this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2025
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As far as I understand, yeah presumably. The thing is that translation dictionaries always translate 兄弟 as plural "brothers" rather than as "singular brother but only when you don't want to specify the relative age of the brother in question" — so while Japanese doesn't have grammatical number, I still just find it striking that this term with a sort of implied plurality is being used to refer to a singular person, especially in this case when the relative age of the brother is just Known.
Of course, I'm just a weeb and I am not fluent in Japanese. For all I know 兄弟 is used to refer to a singular brother all the time and I just don't consume enough Yakuza-related media to notice.
The royal brother
The Royal Bruh
In Chinese, at the very least, you can use 兄弟 to refer to a singular brother.
For example, "{他是你的兄弟吗|Tā shì nǐ de xiōngdì ma}?" is asking "Is he your brother?"
I think this is also the case in Korean.
To my understanding, 兄弟 can be used in a gender neutral way to mean "sibling(s)" in spite of the characters being "big brother + little brother".
I'm no native speaker but I think it would be considered strange if a person kept referring to their singular sibling as きょうだい without specifying gender and who's older/younger. Like how it would be unusual in English to keep saying "my sibling" without specifying brother/sister.
Yup, siblings is another meaning listed by translation dictionaries, though it's often in hiragana in that case.