賛 San (賛)
For '賛 san' mainly the following two things can be cited:.
賛 San' in oriental paintings…so-called '画賛 gasan' (praise for painting)
賛 San,' characters in history books…or '讃 San'
For detail, see the following:
Paintings and 賛 San
賛 San' (also called '画賛 gasan') is a review comment or praise written mainly by a viewer into an oriental painting and constitutes part of the original work and is considered to be a calligraphy work or literary work itself. The act of the painter himself writing san is called 'jiga-jisan' (praising his own painting, self-praise).
San for paintings and rakugo (comic story telling)
In a rakugo entitled 'Hitome agari' (Stepping up One by One), the story progresses as follows: '賛 san (meaning praise, and pronounced the same as 3) =>詩 shi (poem, 4)=>語(悟) go (saying or enlightenment, 5), and skip roku (6) and get to Shichifukujin (Seven Deities of Good Luck), which turns out to be the base material of stories.
The ochi (punch line of a joke) of this story has many variations, not only Shichifukujin, but also 'Chikurin no shichi kenjin' (seven wise men in a bamboo clump), 'Yoritomo-ko no shichi ki ochi' (the exile of seven samurais, Yoritomo and others, on horseback), 'Go-ishin no shichi kyo ochi' (the exile of seven nobles at the Restoration), 'Shichi-nagare wo katta' (Purchased foreclosure), and so on. Continuing further, there exists another ochi, '(No phrase containing hachi [8]) then Basho no ku (poem, 9) (a poem written by Basho)' which can be linked with a phrase containing 7; so there are a total of 5x210 ochis.
Historical character, 賛 San
賛 San is one of the five kings of Wa. The Chinese character 賛 san used in this article is based on the Ryojo (Book of the Liang dynasty), but a different character 讃 is shown in Sungshu (Book of the Sung dynasty). It is inferred that 賛 san was Emperor Ojin, Emperor Nintoku, or Emperor Richu.