Talk:Geoffrey Girard

Veracity and controversy surrounding Thomas Lockley and Geoffrey Girard's 'African Samurai'

On July 4th of this year, five days ago, an accountless user (just like me) altered this section from 'Nonfiction' to 'fiction,' without even updating the capitalization. As many are likely aware, there has recently been controversy over the facts surrounding the purported individual known as 'Yasuke,' who is primarily sourced from the mentioned book. This section, formerly Nonfiction, then fiction, is a potential source of additional controversy and is a vandalism risk. I was actually extremely surprised to find no Talk sections for this article at all, let alone about this topic.

I'm not an actual editor; I don't even have an account, so I'm not really qualified to weigh in on this beyond what I've been able to dig up. I've done some reading through articles both English and auto-translated from Japanese, and they all point back to this book as a primary source. All of them. They source-by-proxy some of THIS book's alleged sources, however, but this book itself is the linchpin of the entire controversy due it making many, many assertions.

The problem: Geoffrey Girard is not only a historical nonfiction writer, he is, to directly quote the article itself: "an author of nonfiction, thrillers, historicals, and speculative fiction." I specifically would assert a hypothesis that Thomas Lockley, the primary author, worked with Geoffrey Girard, the secondary author, to pad out the work from a collection of nonfiction into speculative fiction more readily entertaining to the masses, and thus more marketable.

Alleged from those who have read the book, per reviews on Amazon from 2019 near its original release, is the following:

'Zap Rowsdower,' verified purchase, May 28, 2019: "There are not footnotes leading to sources for any of the ideas presented in the book, which is necessary for any book of history. This book is written exactly like a novel, complete with what the weather was like and what the characters said. The opening scene is even 100% fiction, made to seem like a Kurosawa film. The authors make it known that there is little verifiable information about their subject so they clearly just filled in teh details with their own ideas."

'Historian Skeptic,' July 25, 2019: "If you like historical fiction like Last Samurai Yasuke is the new Tom Cruise. Check the sources again. One that is cited throughout is Stephen Turnbull a corrupt historian that turns history for profit just like this gentleman. Turnbull his associate, lifted work from Japanese academics during his career and never credited them and profited off of THEIR work While passing them off as his own via translation. This man uses Turnbulls stolen work for source points. Turnbull just translated and stole work, this man used that work to create his Yasuke fictions background. The work as a whole is a work of fiction, the author Thomas gave his work and conjecture on this character and worked with a fiction author to create this narrative. Furthermore there is no first person eye witness account of "Yasuke" in existence from his point of view do not be fooled the man was not fully Japanese court literate as is claimed in this book. The author has spun a narrative hoping to get to holly wood for money that doesn't exist again this account is highly embellished fiction. The other sources used are based on a childrens book written in the 1960's a jesuit account written by a researcher that looked into Jesuit activity in Japan during the time period which is sparse in relation to Yasuke, and a universal priamary source that is used when researching Nobunaga. The account is extremely small concerning Yasuke or whatever his real name was. The main documentation is from a samurai in Nobunagas court that kept detailed records about what was going on. This is what is primarily used by scholars to get an idea of what life was during Nobunagas reign. Everything about the story is conjecture by the authors part based on these limited accounts."

So... tiny sample size, but these claims should be easily verifiable by someone better able to put in the legwork than I am. First of all is checking out the actual structure and trustworthiness of the text, and second (and much harder) would be to check its citations.

Until then, I will be updating it from 'fiction' to 'Speculative fiction' as from everything I CAN verifiably tell, it is neither accurate to call it 'Nonfiction' OR 'fiction.' It's somewhere in between and should be respected as such until further work is able to be performed.

But why is this a problem? Well unfortunately, dozens of media and cultural organizations are quoting the book verbatim as nonfiction and have been for years. This book has, in fact, per the assertion of the anonymous Amazon user 'Historian Skeptic' actually prompted a bout of 'holly wood [for] money' (sic) despite allegedly being 'highly embellished fiction' and 'made to seem like a Kurosawa film.'

Someone with the time and ability please investigate and put this to rest. As I'd previously stated, this seems to be THE central, root factor and must be looked in to--and perhaps even have a new article made entirely specifically for the book, with a warning of the controversy and its history. 70.67.165.83 (talk) 00:13, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

If you have (a lot of) time, read through the long threads at Talk:Yasuke. In fact, start with the already-archived bits at Talk:Yasuke/Archive_1, various editors (myself included) had begun discussing the issues about describing Yasuke as a samurai well before the current media kerfuffle. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 00:07, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know about those talks.

I will add for anyone reading in the future that this specifically is a link of interest regarding the talks and what I brought up:

Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Reliability of Thomas Lockley

Additionally, as you'd noted in that specific talk, thank you for looking into this and putting in the effort. Circular citations like this topic potentially is are concerning. 70.67.165.83 (talk) 18:50, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Per The Library of Congress, the book is not categorized as fiction. The book is not marketed as fiction. The book is not sold as fiction. Amazon reviews are not reliable sources. Chrhns (talk) 11:26, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

@Chrhns — See the quotes I mentioned over at Talk:Yasuke#Retainer#Lockley_quotes. These describe Yasuke's internal thoughts and memories, and are pure fiction, as we have zero historical textual resources corroborating any of this.

Roger Purdy, a degreed historian, also categorizes the work as "popular history and historical fiction".

There's an interesting piece online here that talks about how Lockley's statements in Japanese don't agree with his statements in English, where his Japanese writings tend to be more factually grounded.

I take the LoC's categorization with a grain of salt. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 23:31, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

I do not concern myself with discussion occurring on the Yasuke talk page. I am also well familiar with the Purdy review from my forray into closing the RfC and am growing mildly concerned by your seeming fixation on this book to the point that you are misrepresenting Purdy entirely. At no point in his review did he say the book was historical fiction. He said it is a work of popular history and that the writing style would "give the reader of popular history and historical fiction a glimpse of samurai values", saying the book would be good for people who enjoy popular history and historical fiction is not tantamount to Purdy declaring the work is fiction wholesale. There are two other reviews that were presented in that entire argument which called the book well factchecked and sung its high praises. At the end of the day it doesn't matter what you or any other editor feels about the book, it is sold, marketed, and catalogued as nonfiction and until someone can produce a source that actually says it is speculative fiction it should not be listed as such. Lockley's differing statements do not matter. What is discussed on the Yasuke page does not matter. It is inaccurate to represent something as a work of speculative fiction when it is not represented as such anywhere beyond an interpretation of a singular reviewer saying that historical fiction readers would enjoy the book. I have zero interest in being dragged any further into the nonstop arguing about Lockley and Yasuke. Chrhns (talk) 09:55, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

The book is clearly fiction as it has multiple accounts that could not possibly be known without a trove a unpublished sources backing it up. And a 480 page book from just a few pages of facts to go off should immediately set off alarm bells for anyone thinking about the book's veracity. That said, I think it may set a bad precedent to change the category. Should we categorize every get rich quick book as fiction as well? It might be best to leave this as it is.

Perhaps it would be best to not categorize the book at all. I don't think there is a guideline saying we must categorize books by genre, is there?

>to the point that you are misrepresenting Purdy entirely

I would agree Purdey is calling the book a work of fiction. All that's missing is for him to literally say "this book is a work of fiction" which I don't think is necessary. If he felt the need as a reviewer to point out that one of the authors has a degree in creative writing, while also pointing out that the authors provide no source for the events they claim happen, and end it of with a recommendation to readers of fiction, then it is certainly fair to read as Purdey calling the book fiction. However, even if he did directly say it was fiction, I would still say that we should probably keep it as non-fiction.J2UDY7r00CRjH (talk) 03:02, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Per WP:SYNTH yes, Purdy must outright declare the book a work of fiction to be represented as saying the book is fiction, otherwise you are stating/implying a conclusion that is not explicitly stated by the source. Chrhns (talk) 19:31, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm not talking about what we should represent the book as. My comment was about whether Eirikr is "misrepresenting Purdy entirely," which is not a point that needs to follow from Wikipedia's guidelines. J2UDY7r00CRjH (talk) 19:59, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Except Wikipedia policy does apply when they are supporting an argument to change the categorization of a book and challenging the categorization by librarians on the basis of something Purdy didn't say outside of some WP:SYNTH. In fact, Purdy explicitly states that the book is intended to be a work of popular history. It would be more correct to categorize the book as Creative nonfiction than to try and argue the book is fiction off of the Purdy review. Chrhns (talk) 23:45, 22 July 2024 (UTC)