shamisen

Updated: May 25, 2025

Besides this, their daughters and young married women gain a trifle as wandering minstrels, called Torioi, playing on the shamisen, a sort of banjo, and singing ballads. They never marry out of their own fraternity, but remain apart, a despised and shunned race.

Baron Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford Redesdale - Tales of Old Japan