漁師
りょうし
ryoushi
= fisherman; fisher
Ryoushi is the everyday word for someone whose job is catching fish, not someone who fishes for fun. It shows up on job forms, in harbor-town conversations, and in news reports about Japan’s coastal industry, always pointing to fishing as a livelihood rather than a hobby.
Ryoushi (漁師) specifically means a professional fisherman: someone who fishes for income, usually with a boat, nets, or traps, and often as part of a local fishing cooperative. This is different from tsuribito or tsurishi (釣り人 / 釣り師), which describe a hobby angler who fishes with a rod for leisure or sport. If a coworker says they went tsuri (釣り) on the weekend, they mean recreational fishing; if someone’s family business is ryoushi, that means the fishing boat and the daily catch are how they make a living. There is also a well-known trap for learners: 猟師, also read ryoushi, means hunter, someone who traps or shoots land animals like deer or wild boar. The words sound identical but are written with completely different kanji and refer to entirely different jobs.
Because 漁師 and 猟師 are perfect homophones, typing ryoushi into an IME will offer both, and picking the wrong one is a common mistake even for advanced learners. A useful mnemonic is the radical: 漁 contains 氵 (the water radical) paired with 魚-related fishing meaning, while 猟 contains 犬 (the dog radical), tying it to hunting with dogs. Also notice the suffix 師, which marks a trained or licensed practitioner of a skill, the same pattern seen in 教師 (teacher) and 医師 (doctor); this is part of why 漁師 feels more like a professional title than a casual description of an activity.
Everyday use
父は毎朝早くから漁師として働いています。
Chichi wa maiasa hayaku kara ryoushi toshite hataraite imasu.
My father works as a fisherman, going out early every morning.
Casual / Social Media
港で漁師さんに今朝獲れた魚を分けてもらった！新鮮すぎる。
Minato de ryoushi-san ni kesa toreta sakana wo wakete moratta! Shinsen sugiru.
A fisherman at the harbor gave me some fish he caught this morning — it’s so fresh!
Formal / Cultural context
日本の漁師の高齢化は、水産業全体の大きな課題となっている。
Nihon no ryoushi no koureika wa, suisangyou zentai no ookina kadai to natte iru.
The aging of Japan’s fishermen has become a major challenge for the fishing industry as a whole.
In small coastal towns across Japan, being a ryoushi is often a family trade passed down for generations, with sons and daughters learning to read tides, weather, and fishing grounds from parents and grandparents before ever taking the boat out alone. The workday typically starts before dawn, since the freshest catch and the best market prices depend on getting fish onto land while the sun is still low.
A single fisherman’s catch usually travels a well-defined path: from the boat to the local fishing port (漁港), then into the wholesale auction system that feeds markets like Tokyo’s Toyosu, the successor to the famous Tsukiji outer market. Sushi chefs and supermarket buyers bid on fish that a ryoushi pulled from the water hours earlier, which is part of why freshness is such a central selling point in Japanese seafood culture.
Japan’s fishing communities are also aging rapidly; the average ryoushi today is considerably older than in past decades, and many young people leave coastal towns for cities instead of taking over the family boat. Local governments and fishing cooperatives have started offering training programs and subsidies to attract newcomers, since a shrinking number of working fishermen has real consequences for the country’s seafood supply.