" and others saying they've been unable to find evidence of such.
We have no evidence that the subject has a problem with female-gendered pronouns. The Instagram post is about honorifics (something we don't need to worry about at all, per MOS:SURNAME), and given that Utada is a native speaker of Japanese (wherein common honorifics, with the partial exception of -kun, are mostly gender-neutral, almost no honorifics relate to marital status, and it's pretty rare to refer to a married woman as -fujin), it is likely very difficult for most editors of English Wikipedia, even those with a focus on J-Pop, to interpret her statements correctly in their original context (even if such "interpretations" were generally acceptable with Anglo-American subjects). Extrapolating from the above-linked Instagram post (which says It makes me uncomfortable to be identified so markedly by my marital status or sex, and I don’t relate to any of those prefixes.) that Utada self-identifies as non-binary, not female is very, very problematic and I would say violates BLP: indeed, the post actually refers to "female" as "my ... sex", and just says that the subject doesn't like using "prefixes" based on sex and marital status.
To make a hypothetical comparison, if a Japanese popstar was biologically male and had been universally identified as male for decades, and if traditional English titles identified both men and women, or just men, by their marital status (but Japanese honorifics were identical to how they are in the real world), and said popstar posted in English on social media that he didn't want to use a title that is based on a combination of sex and marital status, we would almost certainly not be asking the questions of whether he should be called "non-binary" and whether we should change the pronouns (which are different from titles, in that our articles use the former but not the latter). Another comparison, perhaps easier-to-understand for non-bilingual editors, would be that if, say, Judi Dench said she didn't want to be identified as "Dame", such a comment could very easily be interpreted as indicating discomfort with traditional titles of nobility, or with how such traditional titles are gender-exclusive in some cases but not others, and anyone claiming that such a comment constituted a statement of gender identity would likely be laughed at. (Just to be clear, Judi Dench was just the first name that came to mind; I have no evidence that she would ever make such a comment, and I'm sure there are better examples I could have given of people who might make, or even have made, such comments.)
All that being said, if Utada does make an explicit statement of non-binary gender identity or gives "preferred pronouns" in some form, then I would be happy to change my !vote. All I am saying is that for now, we simply don't have any reliable sources that support the proposed change, and the source that has been cited is apparently being misinterpreted by those supporting the proposed change.
Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 03:12, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
@ Hijiri88: I think you've done a good job explaining why we should use gender neutral pronouns. At the very least we know Utada does not prefer to be labeled based on their sex. That alone is good enough reason to use gender neutral pronouns, which are commonplace in English language. If there is ever any contention on a subject's gender identity, we should use gender-neutral pronouns, as they are usable for anyone, including cisgender people.
P.S. Are you aware the article already describes Utada as non-binary in the Personal Life section? –– 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗗𝘂𝗱𝗲 talk 03:30, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
Arrgh. I did not see that, no. Hmm... I'll have to reconsider my stance, then; is the archive of the livestream in question still accessible? The ANN article in question includes a direct quote, but it also opens by saying Singer Hikaru Utada announced on Instagram on Friday that they are nonbinary., with a link to the aforementioned Instagram post that definitely does not constitute by itself an "announce[ment] ... that they are nonbinary". I will admit that I am editing somewhat outside my wheelhouse here: if a non-specialist wrote an article for a news website that said that such-and-such pre-modern male waka poet's writing in the persona of a woman (for example) constituted an "announcement" of "being nonbinary", such a source could be easily dismissed as having been written by someone who had no idea what they are talking about (and such things have definitely happened many, many times with people citing ANN and other such sources in Wikipedia articles on academic topics, which has somewhat biased me against such sources), but I rarely edit either J-Pop (or pop culture in general) articles or articles on LGB or gender identity topics, so in this case I'm the non-specialist (and I know I'm in the minority regarding the "general reliability" of pop culture sources). This is, of course, not a "vote", so my comment can be taken for what it's worth in light of the fact that I hadn't noticed that our article already explicitly calls her non-binary, citing a source that I personally consider to be sub-par but others probably don't. Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 03:43, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
I agree that looking at that livestream directly may be a good idea. And that is a good point that ANN inferring that from the mere Instagram post is a bad sign for them as a source. If the livestream said it, then Utada is non-binary. FormalDude, while perhaps it is technically true that singular they is usable for anyone, including cisgender people, the fact is that in the general culture, use of "they" for a specific known person strongly implies that the person identifies as non-binary. Going without pronouns is definitely the safest option in this case. Crossroads -talk- 04:00, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
I disagree with the notion that the Singular they has any implication of a person's gender identity. It is explicitly gender neutral, which can be confusing, because it sounds similar to "non-binary", but it is not at all the same as being "non-binary". Gender neutral means a lack of gender definition, or that it can be applied to all genders indiscriminately. –– 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗗𝘂𝗱𝗲 talk 04:11, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
Addendum: I just saw this. By the way, perhaps the bit about Mx. should be cut? It's sourced to ANN and Instagram, but we shouldn't be implying that dislike of English female honorifics necessarily means that someone is nonbinary. Only the self-declaration establishes that. Crossroads -talk- 04:05, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
I'd agree with cutting or moving the Mx. portion, so as not to imply that is the reason they are non-binary. –– 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗗𝘂𝗱𝗲 talk 04:17, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
No worries, I am not an expert in this field either–I think few Wikipedians are. It seems like you're more concerned with the gender identity claim rather than the use of particular pronouns, which I agree is a secondary but relative matter to the subject's gender identity. I found another corroborating source for the non-binary claim, which I added to the article. It will probably be hard to find an archive of the Instagram live stream, which is probably why we're using third-party sources (a primary source would be acceptable for gender identity, but we don't have one other than the unarchived live stream). –– 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗗𝘂𝗱𝗲 talk 04:06, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
It's kinda-off-topic (hence small text), since if our subject were unambiguously cisgender we probably would not be having this discussion, but in contemporary standard English usage, usable for anyone, including cisgender people is only really applicable in certain circumstances, such as an unspecified person whose gender is not known, a hypothetical person who doesn't have a known gender, or someone whose gender is being consciously hidden. As dated as season 7 of the American sitcom Friends is in many ways (the following season contained a very dated/cringeworthy reference to intersex individuals), it is somewhat telling that, when Rachel was pretending to have hired, as her assistant, a qualified elderly woman rather than an attractive young man with no experience, she repeatedly referred to "my new assistant" and avoided pronouns of any kind: "they/them" would, in the standard American English speech of the early 2000s, have given her away as deliberately concealing something; this "standard American English speech of the early 2000s" has changed somewhat in recent years, and people who were yet to be born as of 2000 might be surprised by this, but for the vast majority of cisgender article subjects who are as old as me or older, referring to them as "they/them" within their own articles (as opposed to speaking about them in general, as I am doing now), without any apparent reason, would come across as questioning their gender identity. Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 05:36, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
There you have it–I was born in 98', so I am most familiar with modern 21st century English. (I've never even seen a full episode of Friends!) –– 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗗𝘂𝗱𝗲 talk 05:43, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

@ Hijiri88: @ FormalDude: To clarify for those editors who commented above, the Instagram livestream which contains Utada's declaration of being non-binary is publicly available here. -- GimmeChoco44 ( talk) 05:15, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! Now is when I'd appreciate @ Hijiri88's translation skills. Does it match what the sources quote Utada as having said? –– 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗗𝘂𝗱𝗲 talk 05:26, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
Thanks! I'll watch it (and check on the Wikipedia policy for people who have self-identified as non-binary but have not specified preferred pronouns -- I suspect there might be non-binary people who don't mind using the pronouns that were assigned to them at birth, and, given how many people I've seen on Twitter talking about pronouns but not what Utada called "prefixes", it seems somewhat telling that Utada specifically stated a dislike of "Miss/Mrs./Ms." and said nothing about pronouns) later. Someone in the comments seems to have asked Utada what pronouns to use, only to be met with several people (probably trolls) referring to "Utada-sama" (how our subject is likely to be addressed in formal Japanese emails) as a "pronoun" and one person (likely also a troll) talking about Jesus. Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 05:36, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
BTW, -sama is not English, but Japanese, and pronouns are quite rare in Japanese. The commonest Japanese "pronouns" translated "he"/"him"/"his" and "she"/"her"/"her" literally mean "that one" and "that woman" respectively, and are often used as nouns meaning "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" respectively. These "pronouns" are also not inherently subjective/objective/possessive/etc. -- they are accompanied by postpositions such as wa, ga, o, ni, e, no, etc. that serve those purposes. Languages code things differently (my French is rusty, but IIRC French possessives do not specify the gender of the possessor as English and even Japanese, but does distinguish plural pronouns for all-female groups from all-male/mixed groups): given our subject's having been born and partially raised in the United States, it seems reasonable to assume our subject is familiar with both English and contemporary trends in usage among progressive American youth, but for the majority of our subject's -- a J-Pop artist's -- audience, for whom English is a special way of encoding Japanese that they are taught in secondary school (rather than a separate, living language), such concepts are (probably? again, not a specialist) quite alien. Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 05:48, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
  • @ FormalDude: the quote comes from her speaking English, at 2:32, not Japanese. It's not translated. ‑‑ Volteer1 ( talk) 06:04, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
Okay, well I guess that resolves it for me as far as content goes. I still really wish we could get a better source than ANN; I just noticed that they seem to confuse sexual orientation with gender identity, and do exactly what I referred to above (i.e., assume a song written in the persona of a fictional gay woman who can't be with her female friend romantically is a "tease" as to Utada's real-world sexual orientation and/or gender identity). Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 07:02, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
This just came to my attention, but the English version of Utada's official website still uses "she" twice and "her" well over a dozen times, while not using "they", "them" or "their" at all. [56] Is this because Utada, as a non-binary Japanese, sees masculine and feminine singular pronouns (or adjectives?) as a part of the English language rather than a statement of gender identity? Or just a failure to update the website since March? Given that Utada's official Twitter profile doesn't give preferred pronouns and Utada's official website continues to use "she" and "her" almost two months after Utada "came out as non-binary", I think it would be inappropriate for us to speculate on the reason or reasons for these discrepancies; we should probably just continue to use the pronouns used on Utada's official website. Honestly, it seems like either Utada might have been talking to a monolingual American friend about a preference for Japanese third-person pronouns and honorifics that don't put so much emphasis on gender or marital status, said American friend might have said "Oh, are you non-binary?", and things went from there, or Utada initially expressed a dislike for the "Mr."/"Miss"/"Mrs." trichotomy in English (I'm pretty sure I've heard of Japanese EFL learners being told that "Mrs." means -fujin, which is technically true in Japanese but no one would think referring to a married woman as "[married surname]-fujin" and never as "[preferred name]-san" is acceptable, so the translation is less than ideal; marital status, of course, has nothing to do with gender identity, and indeed in a lot of places and times it has had very little to do with sexual orientation or even romantic affinity) on Instagram or elsewhere and non-japonophone fans started extrapolating that Utada had self-identified as non-binary -- this is exactly what the opening line of the ANN article does, and it's what many people in this thread were doing for more than a month until Volteer finally posted the CQqsEK3JwaG link (wherein Utada actually does self-identify as "non-binary" in both English and Japanese) on 7 August. Given all of this, I think we should just say "Utada self-identified as non-binary in an Instagram livestream" without explicit comment on pronouns, and just continue to use feminine pronouns, with maybe a WP:COMMENT telling people not to change the pronouns to conform to how they think non-binary people should be referred to. Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 02:08, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
Okay, now that I see the official website that I did not know about, I now fully support changing to female pronouns. That has to be taken into account per MOS:GENDERID. She has had more than enough time to update that site. If that site's continued use of she/her is not meaningful now because 'maybe it just hasn't been updated', then how long must we wait?
On a side note, if what you suggest was what happened, it wouldn't be the first time that someone unfamiliar with progressive youth culture inadvertantly said something that was taken to mean they are non-binary. See Talk:Billy Dee Williams#Pronouns. He said something about having a feminine side a certain way and as a result had the media tripping over themselves to say he was "genderfluid". That all was clarified eventually. Crossroads -talk- 04:35, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
But it's not like this is a personal website that's updated by Utada. It's a generic record label site, and even says "© Sony Music Labels Inc. All Right Reserved." in the footer. The bio and updates were very likely written by some nameless, faceless Sony employee—after all, they only include details about single and record releases, lyric books, awards, etc. Music stuff. (Kind of ironic for a page named "BIOGRAPHY", no?)
I get that we generally consider official websites to be ABOUTSELF sources, but there's no indication that Utada is directly involved here. Now compare that to the official Twitter and Instagram accounts, which include plenty of selfies and personal notes, and generally appear to be run by Utada personally. Of course, it's entirely possible that everything's run by a team of nameless, faceless Sony employees—but the near-real-time updates of the social media accounts suggest a closeness to Utada that the website does not. Woodroar ( talk) 07:57, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
it's not like this is a personal website that's updated by Utada I know that (you have no idea how intimately I know that... I recall pointing out the same thing with regard to whether a certain Japanese actor's talent agency's profile on him was a strong indication of his personal preference for how his name is romanized), but so far we have no reliable sources remotely connected to our subject herself that say she prefers different pronouns: just speculation by mostly straight, cisgender fans on various fansites saying that since she "is non-binary" she probably prefers this or that pronoun set (or -- while I doubt any of them would say this -- that she should prefer this or that pronoun set). Regardless of who curates these official social media profiles and official websites, they are the closest thing we have to our subject's personal preferences. It would be better if we had a neutral, third-party source (preferably a major newspaper or an academic work on LGBTQ+ studies or contemporary Japanese music) that discusses the discrepancy between how her website refers to her and how Wikipedia and various fansites like ANN refer to her, and the fact that her official Twitter account (no idea if it's actually our subject's Twitter account or an officially curated page actually operated by a nameless employee, although the fact that tweets are quite infrequent -- if someone was getting paid to tweet for me, I'd want them to do so at least once a week -- and the existence of this page indicate the former) notably does not specify "preferred pronouns" like seemingly the majority non-binary celebrities and many thousands of other Twitter users (seemingly mostly cisgender people showing solidarity), but at present it seems that we do not. We don't have any such source, and we don't even have anything closer to our subject (and therefore more likely to reflect our subject's personal preferences) than the above-linked website and Twitter profile; we just have third-party sources (seemingly mostly written by straight, cisgender, non-Japanese) speculating on how non-binary people like our subject "should" be referred to without any regard for our subject's actual personal preferences. (I'd be willing to accept that Utada's personal Twitter account, which seems to have been used no more than three or four times since 26 June, just hasn't been updated yet, but we don't have any evidence of that, and speculation would be inappropriate.) Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 08:36, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
Off-topic and apropos of nothing since I took the article out, hence small text. Hilariously, I looked at the ANN article again, and I think the point of contention about its adequacy is... a copy-paste linking error. Because the first paragraph article quotes and describes the livestream, but links to the Mx. post. It weakens the source regardless, but I don't think the source was trying to purposefully claim "supporting Mx. === non-binary", they simply linked to the incorrect post. They were correctly attributing the non-binary claim to the correct Instagram thing, just apparently copied the wrong link. ~Cheers, Ten Ton Parasol 17:49, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Not being that familiar with her work, I needed to Google this, and I may be missing some context (and it was a few years ago), but Utada apparently alternated between the gender-neutral (but somewhat more female than male) first-person pronoun wata[ku]shi (the most basic Japanese word for "I", but men also commonly use ore and boku, whereas women mostly use wata[ku]shi and its variants) and the female-only variant atashi to refer to herself here. ("私" might actually be read atashi, but "あたし" can only be read atashi; it's possible she only referred to herself as atashi.) Her official blog (which unfortunately has not been updated since 2017) has also used atashi, [57] and in 2014 her blog described her as her then-fiancé's "special person", with "person" being pointedly written as 女 ("woman"). [58] These are, of course, likely out of date (certainly more than the above-linked English profile), but here is a tweet from last year in which she refers to the Japanese that her half-Italian son uses as "women's speech" due to her influence (he refers to himself as watashi rather than, presumably, boku). Lacking some explicit statement that she no longer identifies as "more female than male" and therefore prefers gender-neutral third-person pronouns in English, I don't think we should use gender-neutral third-person pronouns to describe someone who seems to use female-coded first-person pronouns to refer to herself. Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 04:17, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
    • According to policy, though, we should not be paying attention to Utada's gender identity or pronoun choices prior to the nonbinary announcement. What do we have since then? Newimpartial ( talk) 04:20, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
I'll have to re-watch the stream (and check for other videos, interviews, etc.) later. Japanese speaking Japanese (as opposed to westerners speaking pidgin Japanese based on English) generally use personal pronouns when specificity is required and otherwise omit them, which makes it difficult, Utada's official blog hasn't been updated since 2017, the Twitter page is ... well, it's not "bare", but there's a lot more images and videos than written words. That being said, Utada's "coming out" video said that she/they had felt non-binary for several years. Anyway, I was curious what you meant by "according to policy", so I checked both WP:NONBINARY and MOS:IDENTITY, both of which favour prioritizing the subject's most recent personal preference, which we don't know outside of making assumptions either that the subject's personal website and Twitter profile are waiting to be updated or that they are not waiting to be updated. Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 04:54, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
And then I went and checked the Instagram livestream; she refers to herself as atashi multiple times in the fourth minute of the stream (i.e., immediately after coming out as non-binary). A person who uses female-only first-person pronouns to refer to themselves should not be assumed to prefer gender-neutral third-person pronouns unless we have a very specific statement that "X is how I refer to myself in Japanese, but I would prefer if people speaking or writing about me in English use Y". Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 05:01, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
Waiting for new information is not at all the same as making assumptions ... that the subject's personal website and TWitter profile are waiting to be updated. Rather, waiting for new informarion is the only way to avoid making assumptions one way or the other. We know the subject's latest self-declared identity, and unless you have seen something since then, we don't have a subsequent declaration on pronouns - we cannot assume that the prior pronoun usage does, or does not, now reflect the subject's current preference. We certainly cannot assume that because the subject already felt nonbinary before the announcement, that therefore nothing changed at the announcement so the pronouns should be assumed to stay the same. That really would be EXTRAORDINARY.
And just so that we are clear: I do not assume that the subject prefers non-gendered pronouns in English. What I pointed out earlier is that they/them are the correct pronouns in English when gender, or pronoun preference, is unknown. But I am fine to do without personal pronouns in the article entirely until we have more information. Newimpartial ( talk) 05:05, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
Someone changed the pronouns used in the article based on the assumption that "coming out as non-binary" meant that she doesn't want to be referred to by female pronouns. [59] I am not sure if this person was a Japanese-speaker who had seen the video in which she came out and repeatedly referred to herself with the female pronoun atashi, and was trolling (or had not stopped to think about the edit before making it), but it seems safer to guess that they were a non-Japanese-speaker who heard the portion of the stream that was in English (or read it on a fansite) and made an assumption. Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 05:12, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
This is English wikipedia. In English, if you don't know a nonbinary person's pronouns, you use they/them; you do not continue with pre-transition pronouns unless you have a reliable source that does so. I haven't seen any RS in English since Utada's announcement that use she/her. Newimpartial ( talk) 05:59, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
What a BLP says about themselves as indicative of preference for gendered terms is relevant no matter what language they said it in. It factors in vis a vis MOS:GENDERID. The personal website is an RS incidentally. Crossroads -talk- 06:06, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
You place great faith in the personal website, but even the work of the best publicists isn't as good a source as an independent RS. Honestly, editors should be holding back from OR and simply base the article on what the sources say. The only thing the subject gets to define for themselves is what gender they are and what pronouns they prefer - and I'm still waiting for a statement on the latter. For the rest, we should simply follow the sources. Newimpartial ( talk) 06:10, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
This is English wikipedia. The fact that you do not speak Utada's native language and the language of most of Utada's songs, and therefore have to rely on dubious readings of Wikipedia articles to tell you how to interpret the way Japanese people refer to themselves, is irrelevant. This is a Japanese topic, so most of the reliable sources (and virtually all of the first-party sources) are in Japanese (and therefore do not use third-person pronouns anywhere near as frequently as English sources). We use pronouns for non-binary people in accordance with their stated preference (not some prescriptive "rule" that non-binary individuals "should" use one or another set of pronouns), without making assumptions one way or the other. Since our subject does not have a (clearly) stated preference, we need to weigh the evidence; said evidence includes the use of female-only first-person pronouns by the subject after having come out as non-binary. It is not Wikipedia's place to be telling non-binary people (and certainly not English Wikipedia's place to be telling Japanese non-binary people) how they "should" be referred to.
even the work of the best publicists isn't as good a source as an independent RS You have not located such an RS. We have an Instagram livestream given by the subject of the article and some fansites speculating on the "meaning" of said livestream. The closest I've found to a reliable third-party source is this, which mixes "she" with "their" and makes a general statement that Non-binary people often use the pronouns "they/them".
Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 06:24, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure if this clouds the issue or makes it clearer. Utada mentions "not identifying that much with either being 'male' or 'female'", but says "I never felt like my gender was a disadvantage" and says that "what being a woman means to me" means "being myself". Needless to say, a promotional video for Shiseido is not the best source for this, but for me at least, I am getting a stronger and stronger impression that this is about our subject not wanting to be "defined" by gender labels, including the "non-binary" label that has attracted so much attention to this article in the last few weeks. At present, I think Utada underwent surgery after being diagnosed with a benign ovarian tumor, causing them to put promotional activities on hold (which to most readers who don't specifically know about Utada as "an example of a non-binary celebrity" probably looks, with no reference to gender identity until the end of the article and no reference to preferred pronouns anywhere, like it's referring to "Utada and her retinue") seems (by forcing our readers to stop and Ctrl+F "gend...", "non-bi..." or some other keyword) like shouting "Utada is non-binary", which definitely goes against the spirit of ... just about everything our subject has said on the matter. Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 08:47, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Rewording Mx. sentence

Adding a break bc long section and also separate topic coming out of this. On what to do about the Mx. portion, mentioned way above, would it be possible to reword to separate the concepts? Because they feel both to be important as far as personal identity, just not necessarily related. There's likely a more elegant way to do this, but something like: "In discussing dislike for prefixes such as "Ms." and "Mrs.", Utada expressed support for the gender neutral prefix Mx. and also suggested Mys., a shortening of "mystery". On June 26, 2021, Utada came out as non-binary during an Instagram livestream."

Or, even leveraging the sentence about same-sex marriage: "On June 26, 2021, Utada came out as non-binary during an Instagram livestream. Utada has expressed support for same-sex marriage and for usage of the gender neutral prefix Mx., having also suggested a prefix Mys., a shortening of "mystery"." ~Cheers, Ten Ton Parasol 16:50, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks @ TenTonParasol, I think either of those are good ideas for wording the sentence. –– 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗗𝘂𝗱𝗲 talk 19:01, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
"prefix[es]" is incorrect. Utada used it, presumably either as a simple error or because Japanese equivalents like -san, -sama, -dono, etc. are classified as postfixes in Japanese. Can we say "titles"? Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 00:01, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
"Titles" works fine for me. –– 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗗𝘂𝗱𝗲 talk 00:41, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm also not a big fame of "came out"; Utada did not say "I am proud to announce that" or anything to that effect, and in Japanese この数年で知って「あっ、それなんだ！」って思ったけど、日本でどれぐらい広まっていることかわからないけど「non-binary」に該当するなって最近知ったので it sounds even less like "coming out". The currently cited secondary source is definitely not sufficient to solve this, since they clearly did not ask Utada for clarification and seem to go as far as misidentifying "non-binary" with being gay or bisexual (by referencing a song apparently written shortly after Utada gave birth to a child with her/their then-husband, to whom she/they would remain married for another two years). Could we say Utada self-identified as non-binary during an Instagram livestream instead? Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 02:08, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

We should just remove the "Mx." thing. The proposals above don't seem to change the implication, and frankly it is WP:INDISCRIMINATE trivia only sourced to Instagram and ANN, both poor sources. I also support the rewording you propose. Crossroads -talk- 04:18, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
Also, out of curiosity, what does the Japanese you are quoting translate to? Crossroads -talk- 04:23, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
I would support rewording to titles and "came out". Given there seems to be minimum consensus for that so far, I'm going to leave the sentences structured as is for now but swap those phrases and words. I'm also going to swap the ANN reference to a Kotaku article, bc the Kotaku article doesn't make the same mistake about gender identity vs. sexuality. I don't really think the Mx. thing is indiscriminate if at least because it's noted in multiple sources; the Instagram is lessened in how poor or questionable it would be otherwise given that the claim is about the subject made by the subject. I wonder if stronger Japanese-language sources exist? ~Cheers, Ten Ton Parasol 17:25, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
Oh! I'll also say that I want to retract my first rewording proposal. If consensus lands that the bit about Mx. should remain, I would prefer to reorder it so that the clause about support for same-sex marriage comes between them to further separate and add context for the discussion on titles were in the context of Ms. and Mrs. being related to martial status and sex. I support nixing Mys. from the article though. ~Cheers, Ten Ton Parasol 17:45, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Please stop mangling the reference citations

This is not rocket science. The |publisher= parameter is for THE PUBLISHING COMPANY, only, ever. The |work= parameter (and its aliases like |website=, |newspaper=, |journal=, |magazine=) are for THE PUBLICATION, regardless of medium. Do not put website names in |publisher=, either in title form (Salon) or domain name form (Salon.com). Do not add the |publisher= parameter when it is redundant, i.e. identical or nearly identical to the publication. Every time you garble a citation, which makes it emit incorrect citation meta-data as well as show up with incorrect formatting, you waste the time of other editors who have to clean up after you. At least 30% of the citations in this article were incorrect. That's not okay, especially since a couple of years ago I had already cleaned them up before. I.e., someone went through and mucked them up again. If you are using a script that incorrectly puts website names as |publisher=, stop using it, you are breaking things. Report the error to the author and ask them to fix it.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:58, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Nationality/Citizenship?

Utada having been at one time theoretically eligible for US citizenship by virtue of having been born there is not a valid reason for asserting US citizenship in the article, and American ( jus soli, expatriate) (in the infobox) reeks of WP:OR. The lead is even worse, linking to the article Japanese Americans (which is about Americans of Japanese ancestry) -- if our subject were under the age of 22 (and therefore likely possessing dual citizenship under the laws of both countries), hyphenating without linking to that article might be okay, but our article does not do that, and Utada lost the theoretical ability to possess dual citizenship 16 years ago. Utada is (universally?) considered to be a Japanese singer, and (while this is OR, it is part of a talk page comment and therefore explicitly permitted by policy, unlike the OR currently in the article) Japanese law does not allow people over the age of 22 to possess dual citizenship.

Does anyone have a source addressing these concerns? Because none are currently cited in the article.

Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 01:35, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

There is a 2020 tweet by her stating she managed to register for the election. https://twitter.com/utadahikaru/status/1313979277843537921
Be sure to archive-url that; her article's source material is subject to an unusual level of link rot.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:00, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Japanese naming order?

No comment on the various RMs, but Utada Hikaru [is] the only child of Teruzane Utada is obviously problematic. Since the article title uses Japanese order, can we use Japanese naming order for all Japanese people named in the article? Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 10:19, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

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