Flashcards: Japanese historical terms

Cheonmin, or "vulgar commoners," were the lowest caste of commoners in dynastical Korea.

Anma (Kanji: 按摩 Hiragana: あんま) refers to both a practice of traditional Japanese massage and to practitioners of that art.

Jitō (地頭) were medieval land stewards in Japan, especially in the Kamakura and Muromachi Shogunates.

Sankin-kōtai (参勤交代 "alternate attendance", a daimyo's alternate-year residence in Edo) was a policy of the Tokugawa shogunate during most of the Edo period of Japanese history.

Chōnin (町人, "townsman") was a social class that emerged in Japan during the early years of the Tokugawa period.

Ashigaru (足軽 lit. "light [of] foot") was a foot-soldier employed by the samurai class of feudal Japan.

The kuge (公家) was a Japanese aristocratic class that dominated the Japanese imperial court in Kyoto.

Kokutai (Kyūjitai: 國體, Shinjitai: 国体, literally "national body/structure") is a politically-loaded word in the Japanese language translatable as "system of government", "sovereignty", "national identity; national essence; national character", "national polity; body politic; national entity; basis for the Emperor's sovereignty; Japanese constitution".

The Kazoku (華族, literally "Magnificent/Exalted lineage") was the hereditary peerage of the Empire of Japan, which existed between 1869 and 1947.

Koryū (古流 old style) and kobudō (古武道 ancient martial arts) are Japanese terms that are used to describe Japanese martial arts that predate the Meiji restoration (1868).

The cloistered rule system, or Insei (院政) (meaning "monastery administration"), was a specific form of government in Japan during the Heian period.

Rangaku (Kyūjitai: 蘭學/Shinjitai: 蘭学, literally "Dutch Learning", and by extension "Western Learning") is a body of knowledge developed by Japan through its contacts with the Dutch enclave of Dejima, which allowed Japan to keep abreast of Western technology and medicine in the period when the country was closed to foreigners, 1641–1853, because of the Tokugawa shogunate's policy of national isolation (sakoku).

Taikun (大君) is an archaic Japanese term of respect derived from Chinese I Ching which once referred to an independent ruler who did not have an imperial lineage.

Kokushi (国司, also read Kuni no tsukasa) were officials in Classical Japan sent from the central government to oversee a province from around the 8th century, after the enactment of the Ritsuryō system.

Kokudaka (石高) refers to a system for determining land value for taxation purposes under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo period Japan, and expressing this value in terms of koku of rice.

The Neighborhood Association (隣組 Tonarigumi) was the smallest unit of the national mobilization program established by the Japanese government in World War II.

The term honji suijaku or honchi suijaku (本地垂迹) in Japanese religious terminology refers to a theory widely accepted until the Meiji period according to which Indian Buddhist deities choose to appear in Japan as native kami to more easily convert and save the Japanese.