Second, both “-town” and “-ton” in your examples are actually parts of the city names (which I suppose is the true meaning of suffix, so my original comment is a bit misleading). “Town” appended as a separate word to city names, which is the practice I’m objecting to here, does not happen in English as far as I am aware.

I didn’t know of the Japan Style Sheet. Thanks for the recommendation!

When I translate for clients who want the “town” and “city” tidbits in there, I often use the multiple sentence trick: “The men traveled next to Niigata. In that city, they . . .”

If you need a real live printed reference book to back up your side of a discussion with a client who wants “Yokohama City” or whatever, the SWET Japan Style Sheet has a helpful section on this very issue.

But “Matsushima Island” is completely wrong, since it’s actually a group of islands, not a single island. So I’d just call it “Matsushima,” period.

It depends on the situation. For example, is the name of the island off the coast of Miyagi called “Matsu Island”? I just tested it on my co-worker who speaks English very well, and she didn’t know where I was talking about, despite that we live in the area. The name, as I perceive it, is “Matsushima”. For those of us who speak Japanese, the title in English is redundant, but for those people who don’t speak Japanese (like my mother), I think the redundancy is often necessary, therefore it becomes “Matsushima Island”.

I think this has to do with how the locals digest the language. If I told you there was a town called Springfield, it may not immediately strike you that foreigners might hear it as a “field called Spring”. So, in this case, you may need to append “town” to it.

I think a long deliberation process goes into naming places, actually, but people who are more exposed to the language aren’t satisfied with the decisions. However, we’re not the only target audience.

I was going over one of my students’ English speeches the other day with a JTE who I had to strongly convince not to amend the student’s correct writing of the New Zealand city, Auckland, to Auckland City. The student had been there on a homestay and actually backed me up on the point!