Archaic Japanese in media

Historical dramas are popular in Japan as they are anywhere. Of course, most historical dramas, or jidaigeki (時代劇) revolve around the samurai, or famous people such as the Shinsengumi, Sakamoto Ryoma, or the women of the Ōoku. But watching these dramas can be hard if you’re a Japanese-language student because they still often use archaic words or patterns of speech, so even if you’re familiar with modern, standard Japanese, you can get confused. Some dramas use more archaic speech than others, while others are pretty much modern Japanese only. It depends. Even on my daughter’s TV shows, they sometimes use archaic speech when a character is a samurai, so even children are aware of it.

So, it’s good to know a few pointers about archaic Japanese and this post is a brief look at the subject.

Most samurai dramas and media use the old Edo-Period dialect centered around the capitol of Edo (now Tokyo). As my wife told me recently, it’s different than modern Japanese, but people can still understand it, and if you learn a few pointers, you can catch on too:

• In the Edo-Period, people often said gozaru instead of the modern desu meaning “to be”. I hear this one a lot on my daughter’s TV shows, and it’s only used but historical characters. Often you also hear degozansu which I think is more polite, I am not sure. Cartoon characters like samurai, ninja and such often say this.
• Old Japanese used a lot of pronouns that are now archaic:
• Atai (あたい) – Often used by “tough” youngsters.
• Sessha (拙者) – Often used by samurai as a kind of humble term for “I”.
• Expect to hear a lot fewer katakana, foreign-imported words. Some words did exist, even in the old days (mostly imported from the Portugeuse), but these were few in number.

This is not an exhaustive overview, but simply words I’ve seen used in children’s cartoons and TV shows, which surprises me because even kids can vaguely recognize these words are old words. It’s the same as American cartoons with pirates. Words like “matey” and “landlubber” aren’t used anymore, but kids can recognize them as old “pirate words”.

P.S. Yet another schedule mis-fire. I wanted to post this later.