Dayū/Tayū.

Another Japanese question! My Mizoguchi retrospective reached 1954 and Sansho the Bailiff, which I’d somehow managed never to see, and I was as impressed as I’d expected to be — Kinuyo Tanaka is as resplendent as ever, and the ending is powerfully moving. But I’m here to ask about the title, the original of which, 山椒大夫, is universally transliterated Sanshō Dayū (and in fact the movie is so known in many languages, and according to Wikipedia in the United Kingdom and Ireland). Imagine my surprise, when I went to look up the word translated as ‘bailiff,’ to find that it’s actually /tajuː/! What’s going on here? A separate question is why it’s rendered ‘bailiff,’ which doesn’t seem to equate very well to any of the meanings listed at Wiktionary, like “high ranked courtier, particularly officers in the 5th rank (五位)” and “head of shoku(職) or bō(坊), administrative departments of the imperial court,” but since we’re talking about positions that have long ago fallen into desuetude (and for…