Japanese Wikipedia: William Shakespeare

    This was the first website address that appeared as the result of our search with Google. At first sight, taking into account that Shakespeare was not a Japanese speaking author, it looks like a very solid and complete article on the author, with an extension not very inferior to the English Wikipedia article. However, we do find a certain tendency to limit the playwright’s range of works to the most representative one. That is to say, to the ones that have more often been translated or represented abroad. Thus, in the introduction, we read that Shakespeare is a famous playwright, author of works such as “Hamlet”, “Macbeth”, “Othello”, “King Lear”, “ Romeo and Juliet”, “The Merchant of Venice”, “ Midsummer Night’s Dream”, “Julius Caesar”, the long poem “Venus and Adonis” and the sonnets. This leaves out all the historical plays, and great amount of tragedies and comedies, among other works. Even though later on in the paper all his works are listed, we feel that in the haste in which we normally run through the different websites, the introductory part, that is, the upper part of the page is crucial, since it might be the only section that will actually be read, motivating or not the reader to keep on scrolling down or move to another page.

    As for the sections included in the article, it looks as if they have literally taken from the English Wikipedia. Nevertheless, each of their contents has been simplified, and many of the sections have been merged into one. The most meaningful merging is the one according to the author’s life, where all the sections like religion, sexuality, theatrical career, among others have been summarized or omitted. The same happens with the visual evidence: the number of pictures and photographs compared to the English site, has been dramatically reduced, making the text part the clearly the dominating one.

    On the other hand, the section of authorship has been respected as a section, although renamed as “Shakespeare: A different Person”. There is a section only existing in this Japanese website titled “Valuation” or “Recognition”, where famous quotes are listed as famous lines used on films. This section is somehow similar to the English Wikipedia’s “Reputation”, but the Japanese one is based on present-day understanding rather than the reputation that Shakespeare had on his time. Finally, there is a section mentioning the appearances of Shakespeare on the big screen, where the Japanese animation version of “Romeo and Juliet” is mentioned. Since this movie has its own website, we will pay visit to it by the end of this section.