Sowing Ghosts Glossary

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What follows is a list of Japanese words for some of the objects/titles used in the novel. I realize it's a bit late in the day to be posting this, at least for those of you who've already fought your way through it. But for a list this long, it's more or less traditional it come at the end.

And anyway, unless I figured a Japanese word was common enough in English that most readers would know it (shōgun, katana) I mostly used English translations anyway, to make it easier for readers (and for myself). This is especially true in terms of titles; see bugu bugyō, for instance: "arms master" is just easier for most of us.

This glossary will be posted over the next few days so as to not make something annoyingly long. If you are interested in pronunciation of these words, this is a decent resource. Today's list is a short one, covering words beginning with A through C.

Note: Japanese grammar does not contain the notion of pluralization for nouns. The same word refers to both a single instance and multiple instances. So in the past Japan had one shōgun; in this story there are two shōgun.


Ashigaru: Literally “light foot”, these are irregular infantry recruited from amongst the rural (and sometimes urban) poor.

Bo: Wooden staff (Hiroki’s preferred weapon), about six feet in length.

Bakufu: The samurai government.

Bugu bugyō: Arms master (literally “weapons administrator”), a position in a samurai government.

Bushi: Warrior. Warriors as a class were called buke. All samurai in this period were officially bushi, but not all bushi were samurai (see Ashigaru, above, and Samurai, below).

Cha: Tea. This is fermented (black) leaf-tea, as opposed to green leaf-tea, which wasn’t introduced until a later period. There was a green tea in this period, but matcha (powdered green tea) was used exclusively in the cha-no-yu, the “tea ceremony”.

Next    Characters    Chapter 1    Chapter 2    Chapter 3    Chapter 4    Chapter 5    Chapter 6
Chapter 7    Chapter 8    Chapter 9    Chapter 10    Chapter 11    Chapter 12    Chapter 13    Chapter 14
Chapter 15    Chapter 16    Chapter 17    Chapter 18    Author's Note