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If you were to believe the BBC's Hustle, 'grifter' is perfectly acceptable in the UK.

'Conman' is probably the best to use to also get the exact meaning understood in other English-speaking countries. I like 'spiv,' especially because of its pleasing reminders of Private Walker from Dad's Army; 'wide boy' is good if you prefer Only Fools and Horses. 'Charlatan' only really works in a more high-flown manner, e.g. Wodehouse or Moliere in translation.

All great words, though: the English language has so many marvellous terms for describing different types of roguery.

I'd actually raise more of an eyebrow if I encountered "spiv" in the subtitles of a Japanese film, as it's a word that I'd generally only apply to British characters (and British characters of a certain era - probably not exclusively the 1940s, because Arthur Daley arguably deserves the label just as much as Private Walker), and I'd find a Japanese spiv pretty hard to imagine.

In fact, out of all of those, "conman" is the only one that I'd consider substituting for "grifter", and I'm not sure I would - I like "grifter": it has a ring to it that "conman" doesn't really match.

Is the "Saheiji" character truly a grifter? Not, in my opinion, according to the MacMillan (US) definition:

grifter - thesaurus entry

noun informal : someone who tricks people into giving them their money or possessions

American English synonyms or related words for this sense of grifter: People who are considered dishonest or insincere: liar, cheat, hypocrite, fixer, fraud, crook, wheeler-dealer, conman, politician, brown-nose... more

These are synonyms and/or related words for grifter in the American English Thesaurus.

I didn't notice "grifter" in the booklet, and the liner calls "Saheiji" a man-about-town. Amusingly, when I typed this post in Full Editor mode, the forum spellchecker kept trying to change "grifter" to "grafter".

David Kalat article - http://moviemorlocks.com/2016/02/20/jap ... taiyo-den/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

BD and DVD OOP, dual format forthcoming according to Kevin

can anyone speak to whether the Japanese release of this movie (this being the one I'm looking at) has English subtitles? of course this is long OOP for MOC and I don't see any other edition coming any time soon, so hoping for some guidance here. unclear info