Japanese Wikipedia: Miguel de Cervantes

    If we remember that 6 years have already passed since the Japanese Wikipedia was originally created we would have expected a more complete article on Cervantes; specially if we compare it to other versions of the article found in the English or even Spanish Wikipedia. If we keep in mind what we mentioned in our introductory paragraph on Cervantes not being as famous as his novel in Japan, we should not be surprise to see that introduction of the Wikipedia article, which only has three lines, tells us just that Cervantes was a well-known Spanish novelist famous for his novel “Don Quixote”.

    As for the main body of the article, we can see that there are almost no links, whereas the Spanish and the English versions have a wide contents index with links related to the different stages of his life and works. Going back to the main article, we could describe its contents as follows: the first three paragraphs are a short account on the novelist’s life, the fourth one mentions when he wrote the two parts of “Don Quixote” and the “Novelas Ejemplares” collection. As found on the English and Spanish version of the articles, the fifth and last paragraph of the article narrates about the fact that many people claim that Cervantes died on the same date as Shakespeare. It mentions as well, the fact that the difference in calendars (Gregorian or Julian) makes the date of the death the same, but not the day.

    As a curiosity, it might be interesting to mention that all the three Wikipedia websites on Cervantes, the Japanese, the English and the Spanish, remind us about the coincidental fact on the death of Shakespeare and Cervantes. Nevertheless, on the three versions of the article on Shakespeare, only the Spanish Wikipedia mentions that it coincided with the date of Cervantes death. This might imply that whereas every culture thinks that telling us about  Shakespeare when talking about Cervantes will be a good publicity, the Japanese and English culture do not consider necessary to mention the Spanish novelist in order to enhance the image of the British playwright. Obviously, the Spanish do not think the same.

    The last section of the homepage is dedicated to the author’s main works, which are reduced to the two parts of “Don Quixote”, “Novelas Ejemplares” and “Persiles y Segismunda”. There is no description of the contents of none, except “Don Quixote” which has a link to its own article also on the Japanese Wikipedia.

    Finally, as for the visuals of the site, the Japanese version only has a picture of Cervantes, whereas the English and Spanish have some samples of famous paintings on Cervantes’ life and battles, as well as some images of Don Quixote.