Talk:Old towns of Japan

Images and full list

The lead image is not particularly enticing, can I suggest eg File:Higashi_Chayamachi2.JPG (Kanazawa) instead?

Also, is there an official list of all the designated districts somewhere? Are there too many for a map? Jpatokal (talk) 04:30, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

For the lede, I was trying to choose one of the more typical types of towns (post town, castle town, or merchant district) rather than the rarer types (pleasure quarters, mining towns, farming towns, etc). The linked picture is of Kanazawa's pleasure quarters, which was one of the types I was avoiding, and is already used in a few articles, including as the lede in Kanazawa. While I like the nondescript nature of the current image, your suggestion to change the lede made me try a different approach; how about a close-up. Since most of the pictures representing the types of towns will (rightfully) feature a townscape, having the lede feature an attractive close-up might be a good way to contrast the others, as well as the banner that will probably also be one of the townscapes. I think it looks good (and I can create an Uchiko article to get rid of the redlink). Let me know what you think of the image or the ideas of a close-up or choosing one of the most common types.

As for the second question, I attempted to address it in the "Designation" section. The "Important Preservation Districts for Groups of Traditional Buildings" is the highest designation of these districts that does tend to feature larger and/or more exceptional districts. There are many historic districts that are not part of the IPDGTB, and new listings are added annually (Susaka, Nagano was added on August 15 this year). That list has 129 listings, so if they were all put into our article, I guess this article would have the issues of the original "Old Towns" article, but I don't necessarily think all of them need listings. I'm also not personally against non-listed districts being listed if they are deemed worth listing, but if they overwhelm the article, sticking to the Important Preservation Districts would be an easy line to draw. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 14:00, 9 December 2024 (UTC)