thumb|Tekiya on the grounds of Shimogamo Shrine in [[Kyoto]] thumb|Tekiya selling talismans and decorations Tekiya ( or ; "peddlers") are itinerant Japanese merchants who, along with the bakuto ("gamblers"), historically were predecessors to the modern yakuza. A loose American equivalent of the tekiya could be seen in carnies.
thumb|Tekiya on the grounds of Shimogamo Shrine in [[Kyoto]] thumb|Tekiya selling talismans and decorations Tekiya ( or ; "peddlers") are itinerant Japanese merchants who, along with the bakuto ("gamblers"), historically were predecessors to the modern yakuza. A loose American equivalent of the tekiya could be seen in carnies.
==History== Tekiya ranked as one of the lowest social groups during the Edo period. As they began to form organizations of their own, they took over some administrative duties relating to commerce, such as stall allocation and protection of their commercial activities. During Shinto festivals, these peddlers opened stalls and some members were hired to act as security. Each peddler paid rent in exchange for a stall assignment and protection during the fair.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).