About the name notation of this blog

The far-right Liberal Democratic Party government has publicly slandered the left, labor unions, and the Science Council, while emphasizing Japan's false traditions.

In 2019, discussions began on changing the order of Japanese names in English from "first name-surname" to "surname-first name," and in 2020, the government, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Agency for Cultural Affairs, and others officially announced the "surname-first name" order. (https://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/seimei_romaji/index.html *1)

Subsequently, some overseas researchers and translators followed this example, and some began to interpret the "surname, given name" order as the original English spelling of Japanese names.

It is true that in Japanese the order is surname followed by given name, but the problem here is that a powerful figure who has attacked academia suddenly requested that the long-standing English (Romanized) spelling be changed.

In 2020, the Tokyo Olympics was forced to go ahead amid the COVID-19 pandemic and poverty. The discriminatory Tokyo Governor Koike, the Liberal Democratic Party government, and large corporations flocking to the Olympic Games enjoyed the extravagant festival.

However, people who had nothing to do with sports or national pride suffered in the shadows of the glamorous event.

The entrance march at the opening ceremony was changed to Japanese alphabetical order(Aiueo order), which only Japanese people can understand.

In recent years, some university researchers have also been changing the order of words in academic papers, which are intended to be read by people all over the world, to Japanese alphabetical order which only Japanese people can understand.
In addition, the era name notation advocated by the Japanese government and right wing has no scientific basis and is simply difficult for people overseas to understand.
However, the "Japanese traditions" that the LDP government claims (which is nothing more than the Japanese government and right-wing propaganda and self-intoxication of Japan abroad) contain many historical misunderstandings, which have already been pointed out by researchers.
The LDP government and the far-right organization "Japan Conference" that supports it are aiming to revive the old Japan of the imperialist era, after eliminating liberal and leftist theories.
They are bringing into compulsory education the mistaken idea that "the past wars were just wars, wars to liberate Asia."
They are also excluding science and scholarship, reviving the wartime "gun-kendo" in school education, and indoctrinating children with abstract spiritual theories.

If we were to change the order of names midway through, following the example of the Japanese government, it would confuse many researches that have existed over a long history.

This means that when researchers hundreds of years from now examine past documents, they will have to do extra research to find out when, by whom, and for what purpose the name order was changed.

It will be difficult to find the boundary between the pre-2020 spelling of names and the post-2020 spelling change, and in the end, names with different spelling orders will be mixed together in the same treatise .

The problem here is that those in power do not sincerely and sincerely respect the disclosure of accurate Japanese notation, but always have unscientific intentions in their hearts.
A few years ago, Liberal Democratic Party Vice President Aso caused controversy by saying, "We should use Nazi methods."

Research is something that has existed for tens of thousands of years, and should be passed down for hundreds of years to come, and analyzed and verified.

We hereby announce that when converting Japanese names into Roman letters, we will unify the order of "first name -> Surname as before.

*1:

First of all, because the government and government ministries insist on using the era name "Reiwa Gannen," people other than a few era name enthusiasts have no idea what year it is. Japanese era names are mainly names created by some people in power when the emperor changed and ordered to be used by the general public each time, and are unrelated to the history of the majority of the people.
In addition, when writing in the Gregorian calendar, we write "before Christ" as "BCE" instead of "BC," and "after Christ" as "CE" instead of "AD."We welcome new names like this that make things as close to neutral as possible. BCE and CE are used by researchers and scientific media around the world.

From a thesis published in Science (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adp1295)

The problem with this arbitrary decision by Prime Minister Abe, who dislikes academia, is that it has led to historical confusion in the form of the coexistence of two types of proper nouns, with the surname and given name in a different order, in the same paper, making verification by future generations difficult.