If you’re wondering what the word “ronin” means in FX’s Shogun, here’s the answer to your question about the Japanese term.

Shōgun Episode 2, “Servants of Two Masters,” references a Japanese term that will sound vaguely familiar to many English-speaking viewers: rōnin. So what exactly is a rōnin in the context of Shōgun‘s feudal Japan setting?

What Is a Rōnin in FX’s Shōgun?

In “Servants of Two Masters,” John Blackthorne discovers the existence of a secret Portuguese military base in Macao guarded by a bunch of rōnin. It’s a word that occasionally pops up in wider pop culture – there’s even a 1998 Robert DeNiro vehicle titled Ronin – which begs the question: what is a rōnin?

In Japanese, rōnin translates to “unrestrained person,” and is the name for a wandering, masterless samurai. Becoming a rōnin was a big deal, as samurai were expected to commit ritual suicide (seppuku) when their master died. Yet some chose not to, living on as rōnin, instead. Samurai were also occasionally cut off from their clan after a falling out with their master, and again, some opted not to end their lives in line with accepted convention. Either way, rōnin status was associated with tremendous social shame.

That said, in some eras, having no master (or even switching masters) was less of an issue – particularly when civil wars were going on. But as the Sengoku period depicted in Shōgun gave way to the Edo period, the social stigma around rōnin status reasserted itself. This wasn’t helped by the limited career opportunities available to a rōnin, either. The law prevented them from plying a new trade, so those who couldn’t find work as mercenaries or bodyguards often became bandits or underworld heavies.

This explains why the Portuguese have staffed their hidden outpost with rōnin in Shōgun: because they’re effectively feudal Japan’s rent-a-cop equivalent. And given these rōnin are apparently Catholic converts, whatever loyalty they still possess presumably rests with the Portuguese church, rather than local lords like Yoshii Toranaga or Ishido Kazunari.

Shōgun is currently airing on FX, with new episodes dropping Tuesdays.

Rōnin, any of the masterless samurai warrior aristocrats of the late Muromachi (1138–1573) and Tokugawa (1603–1867) periods who were often vagrant and disruptive and sometimes actively rebellious.

By the 12th century the term rōnin began to be used for samurai who, as a result of either losses in battle, the untimely death of their lord, or their own misdeeds, had been dispossessed of their fief and their noble sponsorship. During the tumultuous period before the founding of the Tokugawa shogunate, their numbers increased rapidly; they remained a great cause of disorder throughout the first half of the 17th century.

In the mid-19th century many impoverished samurai were attracted to the movement to expel Western foreigners from the country and restore the old imperial family to their rightful place as the actual rulers of Japan. Large numbers of these samurai left their lords and became rōnin. These rōnin heightened the revolutionary mood of the country in the years prior to the Meiji Restoration of 1868 by assassinating moderate officials, pro-Western scholars, and foreigners residing in Japan. Although the violence continued for a short while after the restoration, the rōnin ceased to exist after samurai privileges were abolished in 1873. The affair of the 47 rōnin in the early 18th century, in which the rōnin avenged the death of their lord, has been the subject of many popular Japanese theatrical, cinema, and literary works.