in Japanese, person names are generally written without spaces between first/last name, e.g. “平井堅” (instead of “平井 堅”).
but some peoples and labels are tend to add spaces between it.
basically they could classified to one of:
insert spaces to every name (e.g. “平井 堅” and “中島 美嘉”)
insert spaces only if (all or) one of name parts have a only one character (e.g. “平井 堅” but NOT “中島 美嘉”)
not insert spaces between name at all
I think it would be nice (but not required) to keep the space, as long as it looks intended, such as:
release have a official digital text (copy-able) artist credit (including digital release, official websites, etc), and they have a space on it
space is placed in correct place (e.g. should be “平井 堅”, not “平 井堅”)
consistent in the release or release-group
@TheM14says these spaces are mostly removed in MusicBrainz so its our consensus.
while I agree about artist entity name, but about artist credits, I think we couldn’t know editor did remove spaces intentionally or not, because MusicBrainz WebUI automatically fixes the name to entity name regardless of search query (even query is completely match with one of their aliases, WebUI will set to entity name). i can think these cases:
just didn’t notice it
intentionally remove the space
well its basically same so its okay to keep as-is
so I think we couldn’t say about current state (about artist credits) is our consensus.
This is an interesting question! Thank you for bringing it up.
First, the Style/Language/Japanese guidelines don’t say anything about this issue. If there is a consensus, it should be added there.
This seems to be a case of trading off error correction against artist intent, and we have a Style principle for that. Basically, fixing errors is OK, but Artist Intent should have priority if they conflict. Spaces within a display name which are intentionally added by the Artist (or their graphic designer) as part of how they want to present their name seems to be more a case of Artist Intent than an error to be corrected.
Also, one point from the edit discussion which I think is important is that the tradeoff may be different for a “Credited As” string in a Release, than for the Name of the Artist entity itself.
Right now, I favour adding something to Style/Language/Japanese which says that for Japanese-script Names and Aliases of Artist entries, the spaces should get removed; but for Credited As strings in Releases, the spaces should be kept as printed on the Release, whether that is with space or without space.
In my view, I do not think spaces should be added between the family name and given name in Japanese kanji/kana personal names.
My reason is that this kind of space usually does not create a meaningful artist credit difference. In languages such as English, where spaces are used to separate words, the space is part of the normal structure of a personal name. However, in kanji/kana personal names, the family name and given name are normally written continuously, and the name does not rely on an internal space to be valid or understandable.
For MusicBrainz, “中島美嘉” and “中島 美嘉” still point to the same artist; the space is not a join phrase, does not indicate an alias, character credit, or organization credit, and does not change how the artist credit is understood. The family/given name distinction can already be handled by the artist entity and sort name.
Therefore, even if this kind of space appears in the source text of some physical or digital releases, I do not think preserving it as artist credit as necessarily adds useful information; instead, it may create unnecessary inconsistency between releases.
I definitely wouldn’t go for already existing releases adding spaces, someone definitely will tho. I also wouldn’t oppose such edits as well since “as printed” rule is still kinda there and I am not a fan of pretending that I know the artist intent, especially on releases like the one in question where artists are characters and all we have is digital platforms releases - data for which gets submitted from same document without artist involved.
Unless the intent is obviously known and artist is consistent with it, of course. For such cases artist name itself should have a space.
I think the space shouldn’t be added and if you notice it you should remove, because Japanese names just don’t have spaces. I noticed this before and I think I know why it happens.
In Wikipedia, the article (both English and Japanese) generally starts with the person’s name with a space to mark the separation of surname and give name, e.g.:
Ken Hirai (平井 堅, Hirai Ken; born January 17, 1972) is a Japanese singer-songwriter.
I think this is just people who don’t speak Japanese copying the name from Wikipedia not realising the space isn’t part of the name. I don’t think they are intentionally adding a space, so there is no reason to keep it.
@blackteadarkmatter for artist entity names your opinion is understandable, but for artist credits which originally comes from labels based on Japan, probably they (i mean, who related to write/review artist credits in the label) are native (or, at least, non-native but fluent) speaker, i guess.
It’s been the position of MB since before artist credit existed.
We and I have been removing the spaces from every tracklists.
But when I look back at it now, I think it is not completely useless, especially for names with even number of characters, it’s printed super often for 3 character names, for instance.
I wouldn’t remove the space if someone had set it, following the printed tracklist.
I can’t say for a fact, but I suspect it’s people that listen to Japanese music but aren’t fluent in Japanese. They’re not comfortable typing kanji, so they copy it from elsewhere, possibly from Wikipedia or similar articles. Even for the credits, they will probably just copy the name instead of typing it, and not realise there’s an extra space. I don’t think a fluent Japanese speaker/reader would do this, because they will type names everyday, and know you don’t add a space after the surname.
That’s why I’m comfortable just removing it, because I don’t think it’s intentional.
Discussion here is about fluent Japanese people, eg Salaryman X working at Sony Music Labels Inc. creating liner notes or digital release metadata with Japanese names having space, it’s not about editors. Editors merely reproduce (or don’t) the data that already exists on release.
You will notice I didn’t say “3 kanji names spaced out in film staff rolls or on printed albums” is a “mistake by ignorants”. If anything, it’s pretty standard to add a space to mark the surname/given name separation in articles, such as the example I gave above, or in your example.
All I said was that Japanese speakers know that the space is not part of the name, where a non-Japanese speaker will likely just copy it as they see it.
at least, it will reduce differences with (upstream) digital releases tracklist.
I’m not sure about other usage[1], but even if we don’t know about its useful or not, we could easily & automatically remove spaces later (if we need/want) but restore them is hard or sometimes impossible if upstream releases delisted, so i think it would be good to preserve them.
(especially anime/game character songs,) different artist credits between digital and CD releases isn’t rare, so it is already incosistent
if we remove spaces from upstream tracklists, we will introduce unnecessary inconsistency with upstream info, isn’t it?
maybe useful to detect old/new releases when re-released, but I’m not sure about actual case was exists or not ↩︎
