In post-war Japan, ronin were university teachers: nearly all were lecturers who worked part-time at various universities around town. Recently, the ronin has been re-envisioned with foreign university English teachers. Here, the question of why pursue a teaching career in Japan at all was investigated. Publicly-available data of over 300 university teachers in Japan was examined, and the data confirms much of what is already known about teaching in university in Japan with some surprises.