Meanings
- A gold currency unit in the shakkanhō system in pre-Meiji Japan.
He pulled three gold ryō out of his pocket, made a hole in one of them with a short sword, and gave it to the child to play with.
2001, Monumenta Nipponica, volume 56, Sophia University, page 352 more examples
When he started off to go anywhere, which he frequently did quite casually, he always had two ryō in his pocket, which he explained, was for burial fee.
2011 [1962], A[rthur] L[indsay] Sadler, The Japanese Tea Ceremony: Cha-No-Yu, Tuttle Publishing, →ISBNIn the early seventeenth century, an ordinary town maid’s wage was 1.5 ryō a year; in the 1740s, it was 2 ryō a year. By the second decade of the nineteenth century, a maid generally received two to three ryō or, at most, three and a half ryō per year.
2014, Cecilia Segawa Seigle, Linda H. Chance, Ōoku: The Secret World of the Shogun’s Women, Amherst, N.Y.: Cambria Press, →ISBN
Origin
- Japanese両
- Englishryō
From Japanese 両 (ryō).
More words from Japanese
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
ryō. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ry%C5%8D
“ryō.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ry%C5%8D. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “ryō,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ry%C5%8D.
Source: ryō on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.