[Wikipedia-l] Does anyone knows the beginning of ja?

[Tomos at Wikipedia]

Hello.

An email arrived at japanese wikipedia's press contact
mailinglist regarding Web Creation Award. It is an award
given to people who made significant difference in the web
in Japan. The host of the award is an association of
advertisers, though the recipients of the awards are not
limited to marketing campaign planners. Wikipedia is under
consideration because someone made a recommendation. :-)

As a part of selection process, they would like to do
some interview. The person who emailed us expressed that
he would like to find the person who started the Japanese
Wikipedia, someone who came up with the idea, plan, or
determination. Who exactly this is, I think, is somewhat up
to interpretation. Is there any strong candidate?

I recall reading early Wikipedia-l posting (perhaps by Larry and/or Jason) 
announcing the launch of several non-English Wikipedia
circa May 2001. Japanese Wikipedia was among the first
ones. Is there anybody who remembers how that happened?
Was multilingualization of Wikipedia an idea of Jimmy
and Larry from the beginning? Or was there someone else
who suggested/ pushed for it? Is there any reason why
Japanese was among the first?

In the early days, Aoineko was kind of "stationed" when
there was only several edits a week, and welcomed the
logged on users (there were only several back then) if
I understand correct. Brion was there to fix bugs and
take care of other technical aspects, too.  The first
article seems to have been written by RoseParks (phonemes
of Japanese). But there are only fragmental traces and
virtually nobody knows those early days. Could somebody
inform us of people who made significant contributions?

Thank you in advance for your help.

Regards,


Tomos

More info. is available on the award at here (in Japanese):

http://award.wab.ne.jp/award/index.html

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