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Intermediate Japanese - Free Online Course
RŌNIN
浪人
ronin
In feudal Japan, a ronin was a masterless samurai. The samurai were normally employed by warlords called daimyōs / 大名. A samurai could lose his daimyo as a result of war or other upheavals. In these circumstances, it was often difficult for the samurai to find another master to serve. This was especially true in the years following the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate. The Tokugawa shoguns unified the country and put an end to Japan’s long period of civil wars—which had driven most of the demand for the samurais’ skills as warriors.
A ronin samurai without a master had no fixed source of income. To survive, some ronin formed bandit gangs. Others responded to the hardship more positively. The samurai were generally well educated (compared to the rest of the population), and many were qualified to work as teachers. Until 1872, Japan had no centralized, compulsory national system of education. A samurai could therefore find steady work as a private teacher. Some historians credit the large number of samurai-turned-teachers with raising Japan’s overall literacy rate during the 1700s and early 1800s.
The samurai lifestyle was swept away in the 1870s when Japan’s national government abolished feudal class distinctions. But the word ronin is still used in Japan in a new context. Today the term ronin refers to a high school graduate who has failed his college entrance exams, and is studying with the objective of gaining admission into the following year’s class. A person who has left her job without securing new employment can also be called a ronin