Home › Glossary › Letter S

Shamisen

Musical Instrument
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A three-stringed Japanese lute with a cat-skin body, used in theater and folk music

Detailed Definition
The shamisen’s sharp, percussive plucks appear in Edo-period and modern Japanese poetry to evoke geisha culture, urban drama, and narrative intensity; its role in bunraku and kabuki links it to themes of illusion, passion, and lyrical storytelling in verse.
Example
Example in poetry:
Edo-period poets contrasted shamisen with koto: “Shamisen snaps— / courtesan’s laugh cuts silk”; Its cat-skin face holds urban grit; “Three strings, three lies—shamisen sings truth anyway”; In modern verse, the shamisen bridges tradition and punk: “Tokyo subway, but my shamisen rattles like train.”
Additional Notes
The shamisen is a three-stringed Japanese lute with a cat- or dog-skin body, used in kabuki, bunraku, and folk music; its sharp, percussive plucks (tsugaru style) or lyrical lines evoke drama and pathos—poets can reference it to explore urban storytelling, the tension between refinement and rawness, or the shamisen as voice of Edo-period pleasure quarters and outcasts.
Also Known As
Japanese shamisen
Skip to main content