Shamisen: Old Instrument, New Beats
― Thing of it is... when I mention "shamisen", most people don't know what I'm talking about. Reactions range from, "Oh yeah, I've eaten that before. It's really good" to "Is that the banjo thing the girl in the Karate Kid movie was playing?" Yeah, it's the banjo thing. The word shamisen is sometimes romanized as 'samisen'. However, the 'sh' represents a more correct pronunciation and that's why I've used it here. ∙ So what is a shamisen? A shamisen is a long-necked, fretless Japaneselute. [...].
