Not even a loss leader

二束三文
ni.soku.san.mon

Literally: two – bundle – three – mon (an obsolete, very small unit of currency)

Alternately: Dirt cheap. Something so cheap that even selling it in huge volumes doesn’t make it profitable. Selling two pairs of sturdy woven sandals for only three mon.

Notes: Some versions of this saying use 足 – a standard counter for footwear – rather than , although it’s not clear which version came first. In any case, the phrase seems to be based on a real-world example of rock-bottom-price footwear in the Edo era, although probably not really for exactly three mon, since that particular amount can be found in a number of other phrases and seems to be a stock amount representing “cheap.”

NiSokuSaleTime

Who cares about profit? We just want to get this crap off our shelves!

About Confanity

I love the written word more than anything else I've had the chance to work with. I'm back in the States from Japan for grad school, but still studying Japanese with the hope of becoming a translator -- or writer, or even teacher -- as long as it's something language-related.
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1 Response to Not even a loss leader

  1. Pingback: Der Dreigroschenvorteil | landofnudotcom

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