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Apr-17-25
 | | jnpope: I have no idea about the ideograph/orthography of Japanese names, but I did find this:
https://digitalcollections2.hoover....Search for "Card 15".
There appears to be a Japanese text version along with an English translation further below. The English translation gives:
"The tremendous military transport convoy led by Lieutenant General <Hobun> Yamashita dashes through the roaring ocean, heading straight south, towards Malay, towards Malay. They will help land at the brutal British base.
The enemy’s air base is near. If you want to attack us, come on. I will not let you touch even a corner of our convoy." Perhaps that's what you are seeking? |
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Apr-17-25
| | jnpope: <beatgiant>, I think I better understand what you are digging for. I was playing around with Google translate and 山下 奉文 comes up as <Yamashita Tomoyuki> (and I pressed the speaker icon and got a pronunciation of his name). Whereas 山下 奉 文 comes up with <Yamashita tatematsu bun>, so you are checking for pronunciations where something+文 sounds like "Hobun" so I see where you were going with <Hobun> Yamashita being a possible mis-translation of 奉文 (with 首藤 奉文 (Hobun Shuto) using the same characters as Yamashita but getting Hobun instead of Tomoyuki which does throw a rather interesting twist into the translations!). I'd like to see how Tomikichi Yokoyama was mentioned in Japan and if a "something+文" set of characters was ever used along with 横山 富吉 (if those are indeed the characters for his name... with the Yamashita/Shuto duality in play I have no idea if we've even given Tomikichi's name correctly in Japanese!!!). |
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| Apr-17-25 | | stone free or die: <<jnpope> I don't think it's clear at all. It could very well be a self-given honorific related to his becoming a religious scholar.> Dr. is a honorific, and nobody writes "Mr. Dr.". There's a bucket load of <Mr. Hobun T. Yokoyama> in the contemporaneous press, and Hobun was (almost?) always used. It could be an informal honorific, like someone going by the nickname "Doc", possibly. But if it were a true honorific we would have other clear examples of it, which I don't think we do. Do we? (Aside- Japanese honorifics go on the end, as a suffix) . |
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| Apr-17-25 | | stone free or die: <<jn> religious scholar.> Did you see my post about his thesis? |
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| Apr-17-25 | | stone free or die: Tomikichi Yokoyama (kibitz #54) |
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Apr-17-25
 | | beatgiant: <jnpope>
Thanks, that's a very interesting find and I was really excited to possibly learn a new fact about history, but unfortunately I found obvious errors.There's an English translation, a Japanese transcript, and a pdf scan of the original. The translation gives Hobun as you said, the transcript is without pronunciation markings, but the original actually does have superscript pronunciation markings by each character. I checked page 15 of the scan of the pamphlet and found the following markings: 山下奉文中將 (ideographs)
やましたまさおきちゆうじやう(superscript pronunciation markings) The pronunciation given there is Yamashita Masaoki Chiyuu Jiyaou, where Chiyuu Jiyaou is a misspelling of the word for general (should be Chyuu Jyou), and Masaoki is not a possible reading for 奉文 and it just seems to be another name entirely. |
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Apr-17-25
| | jnpope: <It could be an informal honorific, like someone going by the nickname "Doc", possibly.> That's where my mind went, being that until now "Hobun" seemed to appear only after he had begun giving lectures (this was when I was searching for "chess Yokohama"). I just went back and started a fresh set of searches for "Yokoyama" and lo-and-behold, I found this:
"Hobun T. Yokoyama and Matthew M. Imake, natives of Japan, arrived in Kansas City, Kas., yesterday to enter the Kansas City university as students. They are fitting themselves for the ministry, and came to the Kansas City university through the instrumentality of the Rev. E. H. Van Dyke, an interpreter in British Columbia who was formerly a Methodist Protestant missionary in Japan."
-<Kansas City Times>, 1905.11.08. p5
So clearly he was using Hobun prior to attending the university/seminary and way before he began giving lectures. |
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Apr-17-25
| | jnpope: I stuck Hobun Yokoyama in Google translate and got 横山 補文. The audio sounds correct, so I've added 補文 to the biography and I await <beatgiant>'s approval/condemnation. |
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| Apr-17-25 | | stone free or die: Running the hiragana though google translate yields: <"Masao Yamashita"> Whereas the kanji yields:
<"Lieutenant General Tomoyuki Yamashita"> DeepL has this:
<
Masaokichi Yamashita
Commander Bongbun Yamashita
>
Clearly both neural networks have been inadequately trained in Japanese. (?) So, without deep context (like finding his post-USA history in Korea), looking for subtle nuances is nigh to impossible. . |
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Apr-17-25
| | beatgiant: <jnpope>補文 is a real Japanese word, it is pronounced "hobun," it means "complementary clause," and it would be really weird as a person's name. Put not your faith in Google Translate! |
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Apr-17-25
| | jnpope: What would be the "best" representation of "Hobun" then? 奉文?
芳文?
法文? |
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| Apr-17-25 | | stone free or die: <<jn> So clearly he was using Hobun prior to attending the university/seminary and way before he began giving lectures.> That's a good piece of info. He started out on the west coast - Canada or Pacific NW of the US - so he may have picked it up there. I still maintain - barring an unlikely find in Japanese pre- or post- his US/Canadian stay - that Hobun is an informal first name he adopted. (Like his associate's name "Matthew", which is clearly not Japanese.) I don't like <横山 富吉 補文>, as noted before - Japanese almost never have a middle name (and if an honorific, it would go at the end). One reason there's so much discussion here, other than we all enjoy the chase, is this is one of the first cases of dealing with Asian names. I suggest a conservative approach, omitting the Hobun in the native form, and noting it's use as prenom in the Westernized version of his name. (I also would use Hobun in the PGN, as previously stated) |
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Apr-17-25
| | jnpope: I went with 横山 富吉 法文 as the audio sounds correct and 法文 was previously given as a legitimate name (do middle names go in the middle?). |
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| Apr-17-25 | | stone free or die:
<<beat> Put not your faith in Google Translate!> So we're learning. <<jn> What would be the "best" representation of "Hobun" then?> Hobun. |
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Apr-17-25
| | beatgiant: <jnpope> We're discussing an alternate name, not a "middle name." Middle names aren't a thing in the structure of Japanese names. We've seen the following examples of Hobun in a real person's name:
奉文
芳文
豊文
I personally wasn't sold on the 法文 theory, but who am I to argue? The person who proposed it sounds more qualified than me. I suggested 寶文 above in the same vein, and I can find examples of people with this name, albeit Chinese and not Japanese. As I've said above, there's no way to resolve this a priori. We need a new source such as a Japanese document referring to him by this name, or an English one that describes details about the name. |
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Apr-17-25
| | jnpope: <z>, I'm heading in your direction on this... I've stripped out the Japanese from his bio until we actually see his name given in a Japanese source (seems safest given the numerous variations and combinations of characters used). I've updated the PGN in both games to be "Hobun Tomikichi Yokoyama" being that he is literally given as <Hobun T. Yokoyama> upon his arrival in the US (<Kansas City Times>, 1905.11.08. p5) and was still being given as <Hobun T. Yokoyama> in his last mentioned lecture in the US (Knoxville <Sunday Journal and Tribune>, 1916.10.08, p6). I'm keeping his English biography name as <Rev. Dr. "Hobun" Tomikichi Yokoyama>. I know <Tomikichi Yokoyama> is the documented name in the 1901 Canadian census and in his 1905 border-crossing documentation into the US. So "Hobun" is probably just a nickname, but I'd really like to see a birth certificate or some Japanese documentation (perhaps a passport or exit visa from Japan) before I write more than speculation into his bio. |
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Apr-17-25
| | jnpope: One last tidbit of data, he was apparently from the city of Shimoda in the Shizuoka Prefecture if anyone gets a chance to do any additional digging. |
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| Apr-17-25 | | stone free or die: <<jn> I've stripped out the Japanese from his bio until we actually see his name given in a Japanese source (seems safest given the numerous variations and combinations of characters used).> Did you look at the sources I cited on his Korean career? (I provided English translations, but they were originally in Japanese) |
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| Apr-17-25 | | stone free or die: <"Hobun Tomikichi Yokoyama" > thumbs up. |
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Apr-17-25
| | jnpope: <I provided English translations, but they were originally in Japanese> Can you re-post the link to a source along with a page number? |
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Apr-17-25
| | beatgiant: I checked <stone free or die>'s Google books source above cited in Tomikichi Yokoyama (kibitz #55), searched for 横山富吉, and got three hits: p338 横山富吉や、戦時中の配属将校工藤重雄も静岡県人であった p340 横山富吉は,静岡・東京で中学時代までを過ごした後カナダに渡り p348 横山富吉近藤英三吉川義弘・柴山昇な•どアメリカ留学経験者が多かったことが The latter two specifically mention the trips to Canada and US to study, and I would take this as definite proof that 横山富吉 is correct for his official name. |
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Apr-17-25
| | jnpope: Great! Re-added the Japanese form of his name (less the "Hobun"). |
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Apr-17-25
| | jnpope: <With that being said, there are some rare exceptions for when Japanese people might have a middle name. This tends to be the case for people who have adopted different names for their religion (see also ‘The 4 Most Common Religions In Japan‘), or if their field of work requires it. Many people who work on publications may be required to add a middle name or initial to their name in order to differentiate their work from someone with the same first and last names.> https://justaboutjapan.com/do-japan... Ok, so authors tend to take on an additional name to make them uniquely identifiable. Which may explain Yamashita's "pen name", although I don't see any cases of all three names being used simultaneously. I wonder if Yokoyama took on a third name for a similar reason? |
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Apr-17-25
| | beatgiant: <jnpope> It's a valid point, while living abroad a Japanese person might adopt a different name form intended to be easier for locals to pronounce. <Yamashita's "pen name"> Are we still talking about General Yamashita? It's off topic at this point, but I see no great case for the alternate names for him, even after studying the source you found from the Stanford Hoover Institution. I detailed the flaws in that source above: the phonetics in the original source had clear errors, and the English translation didn't follow those anyway. |
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Apr-17-25
 | | NewspaperChessArchiv: <<jnpope>: I finally found some government documentation (US and Canada!).> 1901 Census of Canada has this
Name Tomikichi Yokoyama
Birth 25 Mar 1882 Japan
Residence 1901 British Columbia, Canada
Fifth name down on list.
https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewe... |
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