風俗
Meaning in Englishmanners, customs; sex industry
Animated kanji stroke order
Word context
What it means
風俗 means customs and social norms that shape how people behave in a society. It captures the shared practices, etiquette, and cultural expectations that prevail in daily life, forming the texture of a community’s public and private conduct.
Main meanings
- the cultural patterns and everyday behaviors that a society recognizes and follows
- the adult entertainment sector, especially in casual or media contexts
How to use it
Used in formal, academic, and journalistic contexts to discuss social norms and cultural practices; in everyday speech it can refer to the sex industry, often appearing in compounds like 風俗店 or 風俗業 to denote entertainment services; awareness of context affects formality and meaning
Variants and close terms
- 風習 ふうしゅう — customs, traditions
- 社会慣習 しゃかいかんしゅう — societal conventions
- 風俗業 ふうぞくぎょう — sex industry
Composition
- 風: wind, air current; in compounds it signals a mood, trend, or prevailing atmosphere
- 俗: common, popular, customary; denotes ordinary people or general practices
Etymology
風 conveys a sense of prevailing current or atmosphere, 俗 denotes common custom or the ordinary world; together they yield a Sino-Japanese compound read fūzoku, formed through historical Chinese-Japanese linguistic exchange
Origin
The term entered Japanese via Chinese kanji, with early attestations describing prevailing customs; in Edo and later periods it hardened into a general reference to social norms, and in modern usage expanded to include the regulated entertainment sector; the pronunciation remains on’yomi
Word class
noun (名詞)