He writes his name like that, but it is pronounced ใใใใ (ryouji), not ใใใ (ryoji). The standard on Danbooru is to ignore the "official" spelling in those cases in favor of consistency in romanizing Japanese names.
That creates a situation where Danbooru is basically saying to the artist, "You're wrong about your own name." And in contrast, he's been consistent about spelling his name without the U.
Guess it's a minor point in the end, but the resulting discrepancy still strikes me as curious.
desides, it's pretty arbitrary, but i prefer his name to be listed in a manner that allows you to know how it's written in japanese(ryouji). it's more convenient that way; if it was listed as "ryoji" and i didn't already know what his name actually was in japanese, if i were to go searching for more of his stuff in japanese, i wouldn't know to search for "ใใใใ."
when transcribing an author/artist's name in english, it's generally most helpful to write it how it's written in its native language, as that's usually the best method of searching for new material.
but there are still problems with that in that many artists tend to use/be referred to by their romanized name much more than their japanese one. it would be ideal if we could include both japanese-true and artist-romanized spellings when there's a discrepancy, but in the past i have found romanizations which stay true to the japanese spelling to be helpful.
and as to telling him about his own name, well, we'll just say we're listing his Japanese name romanized by our own system(which is absolutely the truth) and that "ryoji" is his chosen name in English.
Schiz0 said: I agree with desides, if he himself doesn't spell it with a "u" then it shouldn't be spelled as such merely because of pronunciation.
Speaking as someone who does understand the Japanese language, I'm with wtflux on this one.
Japanese artists often use a simplified romanization scheme, with the intent of making themselves known to Western audiences in a pronunciation-friendly way. This is all well and good, except that it makes searching for their original name in Japanese unnecessarily difficult. As was said, there are significant differences between names that may be spelled "ใใใใ" and those that may be spelled "ใใใ".
(For a more accessible comparison, think of the difference between "Marcus" and "Marcos".)
Plus, there's the fact that many such artists know little to no English, and thus their ability to romanize their own names actually is suspect. Without putting the artists down, it is entirely possible that - for the purposes of romanization - we actually do know how to spell the artist's name better than what they insist upon.
Why don't you alias the tags ryouji and ryoji? (I don't know how to do that). I prefer Ryouji though. Japanese artists incorrectly romanize all the time. Missing the "u" after ou is a very common mistake.
Also you can find this whole thing (the picture is the cover) translated by desudesu0.com