Hi all, Eishi here! Hope everything is well with you all, my beloved readers!

I’ve been busy preparing for the online rakugo workshop over the last few days, but I’m finally back to blogging 🙂

In another article, I talked about the influence of a completely unexpected language on Japanese.

Here is even more fascinating trivia (at least to me) about an expression used to describe a certain social class during the Edo period (1603- 1868).

I am aware that many of my readers are Japanologists, who often know about Japanese language, culture, and history more than I do, but do you know which social class during the Edo period was called “nihonzashi” (二本差し にほんざし)?

This literally means “two swords”, so yes it’s pretty easy, it was the samurai class.

But how about “ryanko” (りゃんこ)?

Which social class did this expression mean?

Here is a hint for you.

”Ryan” (りゃん) is the Japanese transliteration of a Chinese word “liǎng” (両).

“Ko” is “個” in kanji character.

So… “Ryanko” (両個 りゃんこ) as a whole means “two pieces”…

Yep, you got it right.

This also means the samurai warriors!

It was often used by everyday people to describe samurai warriors in a slightly derogatory way, and it often appears in rakugo.

So far, I’ve talked about the influence of Lao and Chinese on the Japanese language, but I will talk about the Portuguese influence on my native language!

See you next time! Stay well and positive 🙂

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