Do you know which months have 30 days and which ones have 31? I don’t. At least not off the top of my head. If I need to know how many days are in a month, and there isn’t a calendar around, I use the knuckle-counting method. It’s not as fast as having them memorized, but it works. The Japanese have a cool trick for remembering it: nishi muku samurai.

Japanese Numbers

Before I explain what the hell nishi muku samurai means, I want to quickly go over Japanese numbers for those who don’t know them. Some Japanese numbers have different pronunciations depending on where they occur in context. Here is a simple list of some of the possibilities for the numbers 1-10 (with the corresponding kanji to the right):

1. ichi, i, hito　一
2. ni, futsu　二
3. san, mi　三
4. shi, yon, yo　四
5. go, itsu　五
6. roku, ro, mu　六
7. nana, shichi, nano　七
8. hachi, ha, yo　八
9. kyuu, ku, kokono　九
10. juu, tou　十

As you can see, there are quite a lot of choices! A cool side-effect of this complicated system is that you can easily memorize large numbers (like phone numbers) by stringing together syllables to make words out of the numbers. You see this in Japanese commercials a lot.

Nishi Muku Samurai

We can decode Nishi Muku Samurai using numbers. Check the number list above. “ni” is 2, “shi” is 4, “mu” is 6, “ku” is 9. We’ll get to “samurai” in a second, but for now what do 2, 4, 6 and 9 have in common? They are all months that don’t have 31 days. February, April, June and September. Go ahead and count on your knuckles to make sure.

But wait. What about November?

That’s where the “samurai” comes in. The normal kanji for samurai is 侍. This kanji is completely irrelevant to the discussion, but if you want to get it tattooed on your arm or something, there it is. Person+Temple.

There is another kanji that can be read “samurai”: 士. This kanji actually isn’t normally read “samurai” - more often it is read “shi” (It’s actually the “shi” in “bushido” 武士道) - but I guess a long time ago it was common to use 士 for samurai. I really don’t know, go ask No-Sword. Either way, this is the kanji that is important for our discussion.

November is the 11th month, right? The Japanese write 11 as 10 + 1. If you look at our number chart above, you will see that 10 is 十 and 1 is 一. So 11 is 十一. Look familiar? Imagine if this were vertical writing. How would eleven look? Do you see it now? Our little samurai friend 士 looks like a 十 and a 一 smashed together. That’s the connection between November and Samurai.

So Nishi Muku Samurai = 2, 4, 6, 9, 11. These are the months that don’t have 31 days. Does it sound complicated? It isn’t. These number-to-sound connections are so deeply ingrained in the Japanese language that Japanese people don’t even need to think about it. Couple that with the fact that the Japanese name their months by number (January is 1月, February is ２月, etc) and you’ll see that this system is actually as simple as it gets… if you know some Japanese.

Ok, so I get the Samurai part, but what the hell does “Nishi Muku” mean?

Good question. I asked a few of my co-workers about it and they said it didn’t mean anything. “It’s just easy for us Japanese to say and remember.” So there you have it. Though I can’t help but wonder if it might be 西（の方を）向く侍 “a samurai who faces west”. I’m probably wrong. It’s best to trust the native speakers. But if you want to remember it that way, I won’t tell :)

Like this post? Give me the Thumbs Up!