Definition of "ryō"
ryō
noun
plural ryō
A gold currency unit in the shakkanhō system in pre-Meiji Japan.
Quotations
In 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