Is the Boss's number a phone number or an email address?

[Chekhov MacGuffin 1089]

The context is that I'm having a debate with an IP related the the Boss of the Black Organization article, and I need to be sure I have my facts straight first.

 

Argument that the boss's number is an email address (copied from talk page).

 

I was the IP who did the edit, and I think we have enough proof to say it is an e-mail address rather than a phone number (in Japan each mobile phone have an e-mail address associated to it, and they use e-mail rather than SMS to send messages).

•In file 434 Vermouth receives an e-mail from the boss and replies with another e-mail, not by calling him/her (even though she whispers "Ok, boss" after reading the message): this is the first time Conan hears Nanatsu no Ko, even though he doesn't recognize it right away; Conan even tells Vermouth that if it will look like his heart stopped then the address to which she just sent the e-mail will be found out.

•In file 439 Conan thinks that if he had that address he could find out the boss' identity.

•In file 470 Conan confirms that Vermouth sent an e-email, and Agasa wonders if the numbers dialed are familiar to Conan because they contain letters often used by Conan in his messages: you can't use letters in phone numbers but you can in e-mail; it's true that Conan here search for the telephone numbering plan of Tottori, but only because he found out that the sound of the first four numbers used to make a phone call to someone who lives in Tottori (0858) is similar to the beginning of the sound of the boss' e-mail address (which, as we find later, starts with #969, whose sound is similar to 0858).

•In file 475 Conan confirms again that what Vermouth sent was an e-email and discovers that #969#6261 is the boss' e-mail address. A note by Gosho Aoyama says that in real life e-mail addresses can't have "#", but he decided that in the Conanverse they can to avoid pranks; of course if this was a phone number he would have done things differently, using a real telephone numbering plan (like 0858 for Tottori) and only using symbols that can't be used in the second part of the number to avoid pranks, but since e-mail addresses are (unlike phone numbers) totally unrelated from from where you live it doesn't matter where the impossible symbols are positioned in the number. Still in file 475, Agasa asks Conan if he sent an e-mail to the boss, which he denies; he sais that he wants Takagi to investigate that address, while Ai thinks the address is like Pandora's box.

•In file 479, Conan is about to write an e-mail: we can read the address (#969#6261, which by mistake became #696#6261 in the anime) but he hasn't started yet writing it, and he decides not to do so.

•In file 499, Conan sees Yoko calling someone, and thinks of the fact that now everytime he sees someone using a cell phone he is reminded of Vermouth and the boss' e-mail address, and also thinks of Ai saying the address is like Pandora's box. At the end of that file and the beginning of file 500 Conan hears Rena dialing Nanatsu no Ko and then she is called by Gin: she informs Gin that she only had a small problem which she just informed Anokata via e-mail. •Still in file 500, Ai asks Conan if he is sure that Rena is from the BO, and Conan answers that she sent an e-mail to their boss an then received a phone call from Gin.

•In file 595, Ran says Esuke told her he heard someone (Kusuda) dial an e-email address that sounded like Nanatsu no Ko. Eisuke mistook Kusuda for a colleague of his father because Ethan was a mole inside the BO, and thus sent various e-mail to an address that sounded like Nanatsu no Ko; Eisuke asked what was this sound, and Ethan answered he was sending an e-mail to "his boss" (the BO boss).

•In file 605 James says that it is better if Eisuke gets into the witness protection program since he knows the BO boss' mail address. --87.8.35.181 12:11, 12 December 2014 (CET)

The Italian manga sometimes uses "indirizzo di posta elettronica" ("e-mail address"), while other times uses "SMS", and I believe the former is correct and the latter is an imprecision; on the other hand, "numero di telefono" ("phone number") is never used. The Italian Wikipedia article about phones in Japan, which seems more complete on this point compared to the English Wikipedia, says (my translation) "One of the main features of Japanese cell phones is the constant use of e-mail on the consumer's part, to the detriment of SMS and in some cases even of the classic calls, especially in public places. An e-mail address is associated with each cell phone at the time of subscription to a telephone company: this operation requires a certificate of residence, an account in a Japanese bank or with a local credit card, an employment contract or the presence of a warrantor of Japanese nationality, other the the reguar passport; these requirement are similar to what is required for the stipulation of a lease. The concept of e-mail in Japan is mainly associated with cell phones, to the point that some young Japanese ignore the possibility of sending e-mail through a PC". So, we can conclude that Japanese use e-mail like we use SMS (explaining why some manga translations use "SMS" instead of "e-mail") but the phone number and the mail address are actually two different numbers: for example in file 340 Ran sends an e-mail to Shinichi using her cell phone, but in file 426 she complains about not having Shinichi's phone number because when he calls her he hides his number; she will not get his number until file 483. According to Agasa, letters can be used for e-mail addresses in Japan, but this doesn't prevent numbers to be used, I think. Plus, I don't see how Gosho could have intended #969#6261 to be a phone number, since phone numbers start with a telephone numbering plan, which "#969" is not: one thing is to start a number with a real numbering plan and then using impossible symbols like "#" to avoid pranks, another thing is using a non-existent numbering plan. You said "Nor do I think it is a coincidence that the length of the number is the exact length of a Japanese phone number (9 digits for a geographic number)", but if this is the case then Conan should have know right away that the number has 9 digits, while in file 470 he tells Agasa that the number has 8 or 9 digits. In conclusion, I think that if we write that #969#6261 is the boss' phone number we will confuse the reader, because that number has only been used to send messages to the boss, not to call him/her, and this is an important point: if Vermouth called the boss instead of sending a message in file 434, then Conan would have heard the boss' voice and would know al least his/her gender.

Argument that the number is a phone number

 

I think the problem I'm hearing from others I asked at the DCTP spoiler box is that the argument it is an email overly relies on the literal translation rather than looking at how the number is actually being used.

 

“ @Chek: The problem with calling it an e-mail address is that, even in Japan, e-mail addresses take the form of something@something.sth, like the rest of the world, while the boss' address is just numbers (with the # just there to ensure it's not real). If we then add in the fact that, as jimmy said, text messages (via phone) are called 'mail' in Japan, I'd call the number we have a phone number. Calling it an e-mail address certainly makes little sense. „

— Fujiwara in the spoiler cbox

The best evidence about how the address is actually being used suggests that it is a phone number that is being used for texting. You can't dial an email with a 9 digit keypad to make the nanatsu no ko sound (no .s or @s). Nor do I think it is a coincidence that the length of the number is the exact length of a Japanese phone number (9 digits for a geographic number), and has no @s. Promotional offers in Japan related to Conan (I recall one for M13) had people dial the boss's phone number to hear a pre-recorded message - which suggests that it is a phone number not an email. Also keep in mind the cellphone arc took place way back in 2003/2004, which was pretty early in the smartphone tech cycle.

Other mangas (forget which ones) use the convention # to replace phone numbers to make them unworkable. # is used because the pound sign is on a phone.

I will add to my side at least as I think of new stuff and keep the other party's arguments updated.

[Kurara-chan 13]

Timeline (& technology progress) is hard in Conan.   when eisuke was a child, did the cellphone was already exist? i always find it weird that the boss's e-mail didn't have any .s or @s. just a bunch of number and #

[Balthazar Manfredie 226]

one time phone number, next its an e-mail address 

must be how technology developed 

[Henry Gordan 20]

Just thing that came in my mind. I was talking about smses with my father. And said that sms is quite Finnish thing.(false, but first GSM call was phoned in Finland. First sms was in GB). But he said that old NMT couldn't be used to send smses. And they used Pager. So what if they use pagers to inform their boss. I know nationwide use needs lots of base stations but Black Org. is big and they could do it.

 

So this is just what came in my mind

[ALAKTORN 170]

Just had a conversation about this with a Japanese guy. He says メール means both SMS and e-mail, says to send SMS in Japan you need the same contractor between the 2 phones, when you make a contract they give you a メールアドレス (e-mail address) in the form of xxx@xx.xx, SMS and calls are done using the same phone number.

 

Can we put a rest to this and call the boss’s number a phone number?

 

Edit: Addendum: “but after the advent of smartphone you can always use SMS regardless of the contractor”.

[Chekhov MacGuffin 1089]

Thanks for bringing it up again. I would like to put it to rest. The whole argument seemed to rest on an incongruity between "How a Japanese speaker thinks a concept should be translated into English" (mail address) and "How an English speaker would actually translate that concept" (phone number). I always thought it was pretty obviously a phone number given how it was actually used.