#if you promise an event for women in their 30s please actually deliver it :(

[biromanticbookbabe]

So I'm signed up for this online 30's speed dating event for WLW and sapphics right?

Here's the thing: It looks like they aren't even bothering to regulate it at all because I see tons of people who aren't in their 30s and even some men are listed in the people who are signed up for the event.

What's even the point of a specific event for 30 something WLW if just anyone can join it? :/

#As a 30 year old I'm not interested in 18/19 year olds and yet a bunch of them are signed up for a event for women in their 30s??? #any one who is in their 30s and wants to date teenagers is a total creep #I hope they realize that because I don't think they do #18 and 19 year olds look like children to me now #if you promise an event for women in their 30s please actually deliver it :( #If I'm using a site that's for women loving women- men shouldn't be allowed? I'm not looking for a man! #now I see why the lesbians and other sapphics get angry #I'm debating whether or not this is even worth my time because I'm not confident that it will be run well at all #so many people failed to understand the prompt or purposely don't care #they are either too young or the wrong gender- if you're not a woman in her 30s it's not for you? #If a woman is in her late 20s that's different but it was a bunch of people under 25 #dating is inherently exclusive- most people aren't attracted to everyone else??? #A lot of people fail to realize you CAN be pro equality and still not want to date most other people- it IS possible #Now selfish people are going to ruin something that isn't even for them :/ #I am the target audience for this event and they are making me not want to participate #I'm 30 and sapphic- questioning whether bi or lesbian but I belong there #Should I be surprised? I really don't know what to think honestly #I'm a little angry that they don't seem to care who attends because I paid for a ticket- not too much but still? #mychatter

[baitcloth1]

The White House

Content

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[goldenkamuyhunting]

Golden Kamuy Volume 2 Data Hunting

So this is a collection of assorted information about Golden Kamuy Vol 2 inclusive of data, points to ponder, notable quotes and so on.

It was a terribly long work and I don’t expect it to be perfect. If you notice something is wrong (especially in the translation from Japanese) or missing please, feel free to drop me a note.

I will try to do something similar for vol 3 as well but I don’t promise at all I’ll manage it.

Anyway, I’ll hope you’ll enjoy this!

VOLUME 2

Cover: Asirpa & Retar

Chapters: 10

First printed: 19/February/2015

Volume only extras: Sugimoto’s black and white illustration, Retar’s tiny black and white illustration, reprint of Huci’s words to Sugimoto now translated, 2 page extra story about Sugimoto and Asirpa eating river otter, Asirpa wearing a Kaparamip, frontal and back image, the Ainu sentence ‘Kanto orwa yaku sak no arankep shinep ka isam’ (“Nothing comes from heaven without purpose”).

GENERAL INFO

Notable or recurring Characters: Sugimoto Saichi (杉元 佐一), Gotō (後藤), Wilk (ウイルク), Retar (レタㇻ), Toraji (寅次), Umeko (梅子), Toraji and Umeko’s child, Asirpa (アシㇼパ), pimp (妓夫太郎 ‘Gifutarō’), prisoner who was tailing Sugimoto’s group (杉元達を尾行していた囚人 ‘Sugimoto-tachi o Bikō Shite Ita Shūjin’), Hijikata Toshizō (土方 歳三) , Ogata Hyakunosuke (尾形 百之助), Tsurumi Tokushirō (鶴見 篤四郎), Shiraishi Yoshitake (白石 由竹), Noma (野間), Okada (岡田), Huci (フチ), Makanakkuru (マカナックル), Nikaidō Kōhei (二階堂 浩平), Nikaidō Yōhei (二階堂 洋平), Osoma (オソマ), Tamai (玉井), Tanigaki Genjirō (谷垣 源次郎), Tsukishima Hajime (月島 基), Ushiyama Tatsuma (牛山 辰馬), Wada (和田)

Maps of the places mentioned:

Meiji years mentioned: Meiji 9= 1876, Meiji 23= 1890, Meiji 37=1904, Meiji 38= 1905, Meiji 40= 1907, Meiji 41= 1908.

Weapons used:

- Arisaka Type 30 rifle: Sugimoto, Tamai, Noma, Okada, Tanigaki, Tsukishima, Nikaidō Yōhei, Nikaidō Kōhei

- Arisaka Type 30 bayonet: Noma, Sugimoto, Nikaidō Yōhei

- Ainu bow (Karimpaunku) and aconite poisoned arrow (Ay): Asirpa

- Ainu short knife for women (Menomakiri): Asirpa

- Ainu hunting knife (Tasiro): Asirpa

- Koishikawa Arsenal Type 26 revolver: Tamai, Ushiyama

- Murata Sword: Hijikata

- Borchardt C-93: Tsurumi

- Amappo: Makanakkuru

- Sutu: Asirpa

- Dango skewers: Tsurumi

Convict appeared and their tattoo owners (at the end of the volume):

1. Gotō: Sugimoto

2. Prisoner who was tailing Sugimoto’s group: Sugimoto

3. Hijikata Toshizō: Hijikata (original and copy)

4. Shiraishi Yoshitake: Shiraishi, Sugimoto (copy)

5. Tsuyama: Tsurumi

6. Ushiyama: Ushiyama, Hijikata (copy)

——————————————————————————

 08. FLIGHT (逃走 TŌSŌ)

First printed: 09/October/2014 Weekly Young Jump 45

Characters: Asirpa (アシㇼパ), Sugimoto Saichi (杉元 佐一), Wilk (ウイルク), Tanigaki Genjirō (谷垣 源次郎), Tamai (玉井), Noma (野間), Okada (岡田), Ogata Hyakunosuke (尾形 百之助).

Location: Near Otaru.

Other Places mentioned: None.

Time: 1907/1908 (?) Late February.

Historical events mentioned: None

Includes flashbacks or info about the characters past: Yes, about Wilk.

Info and the characters’ theories about the ‘Noppera-bō incident’, the gold and the escape: None.

Character deaths: None.

Animal deaths: None.

New Ainu words:

- Isepo: “Small creature that cries ‘iii’”. Hare

- Pukusa: Alpine leeks

- Osoma: Poop

Food and drinks: Hare’s raw eyes. Citatap with hare and ohaw in which it’s cooked. Sugimoto adds to it Miso as well.

Useful info and points to ponder:

- The Ainu legend about why Ezo hare have black spots on their ear tips is a cautionary tale against greed ‘If you don’t let greed get the better of you, you won’t have to spend your life running’ that well end up mimicking what the characters will do, run around for more than a year searching for the gold.

- Asirpa offers Sugimoto’s the hare’s eyes as, by custom, the man who caught the hare, gets to eat the eyes… but actually it was Asirpa who caught the hare 2 chapters ago. Noda said Asirpa wants to genuinely share all the food she finds delicious with Sugimoto so she’s not trying to gross him out… but she’s definitely forceful  with him (with Ushiyama she’ll be much nicer) considering Sugimoto is clearly not willing to eat them.

- Sugimoto eat the eyes, same as in the past chapter he ate squirrel brain and says ‘hinna’ probably out of politeness, which might be why, after Ogata refused to eat animal brain and they reached an Ainu village, he told him to behave politely.

- Sugimoto literally says the warm food makes him alive again, not just that it gave him his strength back. That’s because not much before he risked dying by hypothermia, after falling in the frozen river.

- Asirpa is not against adding something she never heard about to the soup, she’s against adding MISO to it because she thinks it’s poop and, even though she forced Sugimoto to eat Ainu food when he  didn’t want to, she isn’t shy to refuse eating Miso rather vocally, insisting it’s poop and refusing to believe Sugimoto who, for three times, will say her it’s not, her comments ending up on making Sugimoto feel as if she’s implying he’s a freak.

- Sugimoto confirms he’s scared of bears when Asirpa orders him to check a bear den and he asks ‘why him?’ although he obeys. He claims his disliking of bears is due to their last encounter with one.

- Asirpa explains Sugimoto her father was so brave he would crawl into the den clutching a poison arrow and kill the bear himself with it. It’s a system to kill a bear that Sugimoto will deploy when the bear will attack Anehata.

- Asirpa’s father clearly underwent a change in character design as in this chapter he has much has sunken cheeks, the scar of his face is either missing or much shorter as it’s supposed to continue on his cheek and yet it doesn’t and his bear is much longer and the same goes for his moustaches.

- Although despite Asirpa telling him according to Ainu a bear doesn’t kill a human that enters its den Sugimoto is firm in how he won’t get in, saying they already have to handle convicts. He’ll change his mind when it’ll become a matter of survival.

- When refusing, Sugimoto acknowledge they’ve already to face dangerous prisoners (‘Kiken'na shūjin’ 危険な囚人). Sugimoto is aware the prisoners can be dangerous… and he also knows the 7th could be dangerous. In short he was already aware he was exposing Asirpa to risk but hadn’t developed with her a bond strong enough it made him think he should apologize for involving her in this and discouraging her from continuing.

- Tamai’s group manages to find the hut Asirpa and Sugimoto had left short after they did (the fire was put out recently).

- Tamai seems to have a good opinion of Ogata, thinking he wouldn’t let a hunter and a child take him down and that he didn’t push his body to the limit just to brag but to tell them something.

- Noma is more prone to think Ogata just fell on his own and wrote ‘immortal’ to brag about how he didn’t die. While it looks like he’s not having a good opinion of Ogata, there’s also to consider Tsurumi will comment Tamai, Noma and Okada are all experienced mountaineers, something Ogata probably isn’t. So Noma’s negative judgment might also stem from the fact Ogata went to wander on the mountain alone when he didn’t know it well and this might have lead him to make mistakes that experienced mountaineers wouldn’t do (like standing on a snow cornice like Sugimoto and Shiraishi in the past chapter).

- Okada has a very minor role but, interesting enough he asks about Ogata’s conditions.

- We learn in this chapter Ogata’s jaw got broken in the fall so he couldn’t talk, yet he did his best to communicate with the others. Vasily, who also can’t talk, except for his attempt to deliver, through drawings, who he was searching to Sugimoto, hadn’t really made an effort at communicating with others, though, to be honest, the others hadn’t done an effort to talk with him either.

- Ogata only wrote ‘immortal’ because he tried to write ‘Immortal Sugimoto’ (although in English we favour ‘Sugimoto the immortal’ in Japanese is ‘Fujimi no Sugimoto’ with “immortal” ‘fujimi’ written first) but, apparently, fall back to unconsciousness before ending the sentence. We’ve seen Sugimoto is pretty well known for his nick so, writing it down would have given people an immediate grasp of who had attacked him. It’s also worth to mention that the message was possibly aimed not at Tsurumi but at Tamai as we’ll discover Ogata was in a rebellion with Tamai, Noma and Okada.

- Noma’s sentence about Ogata claiming to be unkillable it’s actually “did he want to say ‘I’m immortal’?” which is, ironically, Sugimoto’s catchphrase and probably Noma himself, who had met Sugimoto at Port Arthur, slapped himself later on when he realized what Ogata was actually trying to say. On a sidenote as ‘Fujimi’ is generally translated as “immortal” but technically mean “not-dead/not-dying” maybe Noma meant Ogata only wanted to say something like “I am not ding” but this is a speculation I’ll let to who’s more knowledgeable of me in Japanese.

- Tanigaki do not take part at all in the whole discussion about Ogata. While it’s true it’ll turn out Tanigaki is not a chatter, it’s also worth to mention Tanigaki doesn’t like Ogata so he probably wasn’t interested in his whereabouts, although it’s also true he was busy searching for Sugimoto and Asirpa and he’s the one spotting them.

- When Asirpa sees the flashing light caused by binoculars she can’t realize what are they, although Sugimoto does. I guess this hints Asirpa has little to no experience with binoculars.

- Tamai, Noma, Okada and Tanigaki use “Karafuto-style” or “Russian-style” skis. Noda confirmed that back then ski weren’t in use in Japan yet but that he assumed they could have been introduced in Hokkaido due to the prosperous trade with Russia.

Notable changes from the magazine version: None

Notable quotes:

- Sugimoto: “So the moral of this story is…”If you don't let greed get the better of you, you won't have to spend your life running”…” (‘Tsumari sono ohanashi no kyōkun wa “yoku o dasanakereba nigemawaru hitsuyō mo nakatta”… tte kotoda na’ つまりそのお話の教訓は『欲を出さなければ逃げ回る必要も無かった』…ってことだな)

- Asirpa: “Here, Sugimoto. you can have the eyeball.” (‘Sugimoto, usagi no medama tabete yoi zo’ 杉元、ウサギの目玉食べて良いぞ Lit: “Sugimoto, you can eat the rabbit’s eyeball”)

- Sugimoto: “Ahh… It's warming me up from the inside. I can feel my strength coming back.” (‘Ā…-tai ga nukumaru. Ikikaeruu ~’ ああ…体が温まる。生き返るう～ Lit: “Ah... my body gets warm. I’m coming back to life~.”)

- Sugimoto: “This is already pretty delicious, but I bet If you added miso it would really enhance the flavor. What do you think?” (‘Asirpa-san, ko no mama demo jūbun umai ndaga, miso iretara zettai au n janai no? Kore’ アシㇼパさんこのままでも十分美味いんだが、味噌入れたら絶対合うんじゃないの？コレ Lit: “Asirpa-san, it is delicious enough as it is, but if you put in it Miso, it'll definitely fit well, right? I think this.”)

- Asirpa: “Are you trying to feed me poop!? I refuse to eat a bite!” (‘Watashi ni unko kuwa seru ki ka! Zettai tabenai zo!’ 私にうんこ食わせる気か！絶対食べないぞ！Lit: ‘Do you want me to eat poop?! I'll never eat it!’)

- Asirpa: “Eww, He's eating poor and smiling while he does it.” (‘Uwaa… unko tabete yorokon deru yo kono otoko’ うわあ…ウンコ食べて喜んでるよこの男 Lit: “Wow... he’s happy to eat poop, this guy.”)

- Sugimoto: “Don't talk about me like I'm some kind of freak.” (‘Hito o hentai mitai ni iu n jaarimasen yo.’ ひとを変態みたいに言うんじゃありませんよ)

- Asirpa: “There's an ainu saying that goes: a brown bear will never kill a human that enter its den.” (‘Ainu no iitsutae ni kō iu no ga aru “higuma wa suana ni haitte kita ningen o kesshite korosanai”’ アイヌの言い伝えにこういうのがある『ヒグマは巣穴に入ってきた人間を決して殺さない』)

- Sugimoto: “Hell no. I’m not going there. We’ve already got our hands full chasing dangerous criminals. It’s not like we starve if we don’t catch a bear right now. Let’s get out of here.” (‘Zettaiyada. Oretachi wa tadade sae kiken'na shūjin o tsukamaenaki ya naran noda. Ima sugu higuma kuwanakya uejini suru tte wake jane~eshi. Ikōze’ 絶対やだ。俺たちはただでさえ危険な囚人を捕まえなきやならんのだ。今すぐヒグマ食わなきゃ飢え死にするってわけじゃねぇし。行こうぜ Lit: “Absolutely not. We just have to catch dangerous prisoners. I wouldn't be starving to death if I didn't eat brown bears right now. Let's go”)

- Tamai: “It’s hard to believe a capable man like superior private Ogata was taken down by a couple of hunters… but maybe they know something.” (‘Ogata jōtōhei hodo no otoko ga ryōshi no oyako ni yara reta to na waru enga... Nani ka shitteru kamo’ 尾形上等兵ほどの男が猟師の親子にやられたとな悪えんが... 何か知ってるかも Lit: “A man like Superior Private Ogata being taken down by a hunter and his child seems (the) wrong (option)… They might know something.”)

- Noma: “It’s possible that he simply slipped and fell on his own.” (‘Tan no hitori de karraku shita dakedato waruimasuga nē’ 単のひとりで滑落しただけだと悪いますがねえ)

- Okada: “How's his condition?” (‘Yōdai wa?’ 容態は？)

- Tamai: “He managed to regain consciousness once. However he wasn't able to say much with a broken jaw. He used what little strength he had to write something with his finger. ‘Immortal’.” (‘Ichidodake ishiki o torimodoshita kirida. Ago ga warete hanasenakattaga. Sono toki-ryoku o furishibotte yubi de moji o kaita. “Fujimi”.’ 一度だけ意識を取り戻したきりだ。アゴが割れて話せなかったが。そのとき力を振り絞って指で文字を書いた。 「ふじみ」。Lit: “He managed to regain consciousness only once. His jaw his broken so he couldn’t talk. At that time, he collected all his strength and wrote some letters with his finger. ‘Fujimi’.”)

- Noma: “Perhaps he was trying to boast about being unkillable? To fall into a frozen river with injuries like that and come out alive is remarkable good fortune on his part.” (‘Ore wa fushida to demo ītakatta nodeshou ka ne?’ 俺は不死身だとでもいいたかったのでしょうかね？Lit: “Did he want to say ‘I’m immortal’?”)

- Tamai: “No, I don't think that's it... he pushed his body to its limits in order to tell us something. He wouldn't use that effort merely to brag or joke.” (‘Iya... Yatto no omoi de wareware ni tsutaeta noda. Karuguchi hazu ga nai’ いや... やっとの想いで我々に伝えたのだ。軽口はずが無い Lit: “No… he hardly managed to tell us. It couldn’t be a frivolous talk.”)

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09. CORNERED RAT (窮鼠 KYŪSO)

First printed: 16/October/2014 Weekly Young Jump 46

Characters: Sugimoto Saichi (杉元 佐一), Asirpa (アシㇼパ), Tamai (玉井), Noma (野間), Okada (岡田), Tanigaki Genjirō (谷垣 源次郎), Gotō (後藤), Shiraishi Yoshitake (白石 由竹), Retar (レタㇻ), Ogata Hyakunosuke (尾形 百之助).

Location: Near Otaru.

Other Places mentioned: 203 hill in Port Arthur (current Lüshunkou) (China)

Time: 1907/1908 (?) Late February

Historical events mentioned: Russo-Japanese war (8 February 1904  – 5 September 1905), Siege of Port Arthur (1 August 1904 – 2 January 1905), Hokkaidō shikaryō kisoku (北海道鹿猟規則 “Hokkaido Deer-Hunting Regulations”) (1876)

Includes flashbacks or info about the characters past: Yes, about Tanigaki, Noma and Sugimoto.

Info and the characters’ theories about the ‘Noppera-bō incident’, the gold and the escape: None

Character deaths: None

Animal deaths: None

New Ainu words:

- Kitura sisam ohaw or si omare wa e: The man I was with puts poop in his soup and eats it.

Food and drinks: None

Useful info and points to ponder:

- This is the chapter in which Asirpa teaches to Sugimoto that if he walks on bamboo grass his footprints will become less obvious. Sugimoto forgetting about this will become relevant in chap 228 when he’ll get lost and Asirpa will have troubles finding him.

- When realizing they can’t shake them Sugimoto will decide for him and Asirpa to split up, claiming that the soldiers would chase only the adult’s footsteps, not Asirpa’s. Tamai’s group will actually chase both, specifically sending Tanigaki to track her and Sugimoto was aware this could happen, as he specifically instructed Asirpa on what to do, should they find her.

- Sugimoto also, instead than hiding the skins somewhere, entrust them to Asirpa claiming that if they were to find them on him, they would kill him on the spot but that if they were to find Asirpa, she should hand them to them and pretend she knows nothing because they aren’t the types who would kill a kid. Not only this is purely Sugimoto’s assumption but he knows it’s baseless because later, acknowledging the 7th division is dangerous for Asirpa too, he will try to leave her behind. At the moment though, he entrusts the skins to Asirpa because he hasn’t developed a bond tight enough with her yet and therefore prioritized trying to protect himself and the skins, underestimating the danger he put her in.

- Sugimoto claims all Asirpa cares for is for someone to find the gold (so that Noppera-bō will be executed and her father avenged) therefore whoever were to do it would be fine for her. This remarks that Asirpa has no interest in the gold itself (which would therefore go all to Sugimoto if they were to find it) but also that Sugimoto didn’t realize Asirpa cares for him as well.

- Asirpa’s sad expression at such words and her warning he shouldn’t fight them or they would kill him prove she actually cares for him.

- To Asirpa’s words Sugimoto replies with his catchphrase “I’m Sugimoto the immortal”. It seems a cool scene because he’s the main character (so we know he’s not going to die) and because “Sugimoto the immortal” was introduced as his nick. When Tanigaki, in chap 231, will reply the same to Inkarmat in a scene that parallels this one though, we’ll realize how silly and unbelievable of a reply it is in a real life situation.

- It’s Okada who finds Sugimoto’s and Asirpa trails even if it’s Tanigaki who afterward tell them that Sugimoto and Asirpa split.

- Tamai sends Tanigaki after Asirpa. This is likely not really because Tanigaki is the best tracker and Asirpa is better than Sugimoto at hiding her tracks but likely because Tamai and the others are in a rebel group with Ogata and, if Sugimoto were to turn out involved in his incident, they wanted to question him without risking for Tanigaki to overhear something compromising.

- Tanigaki claims he’s a Matagi of Tohoku who has seen animals double back on their tracks countless times, basically telling us he’s a hunter. In fact he easily finds Asirpa.

- Asirpa tells Tanigaki a random sentence in Ainu to pretend she doesn’t know how to talk Japanese.

- Tanigaki doesn’t talk Ainu, not even a little bit.

- Although nervous, Asirpa decides not to hand the skin to Tanigaki and hides it on the tree she was hiding on. Ironically, one of the squirrels she loves to eat cause the skins to fall down and be seen by Tanigaki.

- Tanigaki asks Asirpa if the man with the army cap is her brother or father because 63 Ainu joined the army and so he’s thinking the man with the army cap is actually an Ainu related to her.

- When Tanigaki discovers the skin Asirpa attempts reaching for her poisoned arrows. Likely she only meant to scare him as she doesn’t want to kill anyone but Tanigaki can’t know this, which is likely why, later on, he’ll use her as a human shield seeing her as dangerous as the others despite her age.

- Although Tanigaki doesn’t point his rifle at Asirpa, he charges it, automatically becoming more threatening.

- Retar is then shown running toward Tanigaki from behind.

- An unclear scene shows Sugimoto running with his rifle on his shoulder but in the next panel he has it in his hands.

- Sugimoto lies and claims he escaped because he believed the soldiers were there to catch poachers and he was hunting deer illegally using an Ainu kid as his guide. He’s pretty smooth in his lie, showing he can be a good liar although his sentence is, in itself, too elaborate if he had really bee a poacher. Not only he confesses his crime too easily and too calmly despite having tried so hard to escape but he also adds unnecessary information as Asirpa being his guide. Tsurumi would have easily spotted his lie, but with Tamai’s group it can work.

- On a sidenote Sugimoto would be hunting illegally for two reasons, because he doesn’t have a hunting licence and because hunting deer was limited to a period that went from November to January.

- It’s worth to mention the deer hunting regulations greatly impacted on Ainu life (Japanese even forbid to everyone to hunt deer from 1890 to 1900), also forbidding to hunt them with poisoned arrows or amappo (they were supposed to use rifles like Kirawus does) and fundamentally making most of them illegal hunters.

- Noma says he saw Sugimoto at the field hospital in Port Arthur. As he knows Sugimoto’s division and also his nickname but Sugimoto doesn’t seem to know/recognize him, evidently he was merely pointed to Noma. There’s to say the two had crossed path in Mukden also, when Noma was among the men transporting Tsurumi and Tsukishima (Tamai was there as well) but, evidently, back then he hadn’t recognized him.

- As soon as Noma points out the one in front of them is Sugimoto the immortal, Okada immediately confirms to know him by reputation and Tamai also, like Noma, connects the dots and realizes Sugimoto is the one who attacked Ogata.

Notable changes from the magazine version: None

Notable quotes:

- Sugimoto: “Asirpa-san. Let's split up. I'm the one they're chasing not you. Here. Take the tattooed skin. I want you to hold on to it. If I'm holding it when they find me, they'll probably just kill me on the spot. If they happen to catch you, don't fight back! give them the skin! act like you don't know what's going on. they're not the type of guys that would kill a child. In the end, all that matters to you is that someone finds the Gold! So does it really matter who finds it!? Just do as I've said, Okay?” (‘Asirpa-san futa te ni wakareyou. Yatsu-ra wa otona no ashiato dake o karera ga anata o ou hazuda. Irezumi hito kawa kore o… Asirpa -san ga motte itte kure. Ore ga motte ireba osoraku sonobade korosa reru. Moshimo Asirpa -san ga tsukamattara issai teikō sezu ni yatsu-ra ni watase! Nani mo shiranai furi o shiro. Kodomo made korosu renchū janai! Asirpa -san ni totte wa kinkai sae mitsukete kurereba sore wa dare datte ī hazuda. Ore ga itta tōri ni suru nda zo ~tsuī na?’ アシㇼパさんふた手に分かれよう。やつらは大人の足跡だけを彼らがあなたを追うはずだ。刺青人皮これを…アシㇼパさんが持っていってくれ。俺が持っていればおそらくその場で殺される。もしもアシㇼパさんが捕まったら一切抵抗せずにやつらに渡せ！何も知らないふりをしろ。子供まで殺す連中じゃない！アシㇼパさんにとっては金塊さえ見つけてくれればそれは誰だっていいはずだ。俺が言ったとおりにするんだぞッいいな？Lit: “Asirpa-san. Let's divide. Those guys should chase only after the footsteps of the adult, not yours. The tattooed human skins, these… Asirpa-san should take them with her. If I had them I would probably be killed on the spot. If Asirpa-san gets caught, give it to them without any resistance! Pretend you don't know anything. Those guys are not those who would kill kids! For Asirpa-san, it’s important the gold is found. Whoever it, is fine. Do it exactly as I said it, okay?”)

- Tanigaki: “Aw, shucks. I have no idea what you're saying. I'm not some monster here to gobble you up. please come down.” (‘Maitta na sappari wakaran. Totte kuttari wa shinaikara orite oide.’ まいったなさっぱりわからん。捕って食ったりはしないから降りておいで Lit: “Annoying, I don't understand her at all. I won't catch and eat you, so come down.”)

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10. GAMBLE (博打 BAKUCHI) 

First printed: 23/October/2014 Weekly Young Jump 47

Characters: Sugimoto Saichi (杉元 佐一), Tamai (玉井), Noma (野間), Okada (岡田), Tanigaki Genjirō (谷垣 源次郎), Noma’s grandfather, Asirpa (アシㇼパ).

Location: Near Otaru.

Other Places mentioned: Noma’s grandfather charcoal-making hut, up in the mountains

Time: 1907/1908 (?) Late February

Historical events mentioned: None

Includes flashbacks or info about the characters past: Yes, about Noma.

Info and the characters’ theories about the ‘Noppera-bō incident’, the gold and the escape: None.

Character deaths: Tamai (killed by a bear), Noma (killed by a bear), Okada (killed by Tamai)

Animal deaths: Mother bear (killed by Tamai)

New Ainu words:

- Itatani: Cutting board used for meat

- Rikosinot: “Tossing up”. A bear attack in which the bear bites its target and throw it up in the air over and over.

Food and drinks: Bear citatap.

Useful info and points to ponder:

- During the confrontation between Tamai’s group and Sugimoto, it’s clear the 4 of them are all scared. Sugimoto is without weapons and against three armed men but Tamai’s group, due to Sugimoto’s legend of being immortal and dangerous, is also scared of facing him.

- Tamai is the one who manages to remain the calmest, ordering to shoot Sugimoto in the knees, a sign they didn’t aim to kill him, at least not at first.

- At the prospective of being shoot in the knees, screaming his catchphrase ‘I’m immortal’ Sugimoto decides to overcome is fear of bear and try entering in its den in hope Asirpa was right and the bear won’t attach him.

- Tamai is completely pissed off by what he judges an act of cowardice from someone who’s called ‘immortal’ and who fought like a ‘Kishin’ to the point he decides to shoot into the hole personally, even if this means he could kill Sugimoto and not get any info from him. It’s unknown if the fact that Sugimoto hurt Ogata, one of his underlings, also played a part in Tamai’s anger (Tanigaki had a good opinion of him so Tamai could be a superior officer who cares about whose under him and he also expressed appreciation for Ogata).

- Noma’s question is actually more vague as he says only they won’t be able to ask him what happened, without mentioning Ogata, even if it’s clear he’s referring to what happened with him.

- Despite being mountaineers, none of the three realize the hole is a bear den.

- Despite the shock of seeing the bear running toward him Tamai recharged his rifle but, as Nihei will point out later on, he didn’t manage to shoot the bear. The bear, with one paw, will manage to rip his face and his jaw away, the shock causing him to press the trigger and, inadvertently kill Okada.

- Regardless of the situation Noma remains calm and talks to the bear. He explains his grandfather worked up in the mountains making charcoal (this confirms Noma is a mountaineer and might point out he’s from Hokkaido). His grandfather warned him when meeting a bear running or playing dead won’t work. One has to stay calm and talk to the bear, looking at him in the eyes until it calms down and then shoot him in the head which Noma does, claiming this is revenge because a bear killed his grandfather while he was in his charcoal-making hut.

- Noma’s grandfather’s teaching were wrong. As Nihei will later do, Noma should have shoot the bear when the bear was standing, aiming for his heart and not for his head as a bear skull is really thick while the brain is small, hence it’s pretty difficult to kill the bear this way. As a result the bear gets up and attack Noma, his claws cutting his stomach and causing his intestines to come out, therefore giving him a fatal, although slow killing wound. Noma will still pull out his bayonet and stab the bear multiple times challenging the bear before the bear will toss him in the air over and over, causing him to end up on a tree where he’ll die, still holding his bayonet in his hand, albeit he’ll lose his shoes.

- Noma might have had some contacts with the Ainu as he’s aware they consider bears gods of the mountains.

- Despite the terrible wound he received, Tamai will manage to stand up again and shoot multiple times to the bear’s skull with his gun, until he’ll empty the revolver. Then, after giving a last glance to his fallen men he’ll die as well, probably of blood loss. Overall both Noma and Tamai revealed themselves as tough guys who, despite their terrible wounds, still managed to fight and eventually took down the bear.

- After he shows up, Sugimoto will comments Asirpa was right in saying a bear doesn’t kill who enters in its den and wonders if she threw off her pursuer already (he likely has realized since 3 soldiers came after him the 4th should have gone after her, proving they would chase both of them). He’s however clearly unconcerned and even takes time, before walking to help her against an adult soldier, to talk with the bear cub and hide it in his coat. This clearly implies back then he didn’t care for her as much as he’ll do later.

- Sugimoto, coming out of the bear den, was holding a bear cub in his arms as if he were a child. He claims since the cub’s mother is dead he can’t leave him there but he can’t promise Asirpa won’t turn him into Citatap. It’s not a joke but this will be developed in the next chapter.

Notable changes from the magazine version: None

Notable quotes:

- Noma: “But what if we hit him in the head and he dies? We won’t be able to ask him what happened with Ogata.” (‘Shikashi… Atama ni demo atete sokushi sa setara nani ga atta ka kikidasemasenyo’ しかし。。。頭にでも当てて即死させたら何があったか聞き出せませんよ Lit: “However… If we hit him in the head and kill him immediately he won’t be able to tell us what happened”).

Noma: “What's wrong!? You scared!? The Ainu call you a god of the mountain? Pathetic! I'll show you what it means to take on the 7th division!! Come and get me!!” (‘Dō shita a! Iru nda ka? ! Ainu ni yamanokami to agame rare teru bunzai de yō! Teikoku rikugun dainanashidan aite ni tada de sumu to omou na! Kakatte koi ~tsu!’ どうしたあ！怯んだか？！アイヌに山の神と崇められてる分際でよお！帝国陸軍第七師団相手にただで済むと思うな！かかって来いッ！Lit: “What's wrong! Are you frightened? ! Someone who has the social standing of being worshipped by the Ainu as the mountain god! Don't think you’ll win easily against the 7th division of the Imperial Army! Come on!”)

Sugimoto: “Your mom’s dead and I can't just leave you here. I'll take you with me… but I can't promise Asirpa won't make you into Citatap.” (‘Omae no kāchan shin jimatte hottokene~ekara tsurete kukedo… Asirpa-san omae o chitatapu ni shite kutchimau kamo na’ お前の母ちゃん死んじまってほっとけねぇから連れてくけど…アシㇼパさんお前をチタタプにして食っちまうかもな Lit: “Your mother is dead and I can’t leave you alone so I'll take you... but I'm afraid Asirpa-san might eat you as Citatap.”)

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11. AINU KOTAN (アイヌコタン AINU KOTAN)

First printed: 30/October/2014 Weekly Young Jump 48

Characters: Tanigaki Genjirō (谷垣 源次郎), Retar (レタㇻ), Asirpa (アシㇼパ), Sugimoto Saichi (杉元 佐一), Huci (フチ), Ekasi (エカシ), Hapo (ハポ)*.

Location: Near Otaru, Asirpa’s village near Otaru

Other Places mentioned: None

Time: 1907/1908 (?) Late February

Historical events mentioned: Hokkaido Wolf extinction (1890)

Includes flashbacks or info about the characters past: Yes, about Asirpa, her grandparents and her mother.

Info and the characters’ theories about the ‘Noppera-bō incident’, the gold and the escape: None.

Character deaths: Ekasi (illness)

Animal deaths: None.

New Ainu words:

- Horkew Kamuy: “Howling God”. Hokkaido wolf.

- Kotan: Village

- Nusasan: An altar. Objects like the skulls of the bears were enshrined there.

- Cise: House

- Mukkur: An Ainu musical instrument also known as Mukkuri. It’s a sort of mouth harp.

- Pu: A type of building used as a storehouse

- Huci: Grandmother

- Ekasi: Grandfather

- *Hapo: Mother (to be honest this word isn’t used in this chapter but as Asirpa’s mother is still unnamed and Asirpa names her relatives using Ainu words I listed her as such)

Food and drinks: Brain of a bear

Useful info and points to ponder:

- Differently from Sugimoto Tanigaki immediately realizes Retar is an Hokkaido wolf and not a white dog.

- Retar bites Tanigaki’s leg and use it to toss Tanigaki around, breaking his leg and causing him to go unconscious, before attempting to bite his throat and kill him. Differently from Tamai and Noma, Tanigaki won’t attempt to fight at all.

- Asirpa stops Retar from killing Tanigaki, saving his life. Later, fearing Sugimoto would finish him off, Asirpa will tell him he’s dead, potentially saving Tanigaki’s life a second time. Tanigaki will never thanks her for this, although, as he was unconscious, he might not have realized she had made sure he wasn’t killed.

- Between telling Sugimoto Tanigaki is alive and leaving him in Hokkaido’s wilderness Asirpa judges the safest option for Tanigaki is to be left there as she assumes he’s tough enough to survive this. Her assumption is slightly off as Tanigaki could have probably handle it on his own if he had tried going back, as Tanigaki tried to chase them he fainted and needed to be rescued by Nihei.

- Asirpa’s assumption on they being safe because he can’t go after them with his leg snapped like this is not taking into consideration that if Tanigaki had gone back he could have told to the other soldiers exactly where they met and who they are, with the result that many soldiers would came for them, aware they should search for a man and an Ainu child.

- Asirpa’s reasoning to stop Retar is she didn’t want him to become a Wen Kamuy due to her, though she thanks him for saving her.

- This time Retar not only approaches Asirpa and laps her face but let her rub his belly and scratch his favourite spots as he remained there with an expression of enjoyment. However, as soon as Sugimoto comes close, Retar takes a majestic pose and then hurries to leave.

- It’s worth to mention Asirpa too, once she got rid of Tanigaki, didn’t run to try save Sugimoto but remained with Retar, petting him. However for her it was probably the first time she got herself threatened by a soldier and, anyway, according to the plan she was meant to escape. It’s noteworthy though how things will change for Asirpa as well and worrying about Sugimoto trying to run to help him will become often the first thing she will do in the future.

- Probably, seeing Tanigaki on the ground, taken down by the wolf, subtly drove in Sugimoto’s mind  the point Asirpa had been in danger.

- In the past chapter Sugimoto warned the cub he couldn’t promise him Asirpa won’t turn him into Citatap. We see he meant it for real as first, he very clumsily tries to hide the cub in his coat, then, when he’ll get discovered IMMEDIATELY, he tries to childishly deny its presence as he think she’ll want to eat it. As it’ll be clear Asirpa saw the cub, he’ll claim he’ll take care of the cub and will be his mother, to which Asirpa points out he doesn’t know how to do. At this he won’t dare to oppose to her, handing it for her to eat it, although he’ll say he won’t manage to eat his brain. Honestly, if this was how hard he was going to fight for the cub’s survival he could have abandoned him there. Asirpa is right in saying he doesn’t know how to take care of it, but he could have said something along the lines of ‘I’ll learn’, instead he gives up. Also his approach to the whole thing is very childish, though probably this is due to Noda wanting the thing to be ‘funny’.

- Although Asirpa didn’t mean to be creepy looking not to eat the cub, Sugimoto saw her like that and was surprised when she told him Ainu don’t eat cubs but raise them, which is why she’ll bring him to her village.

- Asirpa is welcomed by the children of the village, showing she’s popular among them. Women also, seeing her, recognize her.

- In the anime the man near the Pu is Makanakkuru. In the manga, unless Makanakkuru’s character design underwent a drastic change, he seems to be another man who still get a close up and to give a long stare to Sugimoto and Asirpa.

- Sugimoto is confused because no one seems to be afraid of him. Asirpa explains him Ainu are curious and love new things but Sugimoto’s problem is another. As he thinks it was Asirpa’s village which was gathering money to fight the Japanese, he believes he’s unwelcomed there and therefore sees again the village as threatening looking through his ‘Sugimoto vision’ and therefore  wants to leave the cub there and then go away immediately. It’ll take him a while to realize, as Asirpa said, Ainu are really just curious and don’t aim to harm him.

- Asirpa’s grandmother is her grandmother on her mother’s side. She seems serious and Asirpa explains she can’t talk Japanese but she still wants Sugimoto to spend there the night as he’s the first guest Asirpa brought there. Asirpa also explains that Huci’s husband was the most important man in the village therefore nobody would say anything against her and add as a proof how Huci’s tattoo is very large because the more important the man, the larger is the tattoo the wife gets. From this we can speculate Asirpa’s grandfather was the head of the village. We don’t know though who the current head is.

- Greeting Asirpa’s grandmother is one of the few instances in which Sugimoto removes his hat. Meeting her he calls her ‘Obā-san’ (お婆さん “Grandmother).

- As soon as Tanigaki wakes up, he lights a fire and takes care of his wound. However he decides he won’t search for his companions or go back to report to Tsurumi what had happened but that he’ll hunt Retar and won’t stop until he had killed him, blaming his Matagi (hunter) blood in him. This act actually constitute desertion and more than his Matagi blood what’s to blame is the fact he is hiding in Tsurumi’s troops because he’s ashamed of himself, yet he doesn’t see the army as his place and longs to go back home.

Notable changes from the magazine version: None

Notable quotes:

- Asirpa: “You're the last Horkew Kamuy (wolf god), I couldn't bear it if you became a Wen Kamuy (Evil God) for my sake. Still, thank you for saving me.” (‘Omae wa saigo no horkew kamuy (ōkami no kami-sama) na ndakara, watashi no tame ni Wen Kamuy (warui kami-sama) nanka ni natcha dame. Demo tasuketekurete arigatō’ お前は最後のホロケウカムイ（狼の神様）なんだから、私のためにウェンカムイ （悪い神様）なんかになっちゃだめ。でも助けてくれてありがとう)

- Asirpa: “Here we go～who's a good wolf!? this is your favorite spot, right? I remember～” (‘Yooo~shi, yoshi yoshi yoshi koko ka? Kokoda na? Shitteru zo?’ よおぉーし、よしよしよしここか？ここだな？知ってるぞ？ Lit: “Gooood, good, good, right here? Is it here? I remember it.”)

Asirpa: “… Let’s go. He’s already dead.” (‘…Ikou mō shin deru’ …行こうもう死んでる)

Sugimoto: “I'll take good care of him! I'll be his new mother!” (‘Koitsu wa ore ga mendōmiru ~tsu! Hahaoya kawari ni naru nda a!!’ こいつは俺が面倒見るッ！母親代わりになるんだあ!! Lit: “I’ll takes care of this guy! I'll be his substitute mother!”)

Sugimoto: “Fine, I understand… but you’ll have to eat him alone! I can’t bear the thought of putting salt on his poor brain and eating it!” (‘Wakatta… koitsu wa Asirpa-san dake de kutte kure. Koitsu no nō miso ni shio kakete kuu toka oreniha murida’ わかった…こいつはアシㇼパさんだけで食ってくれ。

こいつの脳ミソに塩かけて食うとか俺には無理だ Lit: “Okay… Only Asirpa-san should eat this guy. It's impossible for me to sprinkle salt on his brain and eat it.”)

Asirpa: “Huh? I'm not going to eat him. when we find a bear cub during a hunt. it's our tradition to raise it in the village.” (‘Hā? Taben zo. Watashi-tachi ha ryō de koguma o tsukamaetara mura de taisetsu ni sodateru fūshū ga aru’ はあ？食べんぞ。私たちは猟で子熊を捕まえたら村で大切に育てる風習がある Lit: “What? I won't eat it. If we catch a cub when we’re hunting, we have a custom of carefully raising it in the village.”)

Asirpa: “We Ainu are more curious than anyone! deep down, we just love new things!” (‘Ainu wa kōkishin ōseida. “Atarashimonozuki”na nda’ アイヌは好奇心旺盛だ。『新し物好き』なんだ Lit: “The Ainu are brimming with curiosity. The ‘We love new things’ type”)

Asirpa: “Look at this tattoo! The more important the man, the larger the tattoo his wife can get.” (‘Miro. Kono irezumi. Erai hito no okusan hodo ōkina irezumi o suru nda’ 見ろ。この入れ墨。偉い人の奥さんほど大きな入れ墨をするんだ)

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12. KAMUY MOSIR (カムイモシリ KAMUI MOSHIRI)

First printed: 06/November/2014 Weekly Young Jump 49

Characters: Sugimoto Saichi (杉元 佐一), Asirpa (アシㇼパ), Huci (フチ), Makanakkuru (マカナックル),  Unarpe (ウナルペ)*, Ekasi (エカシ), Hapo (ハポ), Osoma (オソマ), Wilk (ウイルク), Ushiyama Tatsuma (牛山 辰馬), Hijikata Toshizō (土方 歳三), prostitute.

Location: Asirpa’s village near Otaru, Otaru.

Other Places mentioned: None

Time: 1907/1908 (?) Late February

Historical events mentioned: None

Includes flashbacks or info about the characters past: Yes, about Asirpa, her grandparents and her parents.

Info and the characters’ theories about the ‘Noppera-bō incident’, the gold and the escape: None

Character deaths: Ekasi (illness), Hapo (illness)

Animal deaths: Bear cub (killed in a Iomante)

New Ainu words:

- Kamuy mosir: “Land of the gods��

- *Unarpe (ウナルペ): Aunt (to be honest this word isn’t used in this chapter but as Asirpa’s aunt is still unnamed and Asirpa names her relatives using Ainu words I listed her as such)

- Iteseni: Stand for weaving mats.

- Asirpa ekimne patek ki wa menoko monrayke eaykap: Asirpa spends all her time in the mountains, and can't do a woman's work.

- Kemeiki neya itese neya menoko monrayke eaykap menoko anak aynu hoku kor ka eaykap: A woman that cannot sew or knit is unable to get an Ainu husband.

- Tane sinuye kuni paha ne kor ka kopan: She's nearly of age to get tattooed, but she refuses.

- Sugimoto Nispa tan matkaci etun wa encore: Mr. Sugimoto, please take this girl as your wife.

- Tan kumippoho kuepotara wa mosir kuhoppa ka koyaykus: So long as I'm still worried about her future, I can't depart this world in peace.

- Nispa: Mister

- Sinna kisar: “Strange ears”

- Si taktak: “Clump of feces”

- Opkehur: “The farter”

- Huuratekki: “Raised stinky”

- Ekasiotonpuy: “Grandfather’s butthole”

- Kimun Kamuy: Bear

- Heperset: Cage for bear cubs

- Iomante: “To send something/someone off”. Ceremony in which the bear cubs are sent off.

Food and drinks: Mixture of meat broth and rice water

Useful info and points to ponder:

- Asirpa explains only her and her grandmother live in that house as her aunt and uncle live in a different one. Her mother died of illness soon after giving birth to her so that she never really knew her. We know though it wasn’t IMMEDIATELY after giving birth to her because in late chapters it will be shown that she was filmed while holding Asirpa on her back. Asirpa’s grandfather fell sick and died 6 years ago. This is relevant because, as he likely was the head of the village, it’s possible he was the Ainu who knew about the gold hideout. In chap 2 Asirpa said the ‘Noppera-bō incident’ took place 5 years ago, therefore AFTER her grandfather’s death. This might mean her grandfather passed the info to Wilk, his firstborn husband and, after his death, Wilk decided to act. On the other side later Noda said Wilk was in jail by 7 years, therefore BEFORE her grandfather’s death so the old man might have known something about it. It’s also worth to note that, if Asirpa considers Huci’s home her home, it’s possible Wilk never built a home for himself, his wife and daughter. Now… this would happen among Ainu if there was no male heir that could inherit, so the daughter’s husband would move in his wife’s home and become a family member. However we were lead to think Makanakkuru is Huci’s son which would make him the male heir. That is unless he’s actually not Huci’s son but was adopted into the family because he married the second daughter or because he was parentless. We’ll see.

- Huci calls Sugimoto ‘Sugimoto Nispa’ while, from now, on he’ll call her ‘Obā-chan’ (お婆ちゃん “Grandmother”) (in the previous chapter it was ‘Obā-san’ (お婆さん “Grandmother)).

- Huci complains that since Asirpa spends all her time on the mountains and can’t do woman works like sewing or knitting won’t get an Ainu husband. Plus, despite being nearly of the age to get tattooed she refuses doing so. Due to all this Huci asks Sugimoto to marry Asirpa because, as long as she’s worried for her future, she can’t depart this world in peace. Long story short very likely Huci invited Sugimoto to spend the night because she thought he could become Asirpa’s husband and that’s why she brought him home.

- Note that Huci didn’t mean they should marry right then but Ainu had no problems to promise children in marriage by arrangement between his or her parents and the parents of his or her betrothed, although the marriage would happen only when the involved kid/kids would be of a marriageable age, which, for women, was around 15 to 16 years of age (varied from village to village), the age in which they were regarded as adult and in which her tattoo is complete. Marring a Sisam was often encouraged among Ainu because it was believed it would lessen discrimination toward them.

- We’ve heard that the pimp speculated Asirpa is around 12/13, which would yes, make her close to marriageable age.

- Tattoo age varied from village to village, with some starting when the child was 6/7 and other doing it later, when the child was around 11 years old, and other even later, also due to the Japanese ban on tattooing (the ban were done in 1799 and 1871, with the  ban renewed in 1976) that didn’t stop the tattooing practice but required it was done in secrecy. The real important point though is that, according to Ainu women, marring without tattoos was a great sin and, if they did, the legend said, they would die and go to hell where the demons would take large knives and do the tattooing all at once. It’s worth to note the profession of tattooist was exclusive to Ainu females and being tattooed rather painful as they would do it by cutting he skin with a knife and then rubbing soot into the wound.

- After Huci asked Sugimoto to marry Asirpa we can see her face is slightly flushed and her ears are red but she refuses to translate her grandmother’s words and, lowering her gaze, say to Sugimoto instead Huci had said people shouldn’t eat poop.

- Sugimoto doesn’t seem to notice Asirpa’s embarrassment nor how Huci supposedly shouldn’t know he eat Miso/poop and cheerfully replies it’s not poop but Miso, though one of his brows is furrowed. Through the story is hard to say if he’s really completely oblivious to Asirpa’s crush on him or he’s just pretending to be, because not interested.

- Osoma is Asirpa’s cousin. Ainu children were raised almost naked until about the ages of four to five but at 6 they would be given a real name. From this is possible to speculate Osoma is around 4/5 years old as she’s dressed but also still retain her filthy name (when Tanigaki will be back after a year she’s still called Osoma… has Noda forgotten about this, has she kept her filthy name or is she still not 6 yet?).

- Asirpa’s filthy name was Ekasiotonpuy, which means “Grandfather’s butthole”.

- Sugimoto continues viewing bears as “monsters” (怪物 ‘Kaibutsu’), commenting it’s hard the bear cub will become one when he grows up. However he previously called the bears he met ‘bakemono’ (バケモノ “monster”). It seems the difference is that a ‘Kaibutsu’ is something that looks ugly or creepy or unidentifiable and therefore is defined as a “monster” while a ‘bakemono’ got some supernatural power and turn into a “monster”. So it’s possible while Sugimoto saw the other bears as nearly supernatural creatures he was afraid of, in regard to the cub he’s just telling he’ll become something as creepy as them. However there are actually debates over the implications of the two words so take this with a grain of salt.

- Asirpa discourage Sugimoto to keep on petting the bear cub, saying he’ll get attached to it so, when he’ll have to say goodbye to it, it would hurt. She knows that, when the bear will grow up, Ainu ‘will send him to the land of the Gods’. Therefore Asirpa doesn’t pet the cub because, if she keep her distance, she won’t get too attached and it won’t hurt parting from it. She explains when she was a child she doted on a bear cub like she would with a younger brother so, before it got ‘sent away’ she unsuccessfully tried to sneak him out and return him to the mountains. She got discovered and the adults were furious with her but she was so sad that she couldn’t take part to the sending away ceremony. In short, prior to her father’s death Asirpa was already thinking distancing herself from people would spare her from the pain of loss.

- Sugimoto’s idea they’ll return the bear in the wild is naïve. Asirpa has explained not much ago how Ainu use every part of the bear and they’re bear hunters. Of course, if they were to have a bear they wouldn’t release it to the wild to just hunt and kill it later.

- Sugimoto is overall negative about the idea of ‘sending back’ the bear cub. He calls it ‘killing’ and, even after Asirpa explains him their religious beliefs he questions her, saying if she really believed in this, killing the cub (Sugimoto says “killing the bear cub” [子熊を殺すことは ‘koguma o korosu’] not “sending it back”) wouldn’t be a sad thing and that therefore she’s avoiding the cub because she doesn’t believe it. Basically Sugimoto, who doesn’t believe in the Ainu beliefs, is trying to have her saying she doesn’t believe in them as well.

- Asirpa’s reply is very clever. She defends Ainu beliefs saying that within them there’s a lesson that help them to survive. Basically they wrap Ainu’s actions in a narrative that make easier to make things that are beneficial to Ainu like killing the bear cub LATER instead than IMMEDIATELY ensures them more meat and fur. This makes Asirpa thinks that the overall teaching is correct. In fact the bear cub has to be killed once is older as they need its meat and fur. You can strip the whole thing of the story the bear cub is sent back but you can’t say killing the bear cub is wrong, on this Asirpa is firm. On the other side she acknowledges that, even if killing the bear cub is right, this wouldn’t save her form the pain of saying goodbye so she keeps her distance so as not to get hurt.

- In a way the whole thing presents parallels with how Sugimoto will spin a narrative in which it’s okay to kill Russians and convicts because they’re soulless evil people. The problem here is that Asirpa doesn’t tell him killing the cub is right because it’ll go back to the world of gods but because they need meat and will confirm that saying goodbye to it is painful while Sugimoto will tell her she shouldn’t feel pain for bad guys’ death because they’re soulless and don’t feel pain when they died. Asirpa doesn’t hide herself between a nice narrative, she faces the truth and acknowledges it’s painful so she tries to protect herself from it by distancing herself. Sugimoto hides the truth (during the war he needed to kill to survive) behind a narrative that dehumanize his opponent. On the surface it can seem similar but, by being aware of the truth of her actions (she kills the cub because she needs to eat) Asirpa can control them (she doesn’t need to kill the cub if she were to have enough food). Sugimoto instead ends up on blurring the borders because if you embrace the fact that  people who oppose to him are bad and won’t feel pain when killed you can kill them regardless of your survival being involved (which is why he can consider involving himself in murdering the convicts for gold even if the convicts weren’t directly threatening him), won’t just distance from them but dehumanize them and overall have problems copying with his instinctive sense of guilt as he tries to suppress it as unneeded… though of course, Sugimoto’s problems stem from very traumatic experiences so it’s sadly normal he developed maladaptive coping mechanisms.

- On a sidenote Asirpa’s attachment for Sugimoto in a way parallel the attachment she felt for that bear cub as, if everything goes according to Sugimoto’s plan, he’s not going to stay in Hokkaido but go back to his village to marry Umeko. It doesn’t help Sugimoto gets paralleled to a bear.

- Sugimoto comments that Asirpa’s way of thinking is ‘genjitsuteki’ (現実的) which can mean “realistic”, “pragmatic” and “practical”. I’ve heard there’s some debate on which would be the better translation but I’ll let the decision to people more competent than me. What hits me is that Sugimoto then comments Asirpa is different from other Ainu. While I think he means it as a compliment toward Asirpa… well, he’s learning about Ainu and Ainu culture through her so from where his impression on how other Ainu are if not from stereotypes? In a way his statement mirrored the one of Asirpa. She thought him being a good warrior was impressive for a sisam, he thinks her being realistic/pragmatic is uncommon for an Ainu. To Asirpa’s credit though, she had to interact with Sisam more than he had to interact with Ainu (to sell what she hunted and buy things, in fact she had explained how she got used at them insulting her) so, at least, her opinion is based on a partial direct contact.

- Asirpa’s name was given to her by her father. As we had learnt in this chapter children get their real name at around 6, this means Wilk was still around when she was 6. She explains it means “new year” but also “future” declaring this means she’s a new kind of Ainu woman for a new age. It would be interesting to know exactly how she has gotten her name as we know Wilk had ambitions for her but Asirpa explained names are given according to the children’s personalities and what they’ve done in life not what their parents hope for them so I’d like to know what she did/say that made her have such name. Was it just the fact she preferred to hunt versus sewing and knitting? Or there’s a story behind it?

- Hijikata and Ushiyama’s meeting take place in one of the many brothels in Otaru that also doubles as a soba restaurant.

- Hijikata informs us that Ushiyama, whose nick is “Ushiyama, the undefeated” (‘Fuhai no Ushiyama’ 不敗の牛山 ) has a voracious sexual appetite, the consequence of which was the prostitute he was with tattled out his presence to Hijikata.

- Ushiyama’s reaction at having been betrayed is to toss the prostitute at Hijikata. There’s to say Ushiyama tends to toss things. When they’ll go to Shibukawa he tosses one of his men through the roof, when facing the 7th, he tosses Shiraishi at them and when they fight with the fake Ainu he tosses Ekurok at them. So, not only for him it’s normal to toss people, but as she has just betrayed him to a man who Ushiyama assumes is there to kill him, he likely wasn’t going to be considerate with her. On the other side I’ve had the feeling Noda has later shifted Ushiyama’s characterization a bit so it’s possible Ushiyama originally was meant to be a worse person than the one he ended up on being in the end.

- When Hijikata place his sword against Ushiyama’s forehead the sound effect implies a tapping, meaning Hijikata wasn’t trying to cut Ushiyama’s head but is holding his sword there merely to threaten him.

- Ushiyama also got a Type 26 revolver, likely by the soldiers they had killed when they escaped.

- Differently from what Asirpa thought it isn’t necessary to skin the convicts to get their tattoo, Hijikata, who was the leader of the escape plan, knows it’s enough to cover the body in oil paper and trace the tattoo so as to get a precise copy. When he says so he shows Ushiyama a copy of a tattoo. It should be supposedly his own as, at the time, he had no others, but as Ushiyama isn’t yet his ally and the manga pointed out more than once how copies might not be reliable (Ushiyama himself saying so to Shiraishi), I wonder if that copy is a fake.

- Hijikata as with himself a couple of underlings. It’s unknown where he got them but he asks Ushiyama to join as well. Through the story Hijikata will recruit more convicts and voice his concern over the mistreatment of the convicts so, although he’s completely capable to kill men without hesitation, it’s possible he meant to join hands with all the 24 convicts.

- In a way Hijikata is set up as the direct antagonist of Tsurumi as they’re both two bright and manipulative army men who dream to make a separate state out of Hokkaido.

- To Ushiyama who asks him if Hijikata plans to face the army with a sword, which is nothing else but a relic of the past, Hijikata replies age doesn’t matter, boys just love playing with swords… through it’s worth to note we’ll discover Hijikata uses a rifle well enough. So he’s likely aware of the sword being a relic but he still swing it because he evidently favours it.

Notable changes from the magazine version:

- This chapter in the magazine version had a color cover. In the volume version it has been turned into a black and white one. It’s also worth to mention this cover has the same image that will be used for the volume cover.

Notable quotes:

- Asirpa: “My aunt and uncle live in a different Cise (house)” (‘Betsu no Chise (ie) ni oji fūfu ga iru’ 別のチセ（家）におじ夫婦がいる Lit: “In a different cise (house) are my uncle and his wife.”)

- Asirpa: “Once children turn six years old and have formed their own personalities, we give them a real name based on what they've done in life.” (‘6-Sai kurai ni natte seikaku ga dete ki tari Sonoko ga okoshita dekigoto nado ni chinande chanto shita namaewotsukeru’ ６歳くらいになって性格が出てきたりその子が起こした出来事などにちなんでちゃんとした名前を付ける Lit: “When around 6 the child’s personality has appeared and we give him a decent name after the events that happened to him.”)

- Asirpa: ““Kill” isn't exactly the right word. We think of it as "sending him back. All the useful things around us, all the things with power beyond our control, we revere them all as Kamuy (Gods). We've maintained a good relationship with the Kamuy by expressing courtesy and gratitude.” (‘Korosu to iu yori “okurikaesu” to iu kangaekatada. Watashitachiha minomawari no yakudatsu mono-ryoku no oyobanai mo no, subete o Kamuy (kami) to shite atsukai, kansha no girei o tōshite yoi kankei o tamotte kita’ 殺すと言うより『送り返す』という考え方だ。私たちは身の回りの役立つもの力の及ばないもの、すべてをカムイ（神）として扱い、感謝の儀礼を通して良い関係を保ってきた Lit: “Rather than to kill it our thought is ‘to send it back’. We treat everything that is useful and that is beyond our power as Kamui (God), and we have maintained a good relationship through courtesy and gratitude.”)

- Sugimoto: “Do you really believe all that Asirpa? If you believed it, then sending that bear cub off wouldn't have been anything to get sad about, right?” (‘Asirpa-san wa sore shinji teru no? Shinji tetara koguma o korosu koto wa kanashī koto janai ndaro?’ アシㇼパさんはそれ信じてるの？信じてたら子熊を殺すことは悲しい事じゃないんだろ？Lit: “Does Miss Asirpa believe in that? If you believed in it, it wouldn’t be a sad thing to kill the bear cub, right?”)

- Sugimoto: “Could it be that some part of you didn't believe it, so you tried to let the bear escape?” (‘Doko ka de shinji tenaikara koguma o sake teru n janai no kai?’ どこかで信じてないから子熊を避けてるんじゃないのかい？ Lit: “Maybe you're avoiding the bear cub because you don't believe it somewhere?”)

- Asirpa: “Within every belief lies a useful lesson to help us survive. For example, If we raise the bear cub instead of killing it right away, that means we end up with more meat and fur. We've lived our lives following those lessons so I believe that they are correct. But that doesn't mean saying goodbye doesn't hurt. That's why I keep my distance, so I won't get too attached.” (‘Shinkō no nakaniha watashitachi ga ikiru jutsu ga haitteru. Tatoeba tsukamaeta koguma o sodateru no wa ōkiku nareba soredake kegawa ya niku ga torerukarada to watashi wa omou. Sō yatte watashitachi wa ikite kitakara tadashī kotoda to watashi wa shinji teru. Demo wakareru sabishisa wa dō shiyō mo nai. Dakara watashi wa kesshite jō ga utsuranai yō ni kyoriwooku nda’ 信仰の中には私たちが生きる術が入ってる。例えば捕まえた子熊を育てるのは大きくなればそれだけ毛皮や肉がとれるからだと私は思う。そうやって私たちは生きてきたから正しい事だと私は信じてる。でも別れるさびしさはどうしようもない。だから私は決して情が移らないように距離を置くんだ Lit: “Inside our faith there is the means for us to we live. For example, I think that the reason for raising a caught cub is that the larger it gets, the more fur and meat we can take. In this way we have survived so that’s why I believe it’s correct. But the loneliness of breaking up can't be avoided. That ’s why I keep my distance.”)

- Sugimoto: “That's a very pragmatic way of looking at it. You really seem like you're a bit different from the other Ainu.” (‘Kangaekata ga genjitsu-tekida na. Yappari Asirpa-san tte Ainu no naka demo chotto kawatteru n janai no?’ 考え方が現実的だな。やっぱりアシㇼパさんってアイヌの中でもちょっと変わってるんじゃないの？ Lit: “This way of thinking is realistic. After all isn't Asirpa-san a bit different among the Ainu?”)

Asirpa: “My father gave me the name Asirpa. It means "New year" but it can also means "Future." I'm a new kind of Ainu woman, for a new age!” (‘Asirpa to iu na wa chichi ga tsuketa. ‘Atarashī toshi’ to iu imidaga ‘mirai’ tomo kaishaku dekiru. Watashi wa atarashī jidai no Ainu no on'nana nda!’ アシㇼパという名は父がつけた。「新しい年」という意味だが「未来」とも解釈できる。わたしは新しい時代のアイヌの女なんだ！)

Hijikata: “Your voracious sexual appetite has cost you. wouldn't you agree, Ushiyama the undefeated?” (‘Ōseina seiyoku ga ada ni natta na. Fuhai no Ushiyama!’ 旺盛な性欲がアダになったな。不敗の牛山！ Lit: “Your voracious sexual appetite has cost you. Ushiyama the undefeated!”)

Hijikata: “It doesn't matter how old you are. Boys just love to play with swords, right?” (‘Ikutsu ni natte mo danshi wa katana o furimawasu no ga sukidarou?’ いくつになっても男子は刀を振り回すのが好きだろう？Lit: “No matter how old it may be, boys like to swing their swords around, don’t they?”)

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13. GUARDIAN SPIRIT (憑き神 TSUKIGAMI) 

First printed: 13/November/2014 Weekly Young Jump 50

Characters: Sugimoto Saichi (杉元 佐一), Asirpa (アシㇼパ), Makanakkuru (マカナックル), Osoma (オソマ), Wilk (ウイルク), Huci (フチ), Tsurumi Tokushirō (鶴見 篤四郎), Tamai (玉井), Noma (野間), Okada (岡田), Tanigaki Genjirō (谷垣 源次郎), Wada (和田),  Tsukishima Hajime (月島 基).

Location: Near Otaru, Asirpa’s village near Otaru, Mukden (currently Shenyang) (China).

Other Places mentioned: 203 hill in Port Arthur (current Lüshunkou) (China), Mukden (currently Shenyang) (China).

Time: 1907/1908 (?) Late February

Historical events mentioned: Russo-Japanese war (8 February 1904  – 5 September 1905) Siege of Port Arthur (1 August 1904 – 2 January 1905), Battle of Mukden (20 February - 10 March 1905), the Treaty of Portsmouth (September 5, 1905)

Includes flashbacks or info about the characters past: Yes, about Asirpa and Retar and about Tamai, Noma, Okada and Tanigaki and about Tsurumi.

Info and the characters’ theories about the ‘Noppera-bō incident’, the gold and the escape:

The people in Asirpa’s village were hoarding gold to battle against the Sisam… which led to the gold being stolen and Asirpa’s father being killed along with all his comrades. Their ancestors gathered all that gold and for decades it lay untouched by anyone then some men decided to use it to buy weapons. Everyone in the village believes they were killed by the wrath of the Wakkaus Kamuy. Ainu do not use rivers to do laundry or wash away excrements but people decided to pan the water for gold, causing the water to grow cloudy and the fishes unable to breathe, risking to cause their disappearance and the disappearance of the animals that feed on them. Soiling the water to gather weapons for war should never have been done therefore the gold was possessed by some sort of evil spirit and cursed. (Source: Makanakkuru)

Character deaths: Makanakkuru’s cousin (got hit by an amappo), 7 Ainu (killed in the Noppera-bō incident), Wada (shoot in the head by Tsukishima as per Tsurumi’s orders)

Animal deaths: Sakhalin sculpins

New Ainu words:

- Heperesinotpe: A special toy for bear cubs

- Raomap: Trap for catching river fishes

- Amappo: Arrow trap used to catch animals

- Wakkaus Kamuy: God of the water

- Turenpe: Guardian spirit that comes in and out through the back of the neck

- Kinaohaw: Soup made with many vegetables.

- Sutu: Punishment road.

Food and drinks: Sakhalin sculpins, Kinaohaw with roasted sculpin, daikon, carrots, potato, spinach and kombu (Sugimoto also adds Miso to it)

Useful info and points to ponder:

- Sugimoto carries around the bear cub holding it in his coat.

- When Makanakkuru stops Sugimoto from turning on the Amappo, Sugimoto’s first though, as he hadn’t realized about the trap, was being ‘unfriendly’ with him. In fact Sugimoto’s reply ‘Nanka-yō ka?’ (なんか用か？“What do you want?”) sounds rude because apparently you use it when you suspect something and the background behind Sugimoto darkens. Sugimoto will later apologize for this, explaining why was his reason for his rudeness.

- Makanakkuru explains how aconite poisoning from the Amappo  would cause one to suffer for a long time instead than dying instantly, killing the person slowly.

- Makanakkuru mentions his cousin got hit by an Amappo but, although he manage d to get out the arrow, as there was still poison inside the wound he was in agony for several days, his body swelled up and he died.

- Asirpa’s arrows also have aconite poison but evidently in a much bigger amount as she states a bear would only manage to make 10 step while a human won’t manage to make one. After hearing all this, it’s impressive Ogata managed to survive being hit by one of Asirpa’s arrows.

- Makanakkuru uses ‘watashi’ (私) to say “I”.

- Makanakkuru, after telling Sugimoto his name, explains him Asirpa is his OLDER sister’s (‘ane’  姉) daughter and Osoma’s father. The fact that Makanakkuru calls Asirpa’s mother his ‘older sister’ doesn’t necessarily mean they’re related by blood as, although there’s a Japanese word for ‘sister-in-law’ you can also call her just ‘sister’. What we can see for now is he doesn’t resemble neither Huci nor Asirpa’s mother (though Huci might have gotten small eyes due to her old age), while Osoma’s mom seems to have Huci’s square face and a nose more similar to hers. However, unless it’ll be specifically said or we’ll get to see Asirpa’s grandfather we won’t be able to tell if Makanakkuru took from him or not.

- We learn from Makanakkuru that since Asirpa lost her father she’s been going into the mountains alone. In the past chapter we discovered she learnt to distance herself from others so as not to suffer when it would be time to say goodbye. As we’ll later learn she had tried forgetting Wilk, her going in the mountains was probably also a way to distance herself from others after undergoing the trauma of losing her father.

- Makanakkuru says he had been worried about her so now he can rest easier since there’s a strong guy like Sugimoto with her and that since Asirpa is smart (‘Asirpa wa atamagaī’ アシリパは頭がいい “Asirpa has a good head”), if she likes Sugimoto this means he’s not a bad guy. My general impression is Makanakkuru too, like Huci, thinks Sugimoto is there to marry Asirpa.

- Sugimoto’s reply can either be ‘it’s him who gets saved by Asirpa’ or ‘it’s him who gets helped by Asirpa’. At this point, Asirpa has only saved him from the bear but all her teaching and hospitality are helping Sugimoto to live in Hokkaido.

- I do wonder if Sugimoto’s apology, which comes kind of late, is because Makanakkuru said since Asirpa like him he’s shouldn’t be a “bad guy” (‘warui yatsu’ 悪い奴) and Sugimoto felt the need to confirm he isn’t by politely apologizing or if it’s an attempt to push Makanakkuru to talk.

- Makanakkuru asks Sugimoto if he heard about the story of the gold from Asirpa. Evidently he wasn’t told that Sugimoto learnt about it from Gotou and he’s assuming Asirpa told him that to explain her father’s death. In short Makanakkuru might not know Sugimoto and Asirpa are searching for the gold.

- In chap 2 I wondered about Asirpa’s words which only implied it was the people of her village which was involved in this. Makanakkuru instead says clearly it was the people from THEIR village which collected the gold dust to fight the Sisam… when we know at least two people weren’t from Asirpa’s village. Retcon or Makanakkuru is misleading Sugimoto? Asirpa was young so she might not have known not everyone was from her village but Makanakkuru should have done it.

- It might mean nothing but normally they were talk of ‘kinkai’ (金塊 “gold nuggets”). Makanakkuru here talks instead of ‘Sakin’ (砂金 “gold dust”). As of now I’ve managed to find the word ‘Sakin’ coming up only when Huci told the tale of the gold and when Hijikata said he knew the right amount of it. It might have been used other times and I might have missed it, of course but still it’s worth pondering.

- In the manga Sugimoto merely asks Makanakkuru “Who do you think was the criminal who stole the gold?” which scanlation preferred to translate it with “Do you have any idea who it was that killed them?” assuming the crime is to murder those Ainu. The anime instead modifies the sentence so it’s not vague anymore and becomes “Who do you think was the criminal who stole the gold?” (金塊を奪った犯人に心当たりは？ ‘Kinkai o ubatta han'nin ni kokoroatari wa?’). As the original sentence didn’t mention which was the crime, we can’t say if this addition was done in cooperation with Noda or it’s just an anime thing which however implies Sugimoto is more worried for the stolen gold than for the killed Ainu.

- Makanakkuru is rather vehement about how the river shouldn’t be polluted explaining how harmful it is gold panning for rivers. Long story short he believes they absolutely shouldn’t have done it, especially to support a war.

- When asked to say who could have killed the men Makanakkuru invoke the supernatural. It’s the wrath of Wakkaus Kamuy, the god of water. The gold dust was possessed by a ‘mamono’ (魔物 “evil spirit”) and cursed. In short he doesn’t pin the blame of those deaths on any human, be them Ainu or Sisam. They deserved it (because they dirtied the river) and the gods or the spirits punished them. Compared to how Asirpa searches always for a realistic explanation this seems pretty abstract… unless we’re meant to interpret it as ‘the men were killed to punish them for their actions’. This can also mean that Makanakkuru views the killer as someone who represents the gods and brought on those men their wrath… but as the Ainu think killing is wrong maybe Makanakkuru thinks who did the deed in order of doing it was possessed by something evil. It’s kind of like saying, they deserved it, but it wasn’t our place to punish them. It’s interesting how the visual at this point shows Wilk. At the time we didn’t know Wilk was innocent so we could think the visual did so to show who was to blame for the crime of murder… but, if anything, Wilk could have blamed for wanting to use the cursed gold to wage war.

- Huci can see the Turenpe (“guardian spirits”) residing on the back of people’s neck and offers food to her own. Much, much later (chap 231) we’ll discover she says her guardian spirit  can tell her the sex of a baby about to be delivered.

- According to Huci Sugimoto has a very powerful Turenpe. Sugimoto wonders if it’s him who makes him immortal and then offers him food, pleasing Huci.

- The scene implies Asirpa will hit Sugimoto with the Sutu. A box explains us a Sutu is normally used for crimes like theft or punishment and therefore is not to be used lightly but to have a girl hit a man is sadly a type of gag that’s considered ‘fun’. So, while Asirpa does it clearly to assert her own authority (Sugimoto doesn’t have to disobey her or there will be punishment) and role as some sort of teacher, ultimately this is taken away by the scene intended to be humorous and clearly done with Sugimoto’s ‘permission’ as we know he could easily rip it from her.

- Overall Huci, who views Sugimoto as Asirpa’s future husband, seems pleased with his behaviour. He offered food to the guardian spirit, embracing Ainu traditions and Asirpa could, at the same time, ‘discipline’ him. It’s also worth to mention how Huci accepted Miso, that all the Ainu exchange for poop, without hesitations, proving either she trusts him or that she wouldn’t refuse an offering from him whatever it is (or that she knows Miso). I guess she thinks Sugimoto brings in the benefits of Asirpa marrying a Sisam (who, she believes, would accept her even if she didn’t know how to sew or knit as well as Sisam’s privileges) while embracing Ainu culture and obeying to her granddaughter. Honestly she feels naïve. She hadn’t realized Sugimoto isn’t interested in Asirpa like that but has another woman in mind and that he acts like that out of politeness not out of belief. This is made even more dangerous by the fact that at the time there were many Wajin who would come in Hokkaido, take an Ainu bride and then dump her when they would return back home.

- As he did for Ogata, Tsurumi is out with his men to search for Tamai and Co. With no luck this time.

- Tsurumi tells us that Tamai, Noma, Okada and Tanigaki are all experienced mountaineers, and Tanigaki is even from a Matagi family so it’s unlikely to believe they would get lost or stranded.

- Wada calls Tsurumi ‘kisama’ (貴様 “you”). As said in chap 5 ‘kisama’ is nowadays an insulting way to say “you”, normally translated as “you bastard” but back then it was the normal way to say “you” in the army. We don’t know though, if Noda is keeping this into consideration. So, while Wada is clearly angry at Tsurumi it’s hard to say if he’s being insulting or not in Noda’s intentions.

- Wada might sound rude to Tsurumi but his complains are all legitimate. Tsurumi shouldn’t have moved his men till Otaru (they were meant to stay in Asahikawa), among the men Tsurumi moved one ended up in critical conditions and four are missing. In addition Tsurumi also took weapons and ammunitions from Asahikawa (in fact we’ll notice later that even first class privates have, occasionally guns they weren’t supposed to have).

- Wada uses ‘watashi’ (私) to say “I”. His ranking is “Captain” (大尉 ‘Taii’) which makes him higher in rank than Tsurumi, who’s a First Lieutenant.

- Wada is drawn there by Tsukishima, who’s the one who’ll shoot him in the head. Very likely it was a trap to get rid of him. As we’ll learn Tsurumi prefers to deal with superior officers by blackmailing them or indebting them to him I guess this means Wada had no dark spots in his past as Tsurumi couldn’t blackmail him into obedience. On the other side, as Tsurumi could manipulate Yodogawa, he could have asked him to just remove Wada from duty or something instead than killing him so I wonder if there’s more than what it looks why on Wada’s death that made important for Tsurumi to kill him. It’s possible Wada too was connected to Ogata and Tamai’s rebellion, hence that’s why he worries about them so, by killing him in secrecy, he wanted the rebels to lose his support and, at the same time, it would work as a warning to them.

- For the first time we see Tsurumi’s brain leaking. Tsurumi explains that during the battle of Mukden a piece of shrapnel from an exploding shell lodged itself into the front of his scull which causes a bit of odd fluid to leak out. I wonder if the mention of that happening is painful for Tsukishima who has to steady himself to be ready to kill a superior officer.

- Tsurumi bites off Wada’s finger. I wonder if Wada pointing his finger awoke unpleasant memories (Tsurumi’s family lost its prestige, due to Tomoharu’s death he wasn’t allowed to advance) or if he did it just because he could. He claims it’s just because his frontal lobe took a bit of damage so he has troubles controlling his temper but that aside he’s the picture of good health and takes pride in his scars who, according to him, make him look dashing. I wonder if it’s more in them he sees Olga’s face disfigured by a bullet.

- Remember when I said Sugimoto almost killing a superior officer was a big deal? Wada wanted to have Tsurumi killed for biting his finger off… and it was completely okay at the time.

- Tsurumi has Wada be stripped off his uniform and buried. In short he plans to keep his death as a secret and have him ‘disappear’.

- Tsurumi paints the whole thing as a battle between lower ranks and higher ranks, claiming the graves their companions got in Manchuria were beneath the cold barren stone, that they hadn’t received reparation from Russia and therefore were left with nothing despite fighting to defend Japan’s borders and therefore their war is not over. Tsurumi conveniently skips on how, between him and Wada, there’s only a rank of difference.

- To clear up a little Tsurumi’s words in an historical contest:

The “graves our comrades in Manchuria got” likely refer to the many graves they left in Port Arthur, where, according to Tanigaki, more than a half of the 7th division died. I guess they can include the ones of the battle of Mukden as well, although they’re probably a reference to the scene of Tsurumi in front of the graves at Port Arthur.

The “reparations they still hadn’t received from Russia” refers to the Treaty of Portsmouth and to how from it Japan didn’t receive any Russian reparation. It’s not so much Japan’s fault on that, as Russia agreed to many things but would have preferred resuming the war than agreeing to give reparations to Japan for a war Japan started and here there’s the problem. Japan, despite doing well during the war, couldn’t sustain the continuation of it. So while Tsurumi’s talk might seem an attack to the state that gave up on fighting without pretending reparation, not considering that war over would have lead to Japan’s defeat. Therefore Japan did as well as it could and Tsurumi is merely feeding up the discontentment.

The soldiers left with nothing refers to something that Tanigaki will explain later, that when Hanazawa ‘committed suicide’ the government blamed the 7th division so they received no metal or monetary reward and were treated as outcasts. To be honest this is not an historical point as this didn’t happen in real life but just in “Golden Kamuy”.

Notable changes from the magazine version: None

Notable quotes:

- Asirpa: “f you don't clean and gut sculpins right away, the flavor suffers! Hurry up and get them, you dolt!” (‘Kajika wa hayaku sabakanaito aji ga ochiru hayaku tori ni ike baka!’ カジカは早く捌かないと味が落ちる早く取りに行けバカ Lit: “Sculpins will lose their taste if they are not handled quickly! Go get it soon! Stupid!”)

- Sugimoto: “She's so cruel!” (‘Hidōī’ ヒドーイ Lit: “Mean!”)

- Sugimoto: “What do you want?” (‘Nanka-yō ka?’ なんか用か？)

- Makanakkuru: “My name is Makanakkuru! Asirpa is my sister’s daughter. And I’m Osoma’s father.” (‘Watashi no na wa makanakkuru. Asirpa wa watashi no ane no musume da. Soshite Osoma-chan no chichioya’ 私の名はマカナックル。アシㇼパは私の姉の娘だ。そしてオソマちゃんの父親)

- Makanakkuru: “Ever since Asirpa lost her father, she's been going into the mountains alone. I've been worried about her. I can rest easier knowing a strong guy like you is with her.” (‘Asirpa wa chichioya o nakushite karamo hitori de yama e itte shimaukara shinpaidatta. Omae mitaina tsuyo-sōna otoko ga isshonara anshinda’ アシㇼパは父親を亡くしてからもひとりで山へ行ってしまうから心配だった。お前みたいな強そうな男が一緒なら安心だ Lit: “Asirpa, after losing her father, had been going on the mountains alone, so I was worried. It’s safer if she’s together with a strong looking man like you.”)

Sugimoto: “No, I 'd say she spends most of the time saving me.” (‘Iyaiya kotchi ga tasuke rare-ppanashi de’ いやいやこっちが助けられっぱなしで Lit: “No, No, I’m the one who’s being helped by her.”)

- Makanakkuru: “Asirpa is a smart girl…If she likes you, it's safe to say that you're not such a bad guy.” (‘Asirpa wa atamagaī. Aitsu ga natsuku ndakara omae wa warui yatsu ja nai nodarou’ アシㇼパは頭がいい。あいつがなつくんだからお前は悪い奴じゃ無いのだろうLit: “Asirpa is smart. As a guy she’s emotionally attached at you are probably not a bad guy.”)

- Makanakkuru: “You heard the story from Asirpa, right? About how the people in our village were hoarding gold to battle against the Sisam… which led to the gold being stolen and Asirpa’s father being killed along with all his comrades.” (‘Asirpa kara kiita nodarou? Watashitachi no mura no ningen ga shisamu to tatakau tame ni sakin o atsumete ita ni to ya. Sore o ubawa rete Asirpa no chichi-tachi ga korosa reta koto’ アシㇼパから聞いたのだろう？私たちの村の人間がシサムと戦うために砂金を集めていたにとや… それを奪われてアシㇼパの父たちが殺されたこと Lit: “Did you hear it from Asia? How the people of our village were collecting gold dust to fight the Sisam… and that Asirpa’s father and the others were killed after being robbed of it”)

- Makanakkuru: “Our ancestors gathered all that Gold. and for decades, it lay untouched by anyone. then some men decided to use it to buy weapons.” (‘Ano sakin wa wareware no senzo ga totta mono de, nanjūnen mo zutto fure rarezu ni ita monodatta. Sore o ichibu no otoko-tachi ga buki o kaou to te o tsuketa’ あの砂金は我々の先祖が取ったもので、何十年もずっと触れられずにいたものだった。それを一部の男たちが武器を買おうと手を付けた)

- Sugimoto: “Do you have an idea who it was who killed them?” (‘Kinkai o ubatta han'nin ni kokoroatari wa?’金塊を奪った犯人に心当たりは？ “Who do you think was the criminal who stole the gold?”)

- Makanakkuru: “Everyone here believes it was the wrath of the Wakkaus Kamuy (God of the water). We Ainu don't do our laundry in the river, nor do we use it to wash away excrement. That’s how much we care about keeping the river clean. But the people decided to pan the waters for gold…” (‘Wakkaus kamui (mizu no kami) no ikarida to min'na itte iru. Ainu wa kawade wa sentaku o sezu haisetsu-mono mo nagasanai. Soko made shite wareware ga yogosanai yō ni ki o tsukete iru kawa de sakin nante torukara…’ ワッカウシカムイ（水の神）の怒りだとみんな言っている。アイヌは川では洗濯をせず排泄物も流さない。そこまでして我々が汚さないように気をつけている川で砂金なんて採るから… Lit: “Everyone says it's the wrath of Wakkaus Kamui (water god). Ainu in the river don't do laundry, nor do we wash away excrements. We go so far to take care of not getting the river dirty so taking gold dust...”)

- Makanakkuru: “Soiling these pristine waters just to gather weapons for war…It should never have been done. That Gold was possessed by some sort of evil spirit. it was cursed.” (‘Ainu ga arasoi no tame ni kawa o yogosu nante zettai ni atte wa naranai. Ano sakin wa mamono ga tsuite iru norowa reta monodatta noda’ アイヌが争いのために川を汚すなんて絶対にあってはならない。あの砂金は魔物が憑いている呪われたものだったのだ Lit: “The Ainu should have never pollute the river for a war. That gold dust was possessed by a demon and cursed.”)

- Wada: “How dare you take my men all the way out here to Otaru without my permission! What the hell do you think you're doing?” (‘Kisama watashi no buka-tachi o katte ni Otaru made hikitsurete. Dōiu tsumorida’ 貴様私の部下たちを勝手に小樽まで引き連れて。どういうつもりだ Lit: “How dare you take my subordinates and drag them to Otaru without permission. What did you mean to do?!”)

Wada: “In the first place, how the hell have you managed to keep the rank of first lieutenant with an injury like that!? I can't cover for you anymore! There's no longer any place for you in the imperial Japanese army!!” (‘Somosomo son'na kega no arisama de kongo mo chūi ga tsutomaru ka! Mō kabai kiren! Tsurumi! Kisama ga rikugun ni modoru basho wa mohaya nai to omoe! !’ そもそもそんな怪我のありさまで今後も中尉が務まるか！もう庇いきれん！鶴見！貴様が陸軍に戻る場所は最早無いと思え！！ Lit: “In the first place, how can you continue working as a lieutenant with such injuries? I'm not covering for you anymore! Tsurumi! There is no longer a place for you to return in the Army! !”)

Wada: “You're a goddamn lunatic. Fire at will.” (‘Shōkide wa nai na… ute’ 正気ではないな…撃て)

Tsurumi: “The only graves our comrades in manchuria got were beneath the cold, barren stones. We still haven't received any reparations from Russia. The soldiers that defended the frontier were left with nothing but barren, worthless land. Our war is not over.” (‘Sen'yū wa ima demo Manshū no areta tsumetai ishi no motoda. Roshia kara baishō-kin mo torezu, moto tondenhei no temoto ni nokotta mono wa yaseta tochi dake. Wareware no sensō wa mada owatte inai’ 戦友は今でも満州の荒れた冷たい石の下だ。ロシアから賠償金も取れず、元屯田兵の手元に残ったものはやせた土地だけ。我々の戦争はまだ終わっていない)

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14. HOWLING (遠吠え TŌBOE)

First printed: 20/November/2014 Weekly Young Jump 51

Characters: Asirpa (アシㇼパ), Sugimoto Saichi (杉元 佐一), Osoma (オソマ), Huci (フチ), Makanakkuru (マカナックル), Retar (レタㇻ), Wilk (ウイルク), Ainu kids.

Location: Asirpa’s village near Otaru, near Otaru.

Other Places mentioned: None

Time: 1907/1908 (?) Late February

Historical events mentioned: None

Includes flashbacks or info about the characters past: Yes, about Asirpa, Wilk and Retar.

Info and the characters’ theories about the ‘Noppera-bō incident’, the gold and the escape: None.

Character deaths: None.

Animal deaths: River otter

New Ainu words:

- Esaman: River otter

- Kisarri: “Long-eared monster”. A toy of some sort you wave standing outside a window making terrifying noise to scare the children inside.

- Uko Karip Ciwe: “Ring catch”. An Ainu children’s game in which everyone competes to catch a ring made from vines and tossed into the air.

- Ratcako: A light stand that holds a scallop shell that contains whale or fish oil.

- Aca: “Father”.

- Sugimoto Nispa. Asirpa anakne kueyam pe ne. Neita pakno turano an wa unkoraye yan.: “Mr. Sugimoto. Asirpa means more to me than anything in the world. Please always be there for her.”

Food and drinks: River otter cut into bite sized chunks cooked into a ohaw with pukusa (alpine leeks), windflower, daikon and burdock root. Also boiled river otter head.

Useful info and points to ponder:

- According to Ainu, River Otter/Esaman are incredibly forgetful Kamuy, so eating them or mentioning them would cause people to forget things.

- Sugimoto is a complete fail at making scary sounds. Asirpa instead excels at them.

- Makanakkuru tells Sugimoto that while Asirpa and her father were out hunting one day they saved a tiny wolf cub from a bear. Since it looked like a tiny snowman they named it Retar, “White”. Asirpa and Retar were inseparable but after Asirpa’s father died they went up into the mountains however on a night they heard a howling and despite Asirpa’s pleading Retar to come back and not leave her, retar left, leaving her behind to cry for him and her father.

- Makanakkuru comments that Asirpa may act mature for her age but in the end she’s a lonely, fragile little girl who had smiled rarely since that day but recently seemed much happier because she enjoyed her time in the mountains with Sugimoto.

- Makanakkuru too, like Huci points out, how Asirpa, up till then, after her father’s death had lived for most of the time alone on the mountains, especially after Retar too left her. Likely this wasn’t just because she liked to be there but also because, due to the pain of her father’s loss, she has tried reducing her chances to form attachment to others in fear of losing them as she’s afraid to be abandoned again, something that Inkarmat will remark as well and that’s a fear she carried within herself from when the bear cub she loved like a brother died. Her isolation protected her from pain but, at the same time, bereft her of happiness. Humans are social animals though and, as she got closer to Sugimoto, as Makanakkuru noticed, she became much happier.

- Makanakkuru calls Sugimoto ‘Sugimoto-san’.

- Noda has Huci talk to Sugimoto but as no one translates what she says, he doesn’t know what she’s peaking about yet he still says he understands and that she means that she and everyone in the village love Asirpa very much. This is because Noda is subtly telling us Sugimoto is an “unreliable narrator” of some sort. In fact in many manga the main character’s interpretation of an event is THE RIGHT INTERPRETATION. However we’ve already seen more than once how ‘Sugimoto’s vision’ doesn’t match with the truth. He thinks Gotou is harmless and a guy who tells tall tales… he’s not. He thinks the men of the 7th trying to get the gold are the dregs of the unit… they’re not. He thinks Asirpa doesn’t care about him… she does. He thinks the soldiers won’t follow Asirpa… they do. He thinks the Ainu are unfriendly… they aren’t. He thinks Makkanakkuru has bad intentions… he saves his life. He thinks Huci is telling him she loves Asirpa very much which pushes him to leave her behind… when at the end of the volume in an extra page we see Huci is also telling him not to leave him. And in future chapters he will interpret things in the wrong way again and again. Sugimoto is not stupid, he’s simply not perceptive. He presents things as he sees them through his experiences but his role as main character doesn’t insure his interpretation is right so we can’t take Sugimoto’s opinions/interpretations as the one of a reliable narrator and therefore as facts just because he’s the main character, as he’s often wrong.

- I wonder if, while watching Asirpa playing with the other children, Sugimoto in a way felt cut out. Not that he was jealous of them but he probably realized those children were Asirpa’s words, she was meant to play with them and have fun. On the opposite Sugimoto has no one he was meant to be with, he’s with Asirpa, in her village, but he doesn’t belong to that place. While Asirpa has people who care for her he has no one. Yet he has grown attached to her as well, we see he thinks at her with fondness but then he thinks at her when he escaped from the 7th and frowns, realizing he has put her in danger. So he does to her the same thing he has done to Umeko. He leaves her behind because he doesn’t want to put people HE CARES FOR in danger (he knew when they were escaping she too was in danger but back then he didn’t care about her as much as he cared about her now so he wasn’t overly concerned… now he is). However this time the thing is even worse because not only he doesn’t discuss the thing with her or at least say her goodbye or talks with an adult, let’s say Makanakkuru, but just leaves in the night. It’s clearly painful for him but, despite hearing more than once that Asirpa has issues with abandonment, he’s abandoning her and the people who have welcomed him. Asirpa wants to have faith in him but Shiraishi interpreted his behavior as him double crossing her, stealing the skins and running away. Overall this would deserve a long discussion but that’s not the place for it.

- Before leaving Sugimoto would like to caress the sleeping bear cub yet hesitates. This is not so much for the bear cub but for himself. In this moment he’s leaving he’s keeping it at distance to make the separation less painful… which is partly probably why he doesn’t say goodbye to Asirpa either.

Notable changes from the magazine version: In the magazine the translation of what Huci said was placed in a note in the page in which she’s speaking. In the volume the translation is placed at the end of the volume.

Notable quotes:

- Makanakkuru: “Asirpa may act mature for her age, but in the end she's still a lonely, fragile little girl… Asirpa has rarely smiled since that day, but recently, it seems like she's been much happier. She must be enjoying her time in the mountains with you, Sugimoto.” (‘Otonabite wa iruga Asirpa wa samishigariya no itaikena kodomona noda. Son'na koto ga atte kara Asirpa wa egao o misenaku nattaga, saikin wa zuibun to akaruku natta. Sugimoto-san to yama ni iru no ga tanoshī ndarou’ 大人びてはいるがアシㇼパは寂しがり屋のいたいけな子供なのだ。そんなことがあってからアシㇼパは笑顔を見せなくなったが、最近はずいぶんと明るくなった。杉元さんと山にいるのが楽しいんだろう)

- Sugimoto: “…I understand, Grandma. I know you love Asirpa very much. You and everyone in this village.” (‘… Wakatta yo obāchan. Asirpa-san wa obachan ni aisa re teru nda na. Mura no min'na ni mo’ …わかったよお婆ちゃん。アシㇼパさんはお婆ちゃんに愛されてるんだな。村のみんなにも)

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15. SCENT (におい NIOI)

First printed: 04/December/2014 Weekly Young Jump 1

Characters: Asirpa (アシㇼパ), Sugimoto Saichi (杉元 佐一), Retar (レタㇻ), prostitute, Umeko (梅子), Toraji and Umeko’s child, Umeko’s mother, pimp (妓夫太郎 ‘Gifutarō’), owner of the Soba restaurant, Nikaidō Kōhei (二階堂 浩平), Nikaidō Yōhei (二階堂 洋平),

Location: Near Otaru, Otaru.

Other Places mentioned: Umeko’s house in her village in the Kanto area

Time: 1907/1908 (?) March

Historical events mentioned: Russo-Japanese war (8 February 1904  – 5 September 1905)

Includes flashbacks or info about the characters past: Yes, about Sugimoto, Umeko, Toraji and Toraji and Umeko’s child and about the pimp.

Info and the characters’ theories about the ‘Noppera-bō incident’, the gold and the escape: None.

Character deaths: Toraji (killed during the war)

Animal deaths: None.

New Ainu words:

- Ipapkeni: Deer whistle

Food and drinks: Nishin Soba

Useful info and points to ponder:

- The chapter starts with Asirpa immediately pointing out how Sugimoto’s escape in the night wasn’t selfless but “too selfish” (勝手すぎる ‘Katte sugiru’). They were working together for a reason, because it helped both of them. Him leaving only means Asirpa will have to work alone, not that she’ll give up.

- Again, although Noda remarks Sutu aren’t to be used lightly, he presents Asirpa planning to whack Sugimoto with it in punishment, in an humorous light.

- It should have been complicate for Asirpa to explain Huci, who believed Sugimoto to be her future husband, why he was missing.

- Asirpa’s behaviour though, contrast with Umeko’s, at least as far as we know. Even though both were worried for him, Umeko let Sugimoto go, Asirpa chased him.

- Presented with the problem of a missing Sugimoto, Asirpa first checks all the hunting huts then decides that trying to find him in Otaru would be too difficult for her and therefore she needs Retar’s help. In order to get it he tries to lure him using a deer whistle, hoping if he hears the sound of a prey he would run to her. Actually though it seems Retar came because from Asirpa’s scent he could tell she needed help. This gives us an idea of how distressed Asirpa was if Retar thought he needed to go help her.

- Sugimoto, seeing a prostitute, thinks she’s Umeko. Although there’s a vague resemblance this is also likely because he desperately wants to see her.

- Seeing a woman that looks like Umeko triggers in Sugimoto a flashback. Toraji’s child has grown enough he can stand and talk. He brings flowers to his mother and, due to her sight deteriorating, Umeko recognizes them thanks to her sense of smell. In chap 100 we’ll learn it’s springtime. In that moment a soldier (Sugimoto) arrives. He’s dirty and unshaved. He hands to a woman who might be a servant or a relative what he says to be all that’s left of Toraji, his finger. The woman bows, telling him they had given up on recovering his remains and thanking him… before realizing he looks familiar and asking him if he’s Sugimoto Saichi-san. At this Umeko comes closer, her child clinging to her and asks him if he’s really ‘Saichi-chan’. He turns away from her but Umeko seems happy as she admits she can only see a blur and asks him if he has come back home. However she catches a scent that makes her shudder and asks him who he is. Sugimoto sees himself in his army uniform covered I blood, wondering what did he smell like to her and saying the person he was is dead, wondering if, should she regain her sight, would she recognize him.

- It’s worth to point out it’s implied Toraji lost both arms and legs so… where did Sugimoto got that finger? Is it really Toraji or is he bringing her some bones to ease her heart?

- When Sugimoto stops the prostitute and realizes it’s not Umeko he tells himself that of course it’s not her as Umeko wouldn’t be selling her body at some port town in the frozen north but he also tells himself he has to do something and fast. Although Sugimoto says so, it’s likely just to reassure himself. He doesn’t know how Umeko’s situation is. Even though it’s unlikely she would sell her body in Otaru, she might be selling her body at home. Meanwhile, as he tries to find the gold her sight deteriorates… and the irony of him telling himself he has to hurry up when we know that more than a year will be gone with him still not having found the gold is rather cruel but at the same time this is a call back at the story of the hare of chap 8. For the greed of getting all the gold Sugimoto had been running after it through all the story getting also horribly wounded and killing more people when he could have tried to just get a job and remain near Umeko. Maybe he would have never managed to collect enough money to heal her eyes but he could have supported her.

- Sugimoto goes asking for info to the pimp who wanted to sell Asirpa to a brothel. The guy, despite wanting to sell Asirpa, tells Sugimoto that if he finds the guy, with a really strange tattoo, who hurt a prostitute in a friend’s brothel will make it worth his while because he was born and raised in a brothel and won’t forgive assholes who go around hurting prostitutes. Now… while it’s nice he cares and even the past time he worried that Asirpa was there to taunt his girls… well, he wanted to sell Asirpa. Is this guy who claims to care for prostitutes’ well being, unable to understand that forcing someone into the profession is a quite horrible thing to do? Or is it a mere racist matter, because Asirpa was an Ainu he was sure there was nothing wrong in selling her as if she were a thing? Still he doesn’t send Sugimoto there to sell him to the 7th because the pimp will cooperate with Shiraishi too and won’t try to sell Shiraishi to the 7th.

- The guy who hurt the prostitute the pimp was talking about was clearly Ushiyama by the way.

- We’ve another example of Sugimoto’s poor perception sense. The woman at the Soba restaurant that also works as a brothel tells him she’ll bring the girl immediately and, in the meanwhile, he should have a bowl of soba. As Sugimoto eats she goes to call the men of the 7th instead with Sugimoto not suspecting a single thing and not even realizing she’s taking too long.

- Sugimoto says he’s a Kanto guy… which is something we could have guessed as he was in the 1st division that’s the Tokyo division but it’s nice to have confirmation he’s from that area as Aoyama Kenkichi for example, despite not being from the Kanto area, will join the 1st division.

- When the Nikaidō brother comes in the soba shop searching for the guy looking for tattoo, Sugimoto kicks them both, sending them flying. This prompt another soldier to try to attack him. Sugimoto sends him on the ground and steps on his face, likely breaking his nose (well, at least he didn’t step on his throat). However there are three more soldiers who aim at him their weapons. Sugimoto acted out of instinct and fought well however not only his attack made him really suspicious, but the people he attacked are other veterans who were merely doing their job and who, due to the war, possess the same instinct of him to kill who attacks them so it’s no surprise if the Nikaidō brothers will inscribe him in the list of the people they want dead.

- As Yōhei and Kōhei look almost the same, it’s hard to understand who is who. If you want some help recognizing them Yōhei is the one with the puttees, who’ll hit Sugimoto’s legs and then give Sugimoto’s face a real beating with the butt of his rifle. Kōhei is the one who pointed his rifle at him and told him to get down so that when he were to shoot at him the bullet won’t hit anyone and who told Yōhei to stand back because he wanted to kill him right now. After Yōhei’s death Kōhei will start wearing puttees.

- Both brothers are bleeding profusely through their nose and, possibly their mouths, bruises on their faces due to Sugimoto’s kick, but while Yōhei is just being violent, Kōhei would just kill Sugimoto and get done with it. After Yōhei’s death Kōhei had probably blamed himself a lot for not killing Sugimoto that day, when he had the chance.

Notable changes from the magazine version: None

Notable quotes:

- Umeko: “Who… are you?” (‘Anata… donate?’ あなた…どなた?)

- Sugimoto: “Ume... just what did I smell like to you? The Saichi you knew... is probably long gone. Even if your eyes are healed, will you really know that it's me...?” (‘Ume-chan… ore wa don'na nioi ga shita? Ume-chan no shitteru ore wa mō konoyo ni inai nodarou ka. Me ga naotte mo sugu ni oreda to wakatte kureru ka na’ 梅ちゃん… 俺はどんな臭いがした？梅ちゃんの知ってる俺はもうこの世にいないのだろうか。眼が治ってもすぐに俺だと分かってくれるかな Lit: “Ume-chan ... What did I smell like? The me known by Ume-chan probably isn’t in this world anymore. Even if your eyes heal… will you immediately understand that it’s me?”)

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16. SHINIGAMI (死神 SHINIGAMI)

First printed: 11/December/2014 Weekly Young Jump 2

Characters: Tsurumi Tokushirō (鶴見 篤四郎), Sugimoto Saichi (杉元 佐一), Tamai (玉井), Ogata Hyakunosuke (尾形 百之助), Nikaidō Kōhei (二階堂 浩平), Nikaidō Yōhei (二階堂 洋平), Asirpa (アシㇼパ), Retar (レタㇻ)

Location: Otaru, near Otaru.

Other Places mentioned: Hanazono park in Otaru, 203 hill in Port Arthur (current Lüshunkou) (China).

Time: 1907/1908 (?) March

Historical events mentioned: Russo-Japanese war (8 February 1904  – 5 September 1905) Siege of Port Arthur (1 August 1904 – 2 January 1905),

Includes flashbacks or info about the characters past: Yes, about Sugimoto and Tsurumi.

Info and the characters’ theories about the ‘Noppera-bō incident’, the gold and the escape: None

Character deaths: Russian soldiers.

Animal deaths: None.

New Ainu words: None.

Food and drinks: Dango skewers.

Useful info and points to ponder:

- It’s Tsurumi who saves Sugimoto’s life from the Nikaidō’s brothers who wanted to kill him, claiming he didn’t want him dead yet. However, as he saw him fighting, it means he also saw the brothers hitting him over and over and didn’t stop them.

- Tsurumi too uses ‘Watashi’ (私). However he doesn’t use ‘kisama’ (貴様 “You”) for Sugimoto but ‘omae’ (お前 “You”). Is he trying to sound more friendly or less?

- Tsurumi introduces himself saying he’s Sugimoto’s ‘Shinigami’ (死神 “God of death”) and that he can blow Sugimoto’s candle anytime. This is a reference to a Japanese myth of human lives being represented by candles and the Shinigami snuffing the out to kill a person.  In early Meiji era there was a famous Rakugo program titled “Shinigami” which referenced this idea.

- Sugimoto, with a good poker face, says he’s working for a guy whose favourite prostitute got hurt by a guy with a tattoo and that wants Sugimoto to beat said guy. Sugimoto says he asked the old lady to bring out the girl but when he saw people with guns he tried to escape. While this time his story is closer to the truth (he was actually sent there by a pimp, not by a customer) this doesn’t change the fact he has overreacted. The ones with the guns were soldiers and if he really meant no harm and is no criminal he shouldn’t have attacked them to try to escape. Tsurumi doesn’t buy it at all and doesn’t even bother to hide it, though, to Sugimoto’s credits, what really damns him is that Tsurumi saw his way of fighting and recognized him.

- There are 3 soldiers in the room in addition to Tsurumi and Sugimoto, though we can only see the Nikaidō brothers. The anime is of no help as, apart from increasing the number to 4, it doesn’t show them.

- Tsurumi’s interrogation method is clever. He figured Sugimoto was a tough nut to crack so he let Sugimoto talk without countering anything, so Sugimoto doesn’t know his cards he only knows Tsurumi isn’t buying it. Then he distracts him with sweets, which, as Sugimoto admits, is something he doesn’t commonly have, causing him to relax and lower his guard, to casually mention the word immortal, saying one of his men, who barely survive, wrote it with his finger. It works to send Sugimoto, who has not even finished his dango, into a hurry to escape, which is nothing else but a confession. As to deliver the final blow comes the accusation, he’s the one who sent Ogata to hospital, complete with Sugimoto’s name and nickname.

- Sugimoto, who knows he’s screwed, find nothing else to do but annoy the Nikaidō brothers, increasing the grudge they feel toward him. It’s not because Sugimoto gets off on this but because this gives him some measure of control and, therefore of confidence. In fact he manages to sit down calmly and insist he’s not Sugimoto.

- Tsurumi tells Sugimoto he has seen him fighting at Port Arthur once, although Sugimoto was a little away he was fighting like a ‘Kishin’ and Tsurumi couldn’t tear his eyes away from him.

- In hindsight the fact Tsurumi couldn’t tear his eyes away from Sugimoto should have told us that a man who’s fascinated by such brutal murdering method is up to no good.

- Tsurumi concludes he recognized Sugimoto by the way Sugimoto fought in the soba shop. Meaning if Sugimoto had let himself be arrested pacifically Tsurumi might not have recognized him.

- Sugimoto keeps calm and denies it. His poker face is back in place but this time he doesn’t have a lie ready.

- When Tsurumi hits right on the spot again, surprising him by realizing Sugimoto has the tattooed skins Sugimoto feels the need to regain confidence again by acting confident and vaguely insulting (he asks if Tsurumi is insane).

- Tsurumi plays along, allowing the tension to drop then… stabs Sugimoto with the skewer and Sugimoto failed to realize if he wanted to insist denying of being Sugimoto he had to react. He just remained there, without even blinking, which proves he’s Sugimoto the immortal.

- Tsurumi subtly hints at how he’s a man who can adapt himself. If the fire of Sugimoto’s candle is an immortal flame he’ll just destroy the candle. We’ll see through the story he’s not one who can’t adapt to the situation but stubbornly insist on the same way.

- Asirpa’s plan is to track Sugimoto by having Retar smell a sock he left behind and search for him by nightfall as Retar stands out too much.

- Tsurumi continues delineating his modus operandi. He tells Sugimoto if he wants to survive he has to join him. This parallels how he’ll tell Ariko that if he wants his family to survive he’ll have to side with him. It also tells us something about Tsurumi. He understood that Sugimoto has a strong wish to live, that he’s alone and that he’s angry and proud of his ability as a fighter, in fact, after the stick, ‘I’ll kill you if you don’t join me’, he presents him with the carrot, the carrot being his great plan to conquer Hokkaido in which Sugimoto can avenge himself from how he didn’t gain anything from the army and hope to have a place, with an extra spoon of sugar when he says that Sugimoto is the courageous soldier he needs. People are always who Tsurumi needs, he says the same to Tanigaki too. It’s also worth to compare this speech with the one Tsurumi had with Asirpa in vol 21. Tsurumi is in control here, after scaring Sugi he explains him something trying to make him feel involved on an emotional level and appreciated. It’s probably a variation of his usual speech for soldiers. With Asirpa he never had such plan to win her over in fact he doesn’t even try to talk with her but just orders to take her away. It’s Asirpa who engages him in a discussion but he hardly attempt to win her over with his speech which was more likely a pretence for his men and Sugimoto than for her.

- Tsurumi claims he has lost many men due to the war claiming he has less than a hundred scattered all over Hokkaido. I do wonder if he says so to get Sugimoto’s sympathy by mentioning the ones who died in the war. Men are, after all, conscripted each year so Tsurumi should have already got a replenishment unless they decided to simply give him less men because there’s not a war at the moment… though of course Tsurumi might wish more he has.

- Sugimoto’s question reveals his feelings on the idea of the men of the 7th wanting the gold. He thinks they only want it in order to get rich. He doesn’t imagine they might want it to do something.

- Tsurumi makes clear the gold isn’t to share among them but to use for military expenditures, informing Sugimoto as well of how they took army from Asahikawa but those aren’t enough and then presenting him with what looks superficially like a grandiose plan but making it really simple and easy. Basically Tsurumi’s plan, even explained in such a simple manner, is extremely disadvantageous for his men who would see no gold and take a huge risk above them becoming rebels. However as he seems so confident and try to play on emotions his plan doesn’t seem so bad.

- When Tsurumi talks of heroes on the battlefield destined to the life of vagrants he’s very likely referring to Sugimoto only, as his men aren’t vagrants but still in service, while Sugimoto seems to be one. In fact Japanese is vague enough we can’t tell if he’s referring to more people or just to Sugimoto.

- Sugimoto refuses, removing the stick that’s through his cheeks. As he’ll state later it’s not like he’s against Tsurumi’s plan, it he has another priority (he needs money fast for Umeko and he thinks he can get it by finding the gold) and he’s afraid of consequences because he hid the skins with the weapons of the other soldiers he killed.

- Since the carrot didn’t work Tsurumi returns to the stick by going back on threatening him in hope to force him to comply. Sugimoto should have remembered this experience in which, even though he had 2 skins, Tsurumi didn’t try to come to compromises with him and tortured him to get what he wanted instead than thinking Asirpa would have some leverage with Tsurumi just because she knew the code.

Notable changes from the magazine version: None

Notable quotes:

- Tsurumi: “I'm your Shinigami. Your life is a candle, and I can blow it out any time I choose.” (‘Watashi wa omae no shinigamida. Omae no jumyō no rōsoku wa watashi ga itsu demo fuki keseru zo.’ 私はお前の死神だ。お前の寿命のロウソクは私がいつでも吹き消せるぞLit: “I'm your death god. I can blow out the candle of your life anytime.”)

- Tsurumi: “We were heroes on the battlefield. but once we got home, all that awaited us was the pathetic life of a vagrant. Did we gain anything for our service? I'd say we lost far more than we gained wouldn't you? A courageous soldier like you is exactly who I want in my army. Let us fight together, Sugimoto!” (‘Senjōde wa eiyūdattanoni furusato e kaereba hōrō seikatsu. Nani ka mukuwa reta ka? Ushinatta mono no kata ga ōku wanai ka? Watashi wa omae no yō ni yūmōna heishi ga hoshī. Wareware to tomoni tatakatte kure’ 戦場では英雄だったのに故郷へ帰れば放浪生活。何か報われたか？失ったものの方が多くはないか？私はお前のように勇猛な兵士が欲しい。我々と共に戦ってくれ Lit: “Although you were a hero on the battlefield, you returned home to a wandering life. Did you gain something? Wasn’t it more what you lost? I want a brave soldier like you. Fight with us.”)

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17. TRACKERS (追跡者 TSUISEKI-SHA)

First printed: 18/December/2014 Weekly Young Jump 3

Characters: Asirpa (アシㇼパ), Retar (レタㇻ), Shiraishi Yoshitake (白石 由竹), Sugimoto Saichi (杉元 佐一), Tsurumi Tokushirō (鶴見 篤四郎), Noma (野間), Okada (岡田), Tamai (玉井), Nikaidō Kōhei (二階堂 浩平), Nikaidō Yōhei (二階堂 洋平)

Location: Otaru.

Other Places mentioned: None

Time: 1907/1908 (?) March

Historical events mentioned: Russo-Japanese war (8 February 1904  – 5 September 1905)

Includes flashbacks or info about the characters past: Yes, about Sugimoto and Nikaidō Yōhei

Info and the characters’ theories about the ‘Noppera-bō incident’, the gold and the escape: None

Character deaths: None

Animal deaths: None

New Ainu words:

- Cinoyetat: rolled birch bark used as a torch

Food and drinks: Dango skewers

Useful info and points to ponder:

- Asirpa can ride Retar.

- Asirpa, believing she has found Sugimoto, does what was implied in chap 15, hits him by surprise on the head with her Sutu without checking it’s him first.

- Asirpa calls Shiraishi ‘Dappun-ō’ (脱糞王 “Defecation king”), instead than ‘Datsugoku-ō’ (脱獄王 “Escape king”). Scanlations go with “Excrement king” because similarly sounding to “Escape King” and close enough to “Defecation king”. It’s worth to note Asirpa likely remembers how he’s called but she hadn’t forgotten he made the Ainu=dog ‘joke’ in chap 6, and will keep on calling Shiraishi the wrong way until he volunteers to bring her in Abashiri chap 49.

- Shiraishi won’t use the Ainu=dog joke again but just call her ‘Ainu no Gaki’ (アイヌのガキ “Ainu brat”). ‘Gaki’ is not very polite but it’s pretty common to use to refer to a kid. Problem is Asirpa doesn’t like to be viewed as a kid.

- This chapter starts the beginning of the recurring gag of animals biting Shiraishi’s head wih Retar doing so trice, each time Shiraishi annoys Asirpa.

- Shiraishi might have noticed Sugimoto took the wrong sock… yet Sugimoto didn’t.

- Shiraishi summarizes Asirpa’s situation as ‘Sugimoto double-crossing her, stealing the skins and running away’ which is likely what Asirpa fears he did but she’s trying to hope that’s not the case.

- The model for Shiraishi Yoshitake ended up in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. There’s to wonder if the Shiraishi too was betrayed as he ended in jail for stealing but we never saw him stealing anything.

- We learn Shiraishi is always up with local info, and therefore knows Sugimoto got involved in a fight and was arrested by the 7th.

- Hearing Sugimoto is in danger Asirpa points one of her poisoned arrows at him, demanding he’ll take her there. It’s unlikely she had the time to remove the poison so if she were to shoot by mistake, as she herself explain, Shiraishi would die quickly. She said she didn’t want to kill anyone so I think she only wants to threaten Shiraishi but if she were to let go of the arrow by mistake she would kill him. This works as a huge hint that Asirpa might end up changing her stance of ‘I won’t kill anyone’ to ‘I’ll kill for Sugimoto’.

- Shiraishi shows again he’s clever. He didn’t fight Asirpa, he takes time and escape. His only problem is he doesn’t how good Retar is as a tracker.

- Asirpa informs Shiraishi no one can escape Retar’s tracking ability, not even if one were to hide in a toilet. Shiraishi will remember this.

- Tsurumi clearly had Sugimoto tortured in attempt to get him to tell him where the skins were. Sugimoto’s face is blending much more than before, and he has two skewers pulled through his cheeks (remember he removed the previous one Tsurumi stuck through him). Sugimoto is a tough guy who wouldn’t have talked easily yet Tsurumi tortured him to get him to talk. What in the world gave Sugimoto the idea Tsurumi wouldn’t have tortured Asirpa to get what he wanted from her without having to give her anything in exchange? Also note that sadly, back then, torturing people to get them to talk, was a pretty common practice so it’s not even surprising or considered particularly evil.

- Sugimoto’s reasoning is flawed. He thinks he couldn’t have pretended to join them because he wouldn’t have fooled Tsurumi as Tsurumi knew he had tattooed skins and would want them in exchange but Sugimoto hit them along with the equipment he looted off the soldiers the bear killed. Basically he’s afraid they would believe he killed those soldiers and kill him in retaliation Honestly I don’t think Tsurumi wouldn’t care but this isn’t the real problem. The real problem is he thinks everything went down the drain because he tried to do it by himself. In truth everything went wrong merely because he did it poorly. If he’d done everything in the same way but Asirpa had been with him when he was arrested, the only result he would have bought home is that Tsurumi would have had the both of them. However it’s clear he feels alone so the idea this is the reason why he’s in trouble probably stems from this.

- What’s also worrisome is… ‘when did he hid the weapons?’ Did he do so after they died, before reaching Asirpa, losing even more time before going to check on her? Or did he do so afterward? But if that’s the case why didn’t he try to retrieve Tanigaki’s weapon also? Because if he had, he would have realized Tanigaki was very much alive and walked away on his own.

- Nikaidō Kōhei calls Sugimoto ‘Kushi dango yarō’ (串団子野郎 “Skewer dumpling bastard”), mocking him because Tsurumi put through him skewers.

- The Nikaidō brothers are clearly people to hold grudges. Being first kicked by Sugimoto and after having him make fun of them set them on their hardest in paying him back and it only will get worse from here. We know nothing about their past so it’s hard to say if the war turned them like that (it sadly happened to way too many soldiers) or something else triggered it or they were like that right from the start. We’ll see if we’ll ever get more backstory.

- As Yōhei and Kōhei look almost the same it’s hard to understand who is who. Kōhei is the one who doesn’t believe the guy they caught is Sugimoto while Yōhei, noticing the swelling on Sugimoto’s face has gone down, thinks he might be Sugimoto and considers cutting out his guts (something that will inspire Sugimoto later on). Kōhei points out they can’t kill him if they want info from him so Yōhei would like to force Sugimoto to talk by cutting off his finger. He makes the mistake of getting to close to Sugimoto who hits his face with his head, causing him to lose a tooth. Yōhei is also the one who manages to partially stab Sugimoto, while Kōhei’s head gets trapped by Sugimoto’s legs.

- I’m starting to think everyone and their mom knew Sugimoto during the war. Even Yōhei says he heard rumors about him regarding how he recovered overnight from wounds the doctors thought were fatal.

- Yōhei remains the more violent prone while Yōhei remains the most rational. Where Yōhei just wants to cut Sugimoto’s guts out K ō ehi reasons they need him alive.

- While Yōhei seems to be there just to kill/hurt Sugimoto, there’s to wonder if the twins were actually there to get him to tell them where the skins were without Tsurumi hearing, as it’ll turn out they actually were in a rebellion with Ogata, Tamai and the others.

- Assorted translations more or less agree that when Sugimoto speaks up the first time, he mumbles something unintelligible. In the anime they actually have him asks Yōhei if he was the one who hit him in the soba shop. In the volume version though Sugimoto didn’t talk enough to voice that whole sentence as he only says ‘bonbon’ (ボンボン). While yes, it’s likely meant to be an unintelligible sound, ironically enough it’s Koito’s nick which  means “pampered rich boy”… but it’s unlikely that’s what Sugimoto is saying as I don’t think Yōhei fits the description.

- Sugimoto shows his best skill is dealing with close contact enemies. He fakes being weak, whispers to get Yōhei close and then takes advantage of it to strike him, manages to break the chair so as to manage to bring in front of himself his tie hand, to stop Yōhei from further stabbing him and to restrain Yōhei. This is impressive (and also a bit unbelievable as it seems adults with normal bodies can’t just manage to bring forwards their hands if they were tied behind themselves.)

- As he’s stabbed Sugimoto yells his catchphrase, “I’m Sugimoto the immortal”.

Notable changes from the magazine version: None

Notable quotes:

- Asirpa: “Huh? You're not Sugimoto.You're  the "Excrement King"…what was your name again?” (‘Are? Sugi moto janai. Omae wa tashika…“dappun-ō” no…’ あれ？杉元じゃない。お前は確か…『脱糞王』の… Lit: “Huh? You’re not Sugimoto. You are...  the “Defecating King” ...”)

- Shiraishi: “That's "Escape King!" and the name's Shiraishi Yoshitake!” (‘“Ore wa “Datsugoku-ō” no Shiraishi Yoshitake da!’ 俺は『脱獄王』の白石由竹だ！ Lit: “I’m the “Escape King” Shiraishi Yoshitake!”)

- Shiraishi: “So, let me guess…Sugimoto double crossed you didn't he? I bet he just stole the skins and ran away! It all makes sense now. that means the rumour I heard really was about Sugimoto.” (‘Nanda omae… sateha sugi moto ni uragira reta na? Irezumi no kawa o mochinige sa reta ndaro. Naruhodo gatten ga itta ze. Yahari ano uwasa wa sugi motodatta ka’ 何だおまえ…さては杉元に裏切られたな？入れ墨の皮を持ち逃げされたんだろ。なるほど合点がいったぜ。やはりあの噂は杉元だったか)

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VOLUME COLOR GALLERY

#Golden Kamuy #Wilk #Retar #Hijikata Toshizou #Ogata Hyakunosuke #Tsurumi Tokushirou #Shiraishi Yoshitake #Makanakkuru #Nikaidou Kouhei #Nikaidou Youhei #Osoma #Tanigaki Genjirou #Tsukishima Hajime #Golden Kamuy Data Hunting #Sugimoto Saichi #Asirpa #Kenmochi Umeko #Kenmochi Toraji #Noma Naoaki #Okada Fumio #Tamai Houzou #Susupo #Wada Kouji #Gotou Takechiyo #Kasahara Kanjirou

[duhragonball]

[FIC] Luffa: The Legendary Super Saiyan (102/?)

Disclaimer: This story features characters and concepts based on Dragon Ball, which is a trademark of Bird Studio/Shueisha and Toei Animation.   This is an unauthorized work, and no profit is being made on this work by me. This story is copyright of me. Download if you like, but please don’t archive it without my permission. Don’t be shy.

Continuity Note: About 1000 years before the events of Dragon Ball Z.

Previous Chapters conveniently available here.

[30 January, 233 Before Age.   Planet Server’la.]

Over the next six weeks, Guwar had learned a great deal about his new partners, but very little about the object of their search.

Treekul, the only non-Saiyan in the group, was an alchemical historian.    She knew a few techniques for preparing mystical elixirs and so on, but her main focus of study was the lore.    Unlike the sciences of chemistry and biology, which made progress through rigorous documentation and peer review, alchemy was a secret discipline, with reclusive masters teaching on a select handful of students.   When they recorded their work at all, it was always done in an esoteric style.   Simple instructions were expressed as complex riddles.   Ingredients were given symbolic codenames which would be meaningless to the uninitiated.   Typically, an alchemical scroll promised much: immortality, mastery over living things, the power to transmute lead into gold.   But once you actually sat down and read them, they delivered very little: Vague sermons, arcane philosophical tracts, and references to other works which were conveniently unavailable.   Guwar had heard about this sort of thing, and always assumed it was an enormous bluff, no different from the way he would use the Saiyans' reputation to make himself seem more powerful than he actually was.  

And yet, Treekul seemed to be able to make sense of it all, at least to a certain extent.   She had shown him a few documents she had worked on in the past, and explained how she was able to filter the "important stuff" from the "crap", as she put it.  Part of the alchemical tradition was to deliberately add a lot of pointless fluff to one's writings, in order to disguise the true wisdom and to trick the unworthy into dismissing their sacred knowledge as nonsense.    "Once you've studied enough of their writings," she had told him, "you can start to decode it, and see what they were really talking about."

Treekul hailed from the Planet Clytemnestra, whose people had pale purple skin and dark green hair.   Treekul preferred to keep her own hair as short as possible, as she said it helped her focus on her research.    "Don't ask me why, but that extra quarter inch of growth on my head just makes me nuts," she had said one day while he saw her applying a trimmer to her scalp.   As a result, Guwar noticed that she tended to leave tiny green clippings behind everywhere she went.  

Endive, one of the Saiyans, was usually the one flying their ship.   She was a smuggler by trade, though she liked to find a good battle between jobs, much the same way that Guwar did when his mathematics skills weren't needed.   Like Guwar, she had been forced to scale back her recreational fighting ever since Luffa had begun cracking down on Saiyan activity.  

"I tried getting as far from Federation space as I could," she once told him.   "I found a nice little civil war on Rofos III.    They had mechs, triffles, and all sorts of interesting weapons.    I was in heaven... for all of two weeks, and then she showed up and ruined the whole thing.  That was when I made up my mind.    One way or another, I refuse to be pushed around again."

Endive never had much to say, but Guwar enjoyed hearing it, if only for the chance to admire her looks.   She had woven the end of her black hair in to a short, thick braid, which hung between her shoulder blades like a piece of halyard rope from a sailing ship.   The bridge of her nose was at a steep angle, which he found aesthetically pleasing, especially whenever she frowned.  Luckily for him, she frowned quite often, since the ship's navigation system wasn't quite up to her personal standards.    She and Treekul had recruited him into this group by tricking him into thinking he would get to sleep with one or both of them.   Watching Endive handle the controls of the ship, he often wished that there was a way to take her up on it.

As for Lesseri, he had dealt with her in the past, though he had always known her to be a ruthless, indomitable warrior.   For years he had envied her superior strength and financial success.   For example, the ship they now traveled in was hardly luxurious, but it was fast and well-armed, and comfortably quartered six people, which made it far nicer than the broken down one-seater Guwar had left behind on Paxul's Planet.   From afar, he had always thought Lesseri to be the model of what a Saiyan should be: a warrior who could go anywhere and do anything she pleased, because she had the might to enforce her own will.  

Now that he had lived with her for a while, and seen her ship from the inside, he realized they had more in common than either of them probably cared to admit.   Lesseri thought of herself as a weakling compared to other Saiyans, just as he saw himself.  This surprised Guwar at first, but the more he thought about it, the more sense it made.    There was always a bigger fish in the pond.  He had always thought Lesseri retreated from untenable situations because she was so cold and calculating, but the truth was that she was afraid of dying, just like everyone else.   She was farther ahead of him in the search for greater power, but the gap between them was insignificant compared to how far they each had to go.    In spite of their past enmity, Guwar was beginning to like her.   When their quest led to searching a tomb on an abandoned planet, he was happy to join her.

"I killed my mother," Lesseri told him as she punched her way through the wall that surrounded the necropolis.  They had been talking about family, and this was where the conversation had led.  

"Why?" Guwar asked.

"You know those procedures where you can have your embryos removed from your womb and gestated outside of your body?"

"No, I had no idea you could do that," Guwar said.   He had no interest in procreation, and since he lacked a uterus, he cared very little what others did with theirs.

Lesseri shook her head.   "Men," she groaned.   "A lot of Saiyan women do it when they get pregnant.    Back when Planet Saiya was still up and running, they practically ordered people to do it."

"Okay," Guwar said.  "What about it?"

"My mother did it through a private company, only she never came back to get me when it was time.    Growing up, it kind of pissed me off.  My sister, she used to make excuses.   She thought mom must have died in battle, or she couldn't pay the bills or something.    When I got older, I tracked her down.   Wasn't even that hard.   She wasn't even trying to hide."

"Must have been a hell of a fight," Guwar said as he doubled checked their coordinates.    

"Nah, I checked her out first before I confronted her.   She was too close to me in power.   I might have won, but there was no guarantee, and I wanted a guarantee.   That was how we both ended up training with Luffa."

Guwar nearly dropped his scanning device.   "You trained with Luffa?" he asked.  

"If you can call it that," Lesseri said.   "Mostly it was Luffa and her alien wife scolding us like we were naughty children.   The leader of the group, guy named Zaperc, he tried to start this 'movement' where we'd learn to become Super Saiyans ourselves.   My mother joined on, and so did I.    Didn't want to risk her learning anything that might make her stronger and protect her from my revenge.    Anyway, Luffa found out about Zaperc's group and took over the whole thing.   Not that there was much to take over, but I guess she didn't like the idea of trash like us taking her name in vain.  Anyway, I waited until the right moment, then I rigged a bomb on my mother's ship.    As soon as things went pear-shaped, I knew she'd try to run for it, and sure enough--"

Lesseri clapped her hands together for effect.    "Boom.  Luffa didn't like it, but she didn't care much for my mother either, so she just sort of stood there while I left."

"What did your sister think?" Guwar asked.

"Beats me," Lesseri said.   "I haven't seen her in years.   She might be dead.    Hold on, I think this is it."

Near the center of the necropolis was a large mausoleum that looked like a great stone chrysalis.   There were small alien creatures clinging to its surface, and the glossy surface of their chitinous shells made the entire structure seem almost alive.

"Yeah, I think this is the one we want.   Let me take some readings before we smash our way in.   Wouldn't want to break anything important."

"So what happened after that?" Guwar asked.

"After what?" Lesseri replied.

"After you killed your mother," Guwar said.   "I've never gotten revenge for anything before.  I wondered what it was like."

"To be honest, it felt kind of empty," Lesseri said.  "I didn't regret it, but I'd spent my whole life on that one goal, and then it was over.    Mostly, it stuck in my craw that I wasn't strong enough to kill the old bag directly.   Luffa had no business giving me her opinion on it, but she was right.   It would have been more satisfying to fight her instead of blowing her up.    Mom didn't deserve the honor, but at least if I'd beaten her fairly, I would have had something to be proud of."

"I suppose so," Guwar said.

"That was when I started looking for ways to get stronger.   I've had enough of people pushing me around like I'm some bystander.    Being a Saiyan used to mean something, but lately it just feels like it makes you a patsy for King Rehval, or Luffa, or anyone else who happens to hit the genetic lottery.    I wanted to make my own opportunity."

"And that was how you met Treekul?" Guwar asked.

"Exactly," Lesseri said.    "I've heard rumors about Saiyans using a technique called 'Jindan' to increase their power.    I know we haven't told you much about it, Guwar, but that's only because we don't know much more than you do.   It's not easy finding a Saiyan these days, so if there's anything to the rumors, these jacked up Saiyans are staying out of sight."

"If that's true," Guwar reasoned, "then maybe this Jindan thing isn't all it's cracked up to be.   The Saiyans who use Jindan still have to hide from Luffa just like the rest of us."

"Could be," Lesseri said, "but it could also mean that they don't want the competition finding out about their secret.    If everyone could use it--whatever 'it' is--then we'd all be right back where we started.    And even if it doesn't make you as strong as a Super Saiyan, it could still be a big gain.   I don't know about you, but I'll take whatever I can get."

"I'm picking up some unusual readings," Guwar said.   "But nothing Saiyan."

Lesseri checked her own scanner and then compared her results to his.    "Yeah, Treekul was afraid of something like this.    We'll have to take a few precautions before we break into this thing.   Give me a hand, will you?"

*******

Thousands of years ago,  a brilliant scholar was interred in a mausoleum.   Over time, his students were buried nearby, and as the scholar's wisdom of the natural world grew into legend, a superstition arose that those who were buried near his tomb would pass on a blessing to their descendants.   Centuries passed, and the scholar came to be revered as a god, whose worshipers believed would one day rise from the dead and rule over the planet.   It was said that those buried in the necropolis that surrounded his tomb would be revived as his holy servants.

Before the planet's intelligent life forms vanished, their history included several wars fought over this sacred ground.    Conquerors thought that by controlling the necropolis, they could convince others of their supremacy.    New religions attempted to assimilate the necropolis's mythical status into their own theologies.   During more enlightened times, scientists would attempt to study the graves to learn the truth behind the legends.   But the scholar's mausoleum was never successfully breached, for when the ancient one was having it built, he planned to take his greatest secrets with him into the hereafter.    To ensure that graverobbers would not plunder his great writings, he treated the interior of his tomb with a concoction of his own making.   It would make the stone heal itself when broken.   In case this was not enough to dissuade intruders, he prepared a guardian, an unliving creature that would become active when fresh air entered the tomb.   Its creator had named it Qursss, and it drew strength from the very earth surrounding the mausoleum.   Once unleashed, it would not rest until it had destroyed all living things in the vicinity.   When its grisly task was finished, it would lumber back into the tomb, which would then reseal itself.  

And so, when the first breeze of fresh air entered the tomb in over fifteen centuries, Qursss stirred and reawakened to its strange un-life.   A blue flame ignited from a pile of ashes, and then it grew, transmuting into a vaguely humanoid form cast in minerals and the bones of its past victims.   Without hesitation, it rushed towards the source of the air current, and wailed its fearsome warning to any who could hear.  

"Woe betide you, graverobbers!   Know that you have summoned Qursss the Unquenchable, and for daring to defile my master's resting place, you must pay with your lives!"

It saw light from the fissure in the stone, and then the crack exploded into an opening large enough for a person to enter.  

"Yeah, I see it now," Guwar said as he peeked inside to look at Qursss.    "We'd better lure the thing outside before we proceed."

Qursss roared as it chased after Guwar.    "Mortal fool!" it shouted.  "You have sealed your doom this day!   Qursss shall pursue you to the ends of the--"

It paused at the threshhold of the hole in the mausoleum.  Guwar stood just outside, waiting patiently for Qursss to follow him.    The only thing missing from this scene was the ground.  Guwar was standing in midair.    

"Looks like you were right," Guwar said.    "This creature's immortal, but it doesn't seem to be able to fly."

Beneath them, Qursss could hear a second intruder, and its primitive intellect slowly realized that she was carrying the entire mausoleum in her arms.     "Aw, well, if he’s too shy to step outside," Lesseri said, "I guess I'll have to give him some encouragement!"

The whole structure began to shake, and Qursss lost its balance.   Unable to react in time, it tumbled forward, and as it fell, it realized that it was thousands of feet in the air.  

It wanted to threaten its enemies, to warn them that such trickery would avail them nothing, since Qursss would follow them and destroy them for as long as it took to restore its master's tomb.    But it had already noticed the ocean below, and Qursss knew that its master had designed it to sleep in the absence of fresh air.    No, there could be no reprisal.  Qursss would sink like a stone once it hit the water, and Qursss would fall dormant for a very long time.   Perhaps one day, when the oceans themselves boiled away, Qursss would stir once more, but that would not be for a very long time.   There was absolutely nothing it could do.    The enemy had won.    

Its final thought, as its monstrous body shattered upon the water's surface, was to wonder why its master had never thought to give it wings.

*******

[31 January, 233 Before Age.    Interstellar Space.]

"What I don't understand," Guwar asked Treekul, "is how you found that planet in the first place.    It was uncharted, and it looked like no one had been there in centuries."

"Geomantic extrapolation," Treekul replied as she ran her finger over the text of the parchment the Saiyans had removed from the mausoleum.    "You're sure this was the only scroll you found in the tomb, right?"

"Positive," Guwar said.    "What was that you said a second ago?"

She sat up from her bunk and finally looked at him.   "Geomancy," she said.   "In my line of work, you can't rely on the people who write these things to actually help you by citing sources.    Sometimes you have to use other methods to connect the dots.    That planet you and Lesseri went to, I don't know what it's called, or the name of the guy who wrote this scroll, but it's written in the same language as the last four scrolls I studied, and uses symbols and notations he would have learned from an older master known as 'Server'.   Not his real name, by the way.  None of these guys ever used their real name."

"You... you really haven't answered my question," Guwar said.  

She pointed to a disc-shaped object hanging from the opposite wall of her cabin.    It appeared to be made of wood, and hundreds of tiny characters and sigils were written upon its surface.   "That's a geomantic compass," she said.    "Normally you use it for aligning ki energies with planetary fields, but a specialist can use it to locate objects bound by special connections.   Server's other disciples had most of the information I needed, but not all of it, so I calibrated my compass with information from the scrolls I had, and used that to point me in the general direction of the one that I didn't.   It's taken a lot of course corrections to narrow it down, but considering how long the planet's been lost, I think ten days was a pretty decent turnaround."

Guwar was beginning to understand how some of his clients felt whenever he explained the more complicated aspects of probability theory.   "Look," he said, "I just want to understand how this gets us any closer to Jindan.   Does that scroll mention it?   Does that mean it was invented thousands of years ago?"

"No, of course not," Treekul said.    "You have to understand how this works, Guwar.    All we really know about Jindan-- and I'm using the word 'know' very loosely-- is that it makes Saiyans stronger somehow, and it just happens to share the name of one of the terms used for the golden elixir, a central concept of alchemical thought.    Until we find out more, our best chance is to dig through old writings, and hopefully find scrolls and records that were used to invent this particular Jindan.    We do that, and we'll have something resembling a lead to what you three are after."

He made a long sigh when he heard this.   "It all sounds pretty hopeless," he said.  

She smiled and lay back down on her bunk.   "Trust me, Guwar, I've been digging up old secrets my whole career.   If there's something to be found, I'll find it.    It just takes time.  And the occasional defiling of an ancient burial ground, but you and Lesseri didn't seem to have much trouble with that at all.   Even if it takes us a year to hit paydirt, wouldn't you say it was worth it?"

Guwar supposed he couldn't argue with that.   "I guess I'll leave you to your work then," he said as he rose from her chair and headed for the door.   "I could use something to eat anyway."

"Hey, drop by anytime," she said.  "It's good to bounce ideas off of you.   Oh, could you toss me my trimmer before you go?   My scalp's getting a little itchy."

*******

[9 February, 233 Before Age.   Thalos I.]

Days later, with nowhere in particular to go, the Saiyans decided to land on a planet to indulge in some hunting and gathering.    Guwar preferred gathering, as it made more sense from an efficiency standpoint.   The ship's sensors could tell him where to go to find abundant supplies of edible plants, and he could collect those much more quickly than he could chase down a comparable mass of wild animals.   Most Saiyans didn't look at it that way, and so when Lesseri and Endive chose to hunt large reptiles on the western continent, he wasn't surprised.

What did surprise him was when Endive approached him later, while he was bundling his first batch of roots and berries for the cargo hold.   They weren't supposed to meet up for another hour.

"I thought you were hunting," he said.  

"I decided to see if you needed any help," she said.    "Lesseri has things well in hand."

"She usually does," Guwar said.   "But I think I've covered my end pretty well."

"What do you think of our little band so far, Guwar?" she asked.    

He finished weaving a simple rope and began wrapping it around a stack of starchy plants he had found in a marsh.    "I'm used to working alone," he said, "but so far I'm impressed with the operation.   All of you are professional, sensible.   Treekul's a bit flaky, but she's an alien, so I won't hold it against her."

"Have you considered what will happen when we succeed, Guwar?" Endive asked.    She took a seat on one of the cargo crates and put her palms on her knees.  

"We'll all get stronger," he said.  "Much stronger, with any luck.   I, for one, plan to be able to write my own ticket."

"And what about Lesseri?" she asked.   "She's stronger than both of us right now.   It stands to reason that if our quest succeeds, she stands to become even stronger still."

"That makes sense to me," Guwar said slowly.   "What's your point, Endive?"

"Merely that we should be considering our own separate interests at this stage of the partnership," she replied.   "Our working theory is that there are already Saiyans out there using Jindan in secret.   They will not be pleased to see three more added to their number.   For every Saiyan that learns the secret, it depreciates in value."

"And if we were talking about treasure," Guwar surmised, "sooner or later we'd have to decide if it would be better to split it two ways instead of three."

"I see this as no different, Guwar," Endive said.    "The other Saiyans may try to stop us from reaching our goal.   But they may find two Saiyans easier to accept into their domain than three.   And if they happen to be fairly weak Saiyans--like you and me-- well, we'd hardly be much of a threat to their plans, now would we?"

"What exactly are you suggesting, Endive?" he asked.   He tried to keep his tone neutral, hoping not to tip his hand.   At the moment, he saw no compelling reason to turn against Lesseri, but he didn't want to appear to reject the idea, just in case she was on to something.

"For the moment, nothing at all," she said briskly.   "I simply wanted to share my appraisal of the situation.   When the time comes to make a decision, there may not be a chance to confer privately, Guwar.  So I thought we should discuss certain... contingencies in advance."

He was about to ask her what contingencies she had in mind, when the communicators on their wrists began to chirp.   It was Treekul.  She had found something.

*******

The closest thing Lesseri's ship had to a meeting area was the mess hall situated between the cabins and the cockpit.  Treekul presented her findings on a small display screen normally used for entertainment purposes.  Guwar found her delivery surprisingly polished and scholarly, considering that she was giving it in her pajamas, which bore flecks of green hair clippings from the last three times she trimmed her scalp.  

"I know a lot of what I just said went over your heads," she said as she finished explaining how she arrived at her conclusions.   "I just want to give you a bird's eye view of what I've done, so you won't think this I just pulled all of this out of my ear.  

"We've trusted you this far, Treekul," Lesseri said.   "And I think we get the general idea."

Lesseri had put her feet up on the table and crossed her ankles.   Endive was busy eating some raw meat from her hunting, while Guwar sat on the table itself.   He had some question about Treekul's data, but he decided to save them for when he could speak with her in private.   He suspected that the others would do the same.  

"All right, then here's the bottom line," Treekul said as she tapped the screen to advance to the next image.   The good news is that my theory was correct, and we've been on the right track.    We've established a line of spagyrist masters who studied techniques for increasing physical attributes.  We're talking about simple stuff, like healing minor injuries, or improving concentration, but each record we've found states that the masters were looking ahead to a refinement of the research.   A 'golden elixir', or a perfection of what they had begun to explore.  They called that ideal experiment 'jindan', which means whoever invented what we're looking for must have based his research upon their earlier work."

"But the scroll we just found was never used by anyone," Lesseri said.   "That tomb hadn't been touched in centuries, and the wax seal on the scroll itself was unbroken."

"Right, but it did give me more information to plug into my calculations," Treekul said.    That means my geomantic measurements will be more precise from here on out, and there's a lot less guesswork about where to look next."  She tapped the star chart on the monitor, causing it to zoom in on a single star system.   "Turns out we'll have to go to the Quadzityz System after all," she said.

"That whole sector is a war zone," Endive said.  

"Fine by me," Lesseri said with a smile.   "With all the fighting, we can slip in, take what we need, and no one will notice we were there.   We might even score some plunder if we have time."

"Yes, that does sound quite pleasant," Endive replied,  "but that isn't my point.  A stray bombardment could destroy our objective before we even have a chance to reach it."

"Not to mention the mercenaries working that sector," Guwar added.   "Saiyans or not, some of them are bound to be stronger than us.    If we're not careful, we could find ourselves outmatched.   Then we'd be the ones getting plundered."

"It's worse than you think," Treekul said.    "I monitored the war reports from that sector, just to get some idea of what we'd be getting into.    Turns out the fighting has escalated even more than we knew.   Someone brought slorgs into the conflict."

"Slorgs!" Endive said with a gasp.    "Then it's only a matter of time before Luffa gets involved!  She'd never tolerate a slorg infestation anywhere near the Federation border."

"And that brings me to the 'Bad News' part of my presentation," Treekul said with a sigh.   She tapped the screen one more time, bringing up an image from a news periodical.   The photo accompanying the article showed a Saiyan with glowing yellow hair and tail, holding a Quadzity armored troop transport over her head.    Terrified soldiers were fleeing from her as she smashed the vehicle into a large boulder.

"Luffa's not just going to get involved on Quadziityz," Treekul said.    "She's already there."

NEXT: The War Against War

#dragon ball #fanfiction #lssjluffafic #guwar #treekul #endive #lesseri #server'la #thalos i #qursss the unquenchable

[pilgrimguyanne]

A day in the field

There are some days when field work is a breeze. When everything goes to plan and everything works out and runs smoothly. Today was not one of those days.

My first task of the day was to get 30 questionnaires to a secondary school pupil, who will deliver them to his principal, who will ensure that they are carried out. It's a lot of trust, but the reality is that I simply cannot be in all the places I need to be in order to get all the data I need, and so arrangements like this are extremely important. The young man is a very talented footballer and we agree to meet at the football field where he trains. My original plan is to go there, then go to the Grenada community library, where I hope to spend the day.

At the football field, however, I notice people- mostly women- sitting and not really watching from the stalls. Soccer moms. Anyone whose child has ever done an extra curricular activity knows (I imagine) that it often doesn't make sense to go home in the 2 hours your child is rehearsing, improving their Math, or playing football. Better run a few errands, or else sit and wait. The waiting women are happy to oblige, and take the cookies I offer them for the younger siblings they have brought in tow, or else for the young athletes. It's gruelling work. The sun is hot and there is no cloud cover and the mummies are dispersed around the field, each in line with her child's team. Total questionnaires:8.

My next stop is the Grenada community library. It's a small, 3-room building, and when I am there the only patrons, a young mother and her toddler who come to sign up, arrive. The volunteers at the desk, however, are happy to help me, and so I get another 2 questionnaires.

From the library, it's a short walk to the cathedral, so I decide to call it a day and check it out. As I walk past, I notice the door of the cathedral chancery is open and, being bold face, I walk in. There's a meeting in progress that I don't want to disturb, but I talk to someone who can't help me.

I walk to the cathedral, careful to only step on the dried portions of the half-mopped steps. Inside, a choir is singing, but all I hear are the voices of possible participants. As I listen, a man approaches me."Come in! Are you visiting?" I'm slightly confused since in all my years of being a Catholic no one has ever greeted me so warmly in a church. I say I am. He introduces himself as the parish priest for the cathedral and I tell him what I would like. "Oh well the choir upstairs is made up of people from all over Grenada, they are practising for ordination. They should be finished by one. You can ask them." Score. Kind of. It's 11:40 and the Caribbean is hot from 12-4. These people are not going to want to help me after a long rehearsal in the hot cathedral. Still, it's worth the wait. I mention that I know the Bishop and the priest tells me that he's in office right now. Of course I can just knock and say hi. Definitely not in Bistum Münster anymore. I go back down to the offices and this time do disturb the meeting.

Bishop Harvey, after sorting out my face, is pleased to see me. "You should have said you were coming, I would have helped you." (I actually thought a relative had told the Bishop I would be there, but not wanting to nag, never followed up on this, and so shot myself in the foot). I told him that 30 questionnaires were being taken to one Catholic Boys' School by the footballer, and said I would be going to another school on Monday myself. "Please tell the principal I'd be very grateful any help she can offer," he says, and I assure him the principal has been a dream to work with so far. Then, he writes a note to the choir conductor and asks him to ask choir members to facilitate me. And then asks the ladies in the meeting I interrupted to do the same, and they tell me they will be at other meeting at 1:30 and I can come then.

I go to the choir rehearsal and join in the really beautiful singing and their closing prayer. That's something I miss in German church choirs; there's never a prayer at the start or the end, as though God is incidental to the music, and not its source. Because it's a special occasion, the rehearsal goes on a bit longer than planned, but even in their tiredness and the Saturday chores not yet done, 10 people complete questionnaires. One takes it home, and promises to send his answers via email. The downside of this is that I am late for the other meeting, and they are reading minutes when I eventually find them. They offer to take the questionnaires and return them by Wednesday to the cathedral office, and I am happy to leave them behind.

After 4.5 hours of walking and buses, I have a meagre 20 questionnaires in hand. In total, so far, I have 15 questionnaires that people have taken, promised to fill, but which I don't yet have (not only from the cathedral). But a researcher is like a shepherd. I know the whereabouts of each questionnaire and the location of a photocopying shop in the event that the questionnaires are not completed when I return to collect them. Again, this comes with the territory of not being able to pay people for their time. I am grateful for their goodwill, their willingness to do the questionnaires at all, even if they don't actually return them.

I get back to my hotel at 3:30 pm, six hours after I left. Not a full work day, but a long time to be on my feet. I make plans for tomorrow and Monday, and then, when the temperature has dropped to a Caribbean cool 31, I go to the beach and swim until the sunset.

[thisdaynews]

‘Absolutely Unprecedented’: Why Japan’s Leader Tries So Hard to Court Trump

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/absolutely-unprecedented-why-japans-leader-tries-so-hard-to-court-trump/

‘Absolutely Unprecedented’: Why Japan’s Leader Tries So Hard to Court Trump

TOKYO—Flying nearly 7,000 miles is not President Donald Trump’s idea of a good time. But he departed for Japan on Friday giddily anticipating what he promised a day earlier would be “the biggest event they’ve had in over 200 years”: that is, his own meeting with the country’s new emperor.

While his hosts may not view Trump’s visit as quite so momentous, it isa crescendo in the remarkable campaign of flattery and cajoling waged by Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe.

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Trump had not yet been inaugurated when Abe hopped on a plane, uninvited, to meet with the president-elect at Trump Tower. Since then, Abe has golfed with Trump three times; visited Mar-a-Lago twice; gifted him a golf club worth nearly $3,800; dropped in on First Lady Melania Trump’s birthday dinner; and even, according to Trump himself, nominated Trump for a Nobel Prize. The two leaders have had 10 personal meetings and spoken 30 other times. “That is absolutely unprecedented,” says a senior Trump administration official. Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Trump boasted that Abe had assured him of his state visit: “I am the guest, meaning the United States is the guest, but Prime Minister Abe said to me, very specifically, ‘You are the guest of honor. There’s only one guest of honor.’”

The Japanese media has taken copious note of the camaraderie. A Friday article in theJapan Timesnoted that on his last trip to Washington, Abe “was even offered the use of Trump’s personal restroom in the White House.”

Abe no doubt appreciates the bathroom privileges. But his relentless courtship of Trump seems—to say the least—off-brand for a leader who came to power by presenting himself as a resolute nationalist, retailing a vision of a strong Japan more than any leader in decades.. Prostrating himself before Trump has put him in an awkward position. Trump is personally unpopular in Japan, and even apart from that, no one likes to see Japan’s prime minister bend his behavior, or travel schedule, around other leaders. “The Japanese public does not like our leader to entertain another country’s leader,” said Koji Murata, a professor of political science at Doshisha University in Kyoto.

So why the desperate overtures to the U.S. president? To understand Abe’s surprising relationship to Trump is to understand the deep insecurity that has developed in Japan in recent years. With its once-powerhouse economy long-stagnant,the world-historical rise of China, which Japan’s imperial army badly abused during the war, has stoked deep alarm. North Korea continues to develop nuclear weapons and missiles capable of delivering them to Japan—and relations with South Korea, the regional power best positioned to help Tokyo counterbalance these threats, are at their lowest point in many years. Even Russia harasses Japanese airspace as part of a dispute over contested northern islands.

Trump has only made this situation more precarious for Abe and his compatriots. With its pacifist constitution and a military far smaller than its status as the world’s third-largest economy would imply, Japan needs America’s protection—and finds itself staring across the Pacific at an erratic partner easily dismissive of longtime global commitments. The fear that the U.S.-Japan alliance could be in jeopardy was one I heard from numerous government officials and academics I met during a weeklong visit to Japan earlier this year. And, they say, Abe will do what he must to maintain it, whatever the cost to his personal pride.

“People in Japan understand that Mr. Trump is quite unpredictable, and that we need to treat him in a different way,” said Murata.

“They need the relationship for their own protection,” adds Jeffrey Prescott, a former Obama White House national security council aide who served as senior Asia adviser to former Vice President Joe Biden. “They’re worried about being caught out in the cold.”

***

When Abe visited the U.S. last year,Trump startled him with a blunt historical reference: “I remember Pearl Harbor,” Trump cracked, reportedly launching into a complaint about Japan’s economic policies. However impolitic his remark may have been, Trump is right to think that World War II continues to rule America’s relationship with Japan. But a more defining moment than the 1941 surprise attack on America’s Pacific fleet is what happened four years later in Hiroshima, when the U.S. punctuated the final days of the war by dropping an atomic bomb on the city, raising ground temperatures nearby to 5,000 degrees and instantly killing up to 80,000 people.

Today, the modest port city, also known for baseball and its symphony orchestra, has become a living monument to the horror of war, and also a place to contemplate the oddity of Japan’s continued dependency on the country that crushed it in anger nearly 75 years ago. Nine days after the blast, and after the U.S. dropped another atomic bomb, this time on Nagasaki, Emperor Hirohito—whose grandson, Naruhito, Trump will visit in Tokyo on Monday—announced his country’s unconditional surrender to America. Thus began a long and fraught dependency that continues to this day.

It was an incredible twist of history when the conquered nation, emerging from a fascist nightmare, actually welcomed its new occupiers after the war. “The Americans arrived anticipating, many of them, a traumatic confrontation with fanatical emperor worshippers. They were accosted instead by women who called ‘yoo hoo’ to the first troops landing on the beaches in full battle gear, and men who bowed and asked what their conquerors wished,” writes John W. Dower in his Pulitzer Prize-wining history of postwar Japan,Embracing Defeat. William Manchester’s epic biography of Douglas MacArthur recounts the moment one of the general’s aides first stepped off a plane in a freshly-defeated Japan, which MacArther was tasked with running and rebuilding after the war: “Instantly, a mob of howling Japanese headed for him. He was reaching for his weapon when they braked to a halt, bowed, smiled, and offered him a cup of orangeade.”

Those events occurred a few months before Trump was born, so he does not actually “remember” any of them. But even though Japan has been remade since, it remains conspicuously eager to please American leaders. In large measure that is because Japan cannot properly defend itself. After World War II, Japan was demilitarized to prevent a repeat of the fascist militarism that led to its brutal conquest of much of East Asia. The U.S. oversaw the adoption of a peace constitution prohibiting a standing military—Japan technically maintains modest “self-defense forces”—and declaring that its people “forever renounce war” and “the threat or use of force as a means of settling disputes.” And in the only country to experience an atomic attack, nuclear weapons have been out of the question. Conveniently, the U.S. was happy to station troops in the country as a way of projecting power into the Asia-Pacific region, first as a check against the Soviet Union and more recently against China. America has also explicitly covered Japan with its “nuclear umbrella,” shielding it from attack with the ultimate form of deterrence.

For several decades, the arrangement made sense for a Japan that faced few credible military threats. But the 21st century has changed past assumptions with startling speed.China’s explosion of growth has led to alarming new territorial claims; Tokyo’s historic rival, which Japan raped and pillaged in the 1930s and 1940s, now has a defense budget about 10 times larger than Japan’s. Meanwhile, North Korea, whose state media has branded Abe an “Asian Hitler” has developed a large nuclear arsenal and ever-more sophisticated missiles, which it sometimes fires over Japan’s territory.

Japan’s relations with South Korea,an important political and economic power, are also at what regional experts call a 50-year low, poisoned by an ongoing dispute over what Japan owes to forced laborers and so-called “comfort women” during its wartime occupation of the Korean peninsula. Japan was scandalized in February when a South Korean legislator referred to Japan’s then-emperor, since succeeded by Naruhito, as the son of a war criminal. (One long-term nightmare here: a unified, hostile Korea.) Even relations with Russia are tense, also thanks to the legacy of World War II, in the form of a territorial dispute over remote islands most of the world has never heard of; a Japanese legislator was recently expelled from the country’s Diet after suggesting (albeit drunkenly) that war with Russia might be necessary to reclaim them.

In sum, Japan looks around and sees enemies and rivals that recall brutal Japanese occupation, and too few close friends. That leaves it as dependent on the U.S. as it has been in years.

At the same time, it is as worried as it’s ever been about whether America can be relied upon. In the Trump era, the U.S. has become inscrutable, unpredictable and potentially unreliable.

People here are keenly aware of Trump’s complaints about the cost of American bases overseas and his questions about long-standing alliances. “We’re basically protecting Japan,” Trump said as a candidate. “If we’re attacked, they do not have to come to our defense. If they’re attacked, we have to come totally to their defense. And … that’s a real problem.” Trump hasn’t spoken that way in a while, but Japanese officials have watched his continued skepticism about the costs and mission of the NATO alliance, and ongoing complaints about the expense of maintaining U.S. troops in South Korea, with great unease. In meetings with diplomats and military strategists, most of whom would only speak off the record, I was told repeatedly that a scaled back U.S. presence in Asia, perhaps as a concession in a nuclear deal with North Korea, would be a “disaster” or “nightmare.” Never mind the 50,000 troops now stationed in Japan itself.

Japan isn’t totally defenseless without its American military bodyguard.Thanks to China’s muscle-flexing, the passage of time and Abe’s nationalistic leadership, Japan in recent years has gradually been expanding its military’s size and legal capabilities. Trump officials, more than Obama ones before them, have wholeheartedly embraced the shift, which Trump will implicitly endorse this weekend when he visits a Japanese navy helicopter carrier set for an upgrade that will allow it to carry advanced American-made F-35B fighter jets.

But Japan also needs American in other ways.Its diplomats have urged the U.S. to help mediate its dispute with South Korea—though to little avail. (“In somewhat more normal times,” says Mike Green, a former top Asia official in the George W. Bush White House now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a big question around Trump’s trip would be, “What is the administration doing to patch up ties between our two closest allies, whose fight is weakening our position in Asia?”) Meanwhile Japan’s huge but deeply troubled economy, which struggles with slow growth and an aging population, is highly vulnerable to Trump’s whims on tariffs.

That’s why it’s a coup for Abe and Japan that Trump, who does not love long trips, has made the 14-hour flight to become the first foreign leader to meet the country’s newly-enthroned emperor. In recent public remarks, Trump has demonstrated only a vague understanding of the honor, while boasting that Abe has assured him it will be “100 times bigger” than the Super Bowl.

While there, Trump will award a specially-made trophy to the winner of a national sumo wrestling championship, for which he will be given a special chair in an area where even dignitaries typically sit on the floor, cross-legged, reportedly to the annoyance of some of the sport’s diehards. In a signal of U.S. military support, Trump will also deliver a speech at the U.S. Navy base at Yokosuka, in southern Japan.

Abe’s flatter-Trump campaign is more than a personal whim, it is the result of extensive analysis. “The Japanese have studied Trump as thoroughly as any government, probably in the world, to try to understand him, because the U.S.-Japan alliance is so critical,” says Green. But it has involved some cost at home. During my visit, the lead headline in theJapan Timesdescribed a “grilling” the prime minister had received in the Diet over Trump’s public claim a few days earlier that Abe had written “the most beautiful five-page letter” nominating him to the Nobel Prize committee for his nuclear diplomacy with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Abe couldn’t quite bring himself to confirm the notion, which seemed strange given that the talks had made little real progress, and that Abe had been a past skeptic of talking to Kim. “I’m not saying it’s untrue,” was all he would allow. According to theWashington Post, Abe has more than once been referred to as “poochi” in the country’s left-leaningAsahi Shimbunnewspaper.

Many Japanese officials argue, though, that Abe has made the best of an awkward situation. Trump has stopped complaining about America’s security agreement with Tokyo and—unlike the case of South Korea—hasn’t made references lately to the cost of stationing troops and equipment in Japan. Abe has helped explain to Trump how important American assets in Japan are to containing China; U.S. Navy patrols into the contested South China Sea often originate from the Japan’s Yokosuka base. Although Abe wasn’t able to prevent Trump from slapping tariffs on Japanese steel and aluminum exports, he has helped to delay potential U.S. tariffs on automobiles that Japanese officials say would create a crisis in their relationship with Washington.

Still, there is a sense of real disquiet here about what may lie ahead. One Japanese official told me that Trump is an effect, not a cause, of eroding American public support for overseas alliances and adventurism. Moreover, some Japanese worry that the character of the U.S. might be changing. Japan is coming to see America “rather differently,” said Ichiro Fujisaki, a former Japanese ambassador to Washington who now chairs the America-Japan Society in Tokyo. “The popularity of the U.S. is decreasing,” he said, as Japanese people see an erosion of “values, respect for international institutions, and commitment to allies.”

It is unclear whether Trump will know or care about such sentiments when he greets Emperor Naruhito on Monday. But it was those values that America spent decades instilling in Japan as the U.S. rebuilt the nation it had conquered after World War II. It was a process that began in earnest when the MacArthur, having arrived in Tokyo for what would be a seven-year term as its de facto viceroy, met with Hirohito for the first time. President Harry Truman and MacArthur had decided by then that the emperor had to be preserved to help earn the trust of the defeated Japanese people. But at that point, Hirohito wasn’t sure that MacArthur wouldn’t have him executed. MacArthur later recalled giving Hirohito an American cigarette, “which he took with thanks. I noticed how his hands shook as I lighted it for him. I tried to make it as easy for him as I could, but I knew how deep and dreadful must be his agony of humiliation.”

Trump will meets Hirohito’s grandson under dramatically different circumstances. It may be that, far from humiliation, Naruhito and Abe will enjoy a sense of triumph at how skillfully they are playing to the president’s vanity. But something essential about the relationship between the U.S. will be unchanged, one that will be a source of both comfort and insecurity here for the forseeable future.

“Japan is always under the influence of the U.S.,” Murara told me. “It is always treated to be the junior partner of the U.S.”

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The Art of Woke Wellness

I first felt reality shift when, at 7 a.m. on a Saturday, there was a line for a class called Body Blast Bootcamp, and I worried that there wouldn’t be enough room for everyone.

The draw to this explicitly not-fun undertaking, others in line told me, was that we would be glad to have done it when it was over. We all made it in, and the workout studio was a carpeted conference room where an Instagram-famous instructor with a microphone headset was waiting to give us high fives. “The hardest step is showing up!”

Once we started working out, a person walked around apparently taking Instagram videos, and people were not bothered by this. Another brought a mini tripod to get some shots of herself in action. There was shouting and a Coldplay house remix. Someone offered me a box of alkaline water, and I drank it because no neutral water was available.

Body blasting was just one of the hundreds of classes, sessions, panels, talks, and silent dance parties at the inaugural Wellspring wellness festival. Last month some 2,000 mannequin-shaped people floated into Palm Springs, California, for what advertisements promised to be “a first-of-its-kind wellness festival, that will feature over 200 transformational workshops, treatments, and fitness across multiple categories.” The goal was to “provide seekers the tools to learn and take action in real time for a healthier mind in a relational platform.” (Relational platform was a new term to me, but people seemed less than pleased when I used the word conference.)

The scene was otherworldly from the first whiff of essential oils on the premises, the palatial Palm Springs Convention Center and an adjacent resort hotel. Almost all of the attendees (seekers) were under 40 years old, and all looked well below it. Many could not be picked out of a lineup of Lululemon models. At least one actually was. There were celebrity speakers lined up to lend their expertise, including the comedian turned spirit guide Russell Brand, whose face is the poster for the event, and Alicia Silverstone, best known for her starring role in Clueless, who currently sells a line of vitamins out of an expressed concern that all other prenatal vitamins on the market can be harmful to fetuses.

The water was in boxes because Wellspring purposely forwent wasteful plastic bottles—a half measure, after inviting thousands of people to exercise in the desert. The water was alkaline because that’s a trendy new way to sell people water, and its maker was a sponsor of the festival. The class, too, was sponsored, an Adidas logo projected onto the wall. Outside was a food truck selling Bulletproof concoctions with “brain octane oil.” In a capacious central cavern was “one of the world’s largest wellness exhibitions,” where vendors pitched cosmetics and supplements and bars and tonics. On offer were complimentary CBD-oil massages (sponsored by the seller of said oils) and a balancing of people’s sacral chakras with something called a BioCharger (trademark), “a natural cellular revitalization platform that uses a full spectrum of light and harmonic frequencies to deliver restorative energy” and that promises to help with “creativity, sexuality, and acceptance of new experiences.”

Melissa Gayle / Wanderlust

This deluge of products alternately offered to fill attendees with energy or to calm us down, but almost never to keep us as we were. The implicit allure of such products was that we were not okay, or at least could be better. Given all the ways in which most people believe we could be improved, “wellness” has become an all-encompassing concept and industry that not only eats into the territory of mainstream medicine, but that has subsumed what used to be called “alternative medicine”—that which alludes to scientific claims when convenient and also defines itself in opposition to the scientific establishment.

In theory, wellness is a democratizing movement. And yet admission to this relational platform was almost $1,000. That was the price of a ticket alone, not to mention airfare and subsequent purchases of elixirs and foams and polyester clothing.

At the opening social event, I made conversation by asking people what had brought them to the festival—which mostly featured things available in most metropolitan areas, and sessions of the sort that can be viewed online. I thought that constituted small talk. By the end, I realized it was not; many people had come for reasons that run deep. I went to the desert wary of the worst side of the wellness movement as an elitist industry that preys on the very human desire to feel like we’re getting ahead of others, but the more I talked to people, the more I realized that the attendees were largely aware of the problems, and wanted to get back to a distilled notion of why people have long come to love wellness trends and fads: the promise of connection.

Wellspring is produced by a quickly growing company called Wanderlust, “a global wellness platform” and “a multi-channel company focused around mindful living” by way of “renowned festival events, a full-service media company, and several permanent yoga centers.” Wanderlust was founded in Brooklyn 10 years ago and has since been putting on small, music-and-yoga-based festivals. But Wellspring is a new and much grander undertaking, lasting multiple days and based mostly on workshops and high-profile panels and lectures.

As it grows, Wanderlust is morphing with and redefining the many-billion-dollar industry. The gift bag seekers received upon checking in contained a spectrum of the products that have become synonymous with wellness: turmeric tea “whose yellow sustains life’s majestic glow,” probiotic capsules labeled “non-dairy” and “DEFENSE + IMMUNITY,” little light-tan-colored circular sticky patches that promise to be “your blemish hero,” hemp-infused honey called B. Chill (respectable for apparently going out of its way to avoid a very easy bee pun), a “germ-resistant” bag for yoga mats, Before You Go toilet spray, and on and on.

Melissa Gayle / Wanderlust

This event goes well beyond the initial vision of Wanderlust’s CEO, Sean Hoess, who sat down with me one morning by a hotel pool in running clothes. Hoess is 48, but like many Wellspring attendees looks a decade younger. He just renovated a house in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and is openly “not a wellness buff”—he prefers tennis. After graduating from Columbia University, he went to law school, but quit practicing to start a record label with a college friend, Jeff Krasno. Krasno’s wife, Schuyler Grant, ran a yoga studio above their office, and the three of them had the idea to start a festival combining the two fields.

Wellness is in many ways a counterpoint to the inefficient and inaccessible and alienating elements of the U.S. health-care system. While it may have antiestablishment origins, the industry is now subject to criticism as a new elite establishment, and one that profits off of serious insecurities and medical problems. Marketing for the festival alludes to the opioid epidemic that killed 72,000 Americans last year: “With our world being affected by addiction and mental-health issues, the Wellspring festival couldn’t come at a better time.” At a time when millions of Americans bear medical debt or are doing jobs they would otherwise quit, because they need health insurance, Wanderlust offers monthly payment plans (“rates from 10–30 percent APR”) to afford a ticket.

[Read: The harder, better, faster, stronger language of dieting]

Elitism was a hot point of contention and discussion among attendees. The convention center was literally divided into two camps: One wing held the expo, with its many aforementioned products, while some 100 yards away a separate wing housed stages where speakers condemned wanton consumerism.

“A significant cost is the association of wellness with money—thinking you need something external, tinctures and potions and balms. Its, you know, it’s the stuff that’s here,” said the Zen priest Angel Kyodo Williams, the second of only four black women recognized as teachers in the Japanese Zen lineage, during a talk in the latter wing as she gestured in the direction of the expo. “And there’s nothing wrong with those things, but we have a psychic connection that wellness equals something I can purchase, something I’m in competition for, something that I have to acquire because it’s not intrinsic to me.”

Williams instead defined wellness as self-determination: “being able to determine my gender, who I love, who I sleep with, having housing I can afford.”

In one early-morning session of “mindful running ”—sponsored by Adidas—the only two other men in the group were there to accompany their wives. Indeed, this was a heavily female event, the “feminine energy” being celebrated at multiple points and the role of men in wellness debated. Should we men be allowed at all?

I went to one interactive session on masculinity, and I was asked to do eye gazing for several minutes with another man while answering prompts like “Something I’m afraid to tell you is” and “Something I love about myself is.” It is meant to teach men to be expressive, and to see that it can feel normal and good. The only strange thing for me was the uninterrupted eye contact at abnormally close range, about a foot. The women in the session watched us do the exercise and shared their reactions afterward, and many seemed genuinely moved because they hadn’t seen men talk to each other like this before.

Melissa Gayle / Wanderlust

Wellness isn’t just gendered. Most of the products and services that define the industry are clearly marketed toward young, thin, toned, ambulatory women who are white. Some speakers were blunt about the fact that wellness is often synonymous with—and sometimes a proxy for—whiteness. One panel was literally called “Wellness Beyond Whiteness,” in which it was decided that wellness needed to be totally reconciled into something for everyone—not to simply be “inclusive” or “bring people to the table,” but to demolish the table and, as with any growing movement, keep building new tables.

The old “bring people to the table” metaphor rang especially egregious to the artist and writer Anasa Troutman, who had a similarly revelatory vision for wellness: “Unless we’re willing to make a commitment to community, we will never be well. Even if you wake up every morning and drink your juice and do your yoga, without that commitment to each other we will not be well as a country and as a world,” Troutman said.

For a wellness festival, there was an unexpected amount of talk about the importance of suffering and pain. In one panel about addiction, the ultramarathoner Charlie Engle, who ran 30 marathons in his first three years of sobriety, told the story of his first son being born. “He was gonna save me,” Engle recalled, “and then six days later, after a crack binge, the police are searching my car, and I had to choose between living and dying. And I chose running ... I wanted to pound that part of me out and never visit it again.”

Engle has since run across the Sahara desert, among other death-defying feats that go well beyond what could be considered good for the joints. This was not a passing hobby or a way of dropping a few pounds. It was, rather, a purposeful blasting of the body. The running community provided for him fellowship and camaraderie, as it does for many people struggling with addiction. It also helped him realize that he didn’t have to give up being intense and passionate and obsessive; he just needed to channel these features in less destructive ways. “Do I run addictively? I’ve been accused of it,” he said. “But I’ve never lost my car after a run.”

The emerging theme was that sitting with pain was integral to finding one’s path to wellness. Yet none of the products in my complimentary tote promised pain. I checked.

The centerpiece of the weekend was a keynote by Russell Brand. I got in early as a member of the media and grabbed a seat in the front row of the enormous multipurpose convention space. I was sitting watching stagehands and audiovisual technicians bustling around when, about 10 minutes before the crowd was to be let in, Brand came onstage and appeared horrified at the layout of the audience seating. There was a 12-foot aisle in the center, directly in front of where Brand was to stand at his microphone. “This is death,” he scolded, pointing at the space. “I’m supposed to perform into this?”

He asked and then demanded that the 200 or so chairs in the middle of the auditorium be rearranged. This required summoning the fire marshal (as the aisle was a matter of code) who insisted that no changes could be made. Brand held his ground. Event planners gathered around him trying to talk him down. Even if it weren’t for the fire code, moving the chairs at this point would have to be done by union workers and would take time. The audience was waiting outside baking in the sun, Hoess, Wanderlust’s CEO, reminded Brand. But he was insistent. I sensed he was willing to threaten to not go on at all when the organizers finally broke down and agreed to move the chairs.

Melissa Gayle / Wanderlust

What at first seemed petulant, though, was actually a vital objection. The importance of spatial connection with the audience wasn’t a note from just a seasoned comedian, but from a person with experience in 12-step meetings and giving counsel to others going through addiction. Once the audience was finally inside and seated in the newly arranged chairs, Brand put his finger directly onto a nerve. “You’re all here because you’re misfits,” he opened, stifling the residual energy from his introduction. “You wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t something you’re trying to fix, now would you?”

Brand’s talk veered only more earnest, about his own trials with addiction to crack and heroin and how 12-step programs helped him “get the keys to his life back.” Drugs are a symbol, he implored. “The craving isn’t for drugs. All yearning and desire are inappropriate substitutes for what you want, which is to be at one with God, which is connection.”

[Read: The irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous]

It could have been confused for a sermon had he not been dressed in black-leather pants and cursed so much. And like many people, he’s not exactly aligned with Alcoholics Anonymous’s religious tone and bent, and so he has rewritten the 12 steps in more colloquial terms for anyone who wants to change, whether the addiction is to “eating badly or to bad jobs or to pornography.” Brand’s own 12 steps, projected on a slide, are:—Are you a bit fucked?

—Could you not be fucked?

—Are you, on your own, going to unfuck yourself?

—Write down all the things that are fucking you up or have ever fucked you up, and don’t lie or leave anything out.

—Honestly tell someone trustworthy about how fucked you are.

—Well, that’s revealed a lot of fucked up patterns. Do you want to stop it? Seriously?

—Are you willing to live in a new way that’s not all about you and your previous, fucked up stuff? You have to.

—Prepare to apologize to everyone for everything affected by your being so fucked up.

—Now apologize. Unless that would make things worse.

—Watch out for fucked up thinking and behavior and be honest when it happens.

—Stay connected to your new perspective.

—Look at life less selfishly, be nice to everyone, help people if you can.

After breaking this down, Brand took questions from the audience. The first was from a person in the third row who said her brother is an addict who keeps coming to her for money. What should she do? Brand moved to the very front of the stage and looked into the back of her eyes and told her she knows what she has to do—which is cut him off, let him hit rock bottom. She said, yes, she knows, and she cried.

He asked the room, “How many of you have had to detach from a loved one because of addiction?” About half of the people raised their hands. He told them they were right and to never second-guess themselves. Some people don’t make it, but no one does when enabled.

Melissa Gayle / Wanderlust

The emphatic takeaway is that the opposite of addiction is connection. Beating the disease is fundamentally about preempting the point where you lose the freedom to choose: Don’t hold the drink in your hand; don’t go to the party where you know exactly what will go down. In the moment before the bad decision, Brand urged, “you have to make the commitment to call someone who can be your North Star. Someone who is not spellbound in that moment. Someone who can tell you the problem you’re trying to escape is still going to be there, and it’s not going to work, and you’re gonna feel like shit afterward. This is why we need people further down the path, so they can hold our shit as we grow.”

For the rest of the hour, Brand was holding the shit of the entire Palm Springs Convention Center.

The people at Wellspring were easy to talk to. They were into eye contact, and open about how what Brand had said was true: Beneath the good vibes and aerial-yoga acrobatics, many attendees at this conference told me they were sober or currently dealing with addiction. The ultra-runner Engle was not alone in the conscious replacement of substances with wellness. But addicted or not, many of the people I met had turned to wellness to explicitly fill some space previously occupied by a substance or behavior or person, so as not to relapse into self-destructive habits.

“I don’t do anything a little bit,” said Nadia Bolz-Weber, a speaker whose recovery from addiction led her to become an ultraprogressive Lutheran minister. “I think that whole ‘balance’ thing is just another thing society made up to make me feel bad about myself. I’m not going to be someone who’s not intense, that’s not going to happen. So I was intense about the way I drank and did drugs.”

There are evident parallels between the isolated, secular American lifestyle and the sale of identity, community, and guidance on how to live. The festival’s speakers were called “guide leaders.” Wanderlust’s slogan is “Find your true north.” When I asked Hoess how he thought the festival was going, he said it was great because everyone looked “totally blissed out.” The idea kept coming up that we all worship something, and that God is a necessary construct if only to have something to conceptually subordinate the self.

This is at odds with the consumerist bent to wellness. If the movement indeed rejects the quick-fix products, which seems infeasible, it’s unclear what wellness is to become. If wellness is actually essentially the inverse of consumerism, and nearly synonymous with connectedness and wholeness and feeling complete, then the industry will need a new way to monetize.

Connection itself can be monetized, of course—in ways that create factions and cliques, or in inclusive ways that bring together people of various socioeconomic strata. That actually may look something like Wanderlust. The market is flooded with things we can consume alone on our couches or at the gym with headphones in. But we are hungry for connection—to hear the same things said but to have a person speaking directly to us (and to a few hundred other people).

The last time I was in Palm Springs was a year ago for the TEDMED conference (relational platform?), and at the time I was mystified. It was a full house at the price of $4,950 a ticket, even though TED Talks are available for free online. The videos can be sped up if the speaker is boring, segments can be skipped, and tabs can be opened to keep the talk running in the background while getting some email done or shopping for shoes. There would seem, then, very little reason to need to go to the actual conference, to sit through marathon sessions where a fair number of speakers mess up or forget their lines (as I did).

Yet people attend. In the same vein later this month in Los Angeles there is a conference called Summit LA, which features a “wellness” track and includes speakers like Wim Hof, “the Ice Man” who teaches people how to be cold. The price including a “medium” room at the Ace Hotel is $9,100.

Melissa Gayle / Wanderlust

The consumption of commodified connection doesn’t need to require a small fortune, though. In fact, it can’t, by any of the new, woke definitions of wellness. Hoess would like to get Wellspring up to 4,000 people or so, he tells me, in order to keep the price down. I met two seekers who were there on scholarship, and four who had won a ticket through an Instagram giveaway (people actually do win those things). Hoess contrasted his model with smaller events like the Aspen Ideas Festival (which The Atlantic has long been a partner in producing), which tend to be more expensive at least partly due to scale.

The other way to make such things accessible is to inundate attendees with advertising—which can undermine the concept by making us feel inadequate without this product or that, rather than by affirming our wholeness. Poolside, Hoess told me that he believes there can still be profit in a less consumerist direction, but that it’s necessary to “redefine capitalism to where it’s not just about pure profit, it’s also about social profit. If we can merge those things, I think business becomes a force for good.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Hey, you can roll your eyes, and I know there are bad [companies],” said Hoess, likening wellness to the health-care industry. “Obviously the system is fucked up, and it causes weird incentives, and eventually people get jaded and maybe lose their passion for doing good.”

So how does the wellness movement keep perspective and stay focused on what matters? It’s not about just finding one’s true north but following it, day after day, year after year. Straying happens as more of a gradual slide than as any single decision to go down a bad road. You start off doing what you think is right or helpful or normal, and then it feels good to make some money, and then it feels necessary, and you have an obligation to grow and to be seen as flourishing and successful. Then before you know it, you’re running a huge company that’s preying on seekers and begging them off course.

Everyone strays; everyone tries to avoid pain instead of learning from it; everyone has ways of escaping anxiety that aren’t productive. At its best, wellness offers habits and practices around which to build a community that will help you feel whole, or at least distract from the sense of inadequacy that drives people to self-injurious behavior—whether it be substance abuse or gambling or mistreating others or spending three hours a day on Instagram despite knowing it makes us feel bad.

Once I understood this, Wellspring’s lingo and the community signifiers and the products over which people bond and become “obsessed” and build rituals seemed a lot less silly or predatory. I did leave the desert in a better state than I arrived, though with nothing that—at least hypothetically—couldn’t be had for free.

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/11/wellspring-festival-woke-wellness/576103/?utm_source=feed

[ionecoffman]

The Art of Woke Wellness

I first felt reality shift when, at 7 a.m. on a Saturday, there was a line for a class called Body Blast Bootcamp, and I worried that there wouldn’t be enough room for everyone.

The draw to this explicitly not-fun undertaking, others in line told me, was that we would be glad to have done it when it was over. We all made it in, and the workout studio was a carpeted conference room where an Instagram-famous instructor with a microphone headset was waiting to give us high fives. “The hardest step is showing up!”

Once we started working out, a person walked around apparently taking Instagram videos, and people were not bothered by this. Another brought a mini tripod to get some shots of herself in action. There was shouting and a Coldplay house remix. Someone offered me a box of alkaline water, and I drank it because no neutral water was available.

Body blasting was just one of the hundreds of classes, sessions, panels, talks, and silent dance parties at the inaugural Wellspring wellness festival. Last month some 2,000 mannequin-shaped people floated into Palm Springs, California, for what advertisements promised to be “a first-of-its-kind wellness festival, that will feature over 200 transformational workshops, treatments, and fitness across multiple categories.” The goal was to “provide seekers the tools to learn and take action in real time for a healthier mind in a relational platform.” (Relational platform was a new term to me, but people seemed less than pleased when I used the word conference.)

The scene was otherworldly from the first whiff of essential oils on the premises, the palatial Palm Springs Convention Center and an adjacent resort hotel. Almost all of the attendees (seekers) were under 40 years old, and all looked well below it. Many could not be picked out of a lineup of Lululemon models. At least one actually was. There were celebrity speakers lined up to lend their expertise, including the comedian turned spirit guide Russell Brand, whose face is the poster for the event, and Alicia Silverstone, best known for her starring role in Clueless, who currently sells a line of vitamins out of an expressed concern that all other prenatal vitamins on the market can be harmful to fetuses.

The water was in boxes because Wellspring purposely forwent wasteful plastic bottles—a half measure, after inviting thousands of people to exercise in the desert. The water was alkaline because that’s a trendy new way to sell people water, and its maker was a sponsor of the festival. The class, too, was sponsored, an Adidas logo projected onto the wall. Outside was a food truck selling Bulletproof concoctions with “brain octane oil.” In a capacious central cavern was “one of the world’s largest wellness exhibitions,” where vendors pitched cosmetics and supplements and bars and tonics. On offer were complimentary CBD-oil massages (sponsored by the seller of said oils) and a balancing of the sacral chakras with something called a BioCharger (trademark), “a natural cellular revitalization platform that uses a full spectrum of light and harmonic frequencies to deliver restorative energy” and that promises to help with “creativity, sexuality, and acceptance of new experiences.”

Melissa Gayle / Wanderlust

This deluge of products alternately offered to fill attendees with energy or to calm us down, but almost never to keep us as we were. The implicit allure of such products was that we were not okay, or at least could be better. Given all the ways in which most people believe we could be improved, “wellness” has become an all-encompassing concept and industry that not only eats into the territory of mainstream medicine, but that has subsumed what used to be called “alternative medicine”—that which alludes to scientific claims when convenient and also defines itself in opposition to the scientific establishment.

In theory, wellness is a democratizing movement. And yet admission to this relational platform was almost $1,000. That was the price of a ticket alone, not to mention airfare and subsequent purchases of elixirs and foams and polyester clothing.

At the opening social event, I made conversation by asking people what had brought them to the festival—which mostly featured things available in most metropolitan areas, and sessions of the sort that can be viewed online. I thought that constituted small talk. By the end, I realized it was not; many people had come for reasons that run deep. I went to the desert wary of the worst side of the wellness movement as an elitist industry that preys on the very human desire to feel like we’re getting ahead of others, but the more I talked to people, the more I realized that the attendees were largely aware of the problems, and wanted to get back to a distilled notion of why people have long come to love wellness trends and fads: the promise of connection.

Wellspring is produced by a quickly growing company called Wanderlust, “a global wellness platform” and “a multi-channel company focused around mindful living” by way of “renowned festival events, a full-service media company, and several permanent yoga centers.” Wanderlust was founded in Brooklyn 10 years ago and has since been putting on small, music-and-yoga-based festivals. But Wellspring is a new and much grander undertaking, lasting multiple days and based mostly on workshops and high-profile panels and lectures.

As it grows, Wanderlust is morphing with and redefining the many-billion-dollar industry. The gift bag seekers received upon checking in contained a spectrum of the products that have become synonymous with wellness: turmeric tea “whose yellow sustains life’s majestic glow,” probiotic capsules labeled “non-dairy” and “DEFENSE + IMMUNITY,” little light-tan-colored circular sticky patches that promise to be “your blemish hero,” hemp-infused honey called B. Chill (respectable for apparently going out of its way to avoid a very easy bee pun), a “germ-resistant” bag for yoga mats, Before You Go toilet spray, and on and on.

Melissa Gayle / Wanderlust

This event goes well beyond the initial vision of Wanderlust’s CEO, Sean Hoess, who sat down with me one morning by a hotel pool in running clothes. Hoess is 48, but like many Wellspring attendees looks a decade younger. He just renovated a house in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and is openly “not a wellness buff”—he prefers tennis. After graduating from Columbia University, he went to law school, but quit practicing to start a record label with a college friend, Jeff Krasno. Krasno’s wife, Schuyler Grant, ran a yoga studio above their office, and the three of them had the idea to start a festival combining the two fields.

Wellness is in many ways a counterpoint to the inefficient and inaccessible and alienating elements of the U.S. health-care system. While it may have antiestablishment origins, the industry is now subject to criticism as a new elite establishment, and one that profits off of serious insecurities and medical problems. Marketing for the festival alludes to the opioid epidemic that killed 72,000 Americans last year: “With our world being affected by addiction and mental-health issues, the Wellspring festival couldn’t come at a better time.” At a time when millions of Americans bear medical debt or are doing jobs they would otherwise quit, because they need health insurance, Wanderlust offers monthly payment plans (“rates from 10–30 percent APR”) to afford a ticket.

[Read: The harder, better, faster, stronger language of dieting]

Elitism was a hot point of contention and discussion among attendees. The convention center was literally divided into two camps: One wing held the expo, with its many aforementioned products, while some 100 yards away a separate wing housed stages where speakers condemned wanton consumerism.

“A significant cost is the association of wellness with money—thinking you need something external, tinctures and potions and balms. Its, you know, it’s the stuff that’s here,” said the Zen priest Angel Kyodo Williams, the second of only four black women recognized as teachers in the Japanese Zen lineage, during a talk in the latter wing as she gestured in the direction of the expo. “And there’s nothing wrong with those things, but we have a psychic connection that wellness equals something I can purchase, something I’m in competition for, something that I have to acquire because it’s not intrinsic to me.”

Williams instead defined wellness as self-determination: “being able to determine my gender, who I love, who I sleep with, having housing I can afford.”

In one early-morning session of “mindful running ”—sponsored by Adidas—the only two other men in the group were there to accompany their wives. Indeed, this was a heavily female event, the “feminine energy” being celebrated at multiple points and the role of men in wellness debated. Should we men be allowed at all?

I went to one interactive session on masculinity, and I was asked to do eye gazing for several minutes with another man while answering prompts like “Something I’m afraid to tell you is” and “Something I love about myself is.” It is meant to teach men to be expressive, and to see that it can feel normal and good. The only strange thing for me was the uninterrupted eye contact at abnormally close range, about a foot. The women in the session watched us do the exercise and shared their reactions afterward, and many seemed genuinely moved because they hadn’t seen men talk to each other like this before.

Melissa Gayle / Wanderlust

Wellness isn’t just gendered. Most of the products and services that define the industry are clearly marketed toward young, thin, toned, ambulatory women who are white. Some speakers were blunt about the fact that wellness is often synonymous with—and sometimes a proxy for—whiteness. One panel was literally called “Wellness Beyond Whiteness,” in which it was decided that wellness needed to be totally reconciled into something for everyone—not to simply be “inclusive” or “bring people to the table,” but to demolish the table and, as with any growing movement, keep building new tables.

The old “bring people to the table” metaphor rang especially egregious to the artist and writer Anasa Troutman, who had a similarly revelatory vision for wellness: “Unless we’re willing to make a commitment to community, we will never be well. Even if you wake up every morning and drink your juice and do your yoga, without that commitment to each other we will not be well as a country and as a world,” Troutman said.

For a wellness festival, there was an unexpected amount of talk about the importance of suffering and pain. In one panel about addiction, the ultramarathoner Charlie Engle, who ran 30 marathons in his first three years of sobriety, told the story of his first son being born. “He was gonna save me,” Engle recalled, “and then six days later, after a crack binge, the police are searching my car, and I had to choose between living and dying. And I chose running ... I wanted to pound that part of me out and never visit it again.”

Engle has since run across the Sahara desert, among other death-defying feats that go well beyond what could be considered good for the joints. This was not a passing hobby or a way of dropping a few pounds. It was, rather, a purposeful blasting of the body. The running community provided for him fellowship and camaraderie, as it does for many people struggling with addiction. It also helped him realize that he didn’t have to give up being intense and passionate and obsessive; he just needed to channel these features in less destructive ways. “Do I run addictively? I’ve been accused of it,” he said. “But I’ve never lost my car after a run.”

The emerging theme was that sitting with pain was integral to finding one’s path to wellness. Yet none of the products in my complimentary tote promised pain. I checked.

The centerpiece of the weekend was a keynote by Russell Brand. I got in early as a member of the media and grabbed a seat in the front row of the enormous multipurpose convention space. I was sitting watching stagehands and audiovisual technicians bustling around when, about 10 minutes before the crowd was to be let in, Brand came onstage and appeared horrified at the layout of the audience seating. There was a 12-foot aisle in the center, directly in front of where Brand was to stand at his microphone. “This is death,” he scolded, pointing at the space. “I’m supposed to perform into this?”

He asked and then demanded that the 200 or so chairs in the middle of the auditorium be rearranged. This required summoning the fire marshal (as the aisle was a matter of code) who insisted that no changes could be made. Brand held his ground. Event planners gathered around him trying to talk him down. Even if it weren’t for the fire code, moving the chairs at this point would have to be done by union workers and would take time. The audience was waiting outside baking in the sun, Hoess, Wanderlust’s CEO, reminded Brand. But he was insistent. I sensed he was willing to threaten to not go on at all when the organizers finally broke down and agreed to move the chairs.

Melissa Gayle / Wanderlust

What at first seemed petulant, though, was actually a vital objection. The importance of spatial connection with the audience wasn’t a note from just a seasoned comedian, but from a person with experience in 12-step meetings and giving counsel to others going through addiction. Once the audience was finally inside and seated in the newly arranged chairs, Brand put his finger directly onto a nerve. “You’re all here because you’re misfits,” he opened, stifling the residual energy from his introduction. “You wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t something you’re trying to fix, now would you?”

Brand’s talk veered only more earnest, about his own trials with addiction to crack and heroin and how 12-step programs helped him “get the keys to his life back.” Drugs are a symbol, he implores. “The craving isn’t for drugs, all yearning and desire are inappropriate substitutes for what you want, which is to be at one with God, which is connection.”

[Read: The irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous]

It could have been confused for a sermon had he not been dressed in black leather pants and cursed so much. And like many people he’s not exactly aligned with Alcoholics Anonymous’s religious tone and bent, and so he has rewritten the 12 steps in more colloquial terms for anyone who wants to change, whether the addiction is to “eating badly or to bad jobs or to pornography.” Brand’s own 12 steps, projected on a slide, are:—Are you a bit fucked?

—Could you not be fucked?

—Are you, on your own, going to unfuck yourself?

—Write down all the things that are fucking you up or have ever fucked you up, and don’t lie or leave anything out.

—Honestly tell someone trustworthy about how fucked you are.

—Well, that’s revealed a lot of fucked up patterns. Do you want to stop it? Seriously?

—Are you willing to live in a new way that’s not all about you and your previous, fucked up stuff? You have to.

—Prepare to apologize to everyone for everything affected by your being so fucked up.

—Now apologize. Unless that would make things worse.

—Watch out for fucked up thinking and behavior and be honest when it happens.

—Stay connected to your new perspective.

—Look at life less selfishly, be nice to everyone, help people if you can.

After breaking this down, Brand took questions from the audience. The first was from a person in the third row who said her brother is an addict who keeps coming to her for money. What should she do? Brand moved to the very front of the stage and looked into the back of her eyes and told her she knows what she has to do—which is to cut him off, to let him hit rock bottom. She said, yes, she knows, and she cried.

He asked the room, “How many of you have had to detach from a loved one because of addiction?” About half of the people raise their hands. He told them that they were right and to never second-guess themselves. Some people don’t make it, but no one does when enabled.

Melissa Gayle / Wanderlust

The emphatic takeaway is that the opposite of addiction is connection. Beating the disease is fundamentally about preempting the point where you lose the freedom to choose: Don’t hold the drink in your hand; don’t go to the party where you know exactly what will go down. In the moment before the bad decision, he urged, “You have to make the commitment to call someone who can be your north star. Someone who is not spellbound in that moment. Someone who can tell you the problem you’re trying to escape is still going to be there, and it’s not going to work, and you’re gonna feel like shit afterward. This is why we need people further down the path, so they can hold our shit as we grow.”

For the rest of the hour, Brand was holding the shit of the entire Palm Springs Convention Center.

The people at Wellspring were easy to talk to. They were into eye contact, and open about how what Brand said was true: Beneath the good vibes and aerial-yoga acrobatics, many attendees at this conference told me they were sober or currently dealing with addiction. The ultra-runner Engle was not alone in the conscious replacement of substances with wellness. But addicted or not, many of the people I met had turned to wellness explicitly to fill some space previously occupied by a substance or behavior or person, so as not to relapse into self-destructive habits.

“I don’t do anything a little bit,” said Nadia Bolz-Weber, a speaker whose recovery from addiction led her to become an ultra-progressive Lutheran minister. “I think that whole ‘balance’ thing is just another thing society made up to make me feel bad about myself. I’m not going to be someone who’s not intense, that’s not going to happen. So I was intense about the way I drank and did drugs.”

There are evident parallels between the increasingly isolated, secular American lifestyle and the sale of identity, community, and guidance on how to live. The festival’s speakers were called “guide leaders.” Wanderlust’s slogan is “Find Your True North.” When I asked Hoess how he thought the festival was going, he said it was great because everyone looked “totally blissed out.” The idea kept coming up that we all worship something, and that God is a necessary construct if only to have something to conceptually subordinate the self.

This is at odds with the consumerist bent to wellness. If the movement indeed rejects the quick-fix products, which seems infeasible, it’s unclear what wellness is to become. If wellness is actually essentially the inverse of consumerism, and rather nearly synonymous with connectedness and wholeness and feeling complete, then the industry will need a new way to monetize.

Connection itself can be monetized, of course—in ways that create factions and cliques, or in inclusive ways that bring together people of various socioeconomic strata. That actually may look something like Wanderlust. The market is flooded with things we can consume alone on our couches or at the gym with headphones in. But we are hungry for connection—to hear the same things said but a person speaking directly to us (and to a few hundred other people).

The last time I was in Palm Springs was a year ago for the TED MED conference (relational platform?), and at the time I was mystified. It was a full house at a price of $4,950 per ticket, even though TED talks are available free online. The videos can be sped up if the speaker is boring, and segments can be skipped and tabs opened to keep the talk running in the background while getting some email done or shopping for shoes. There would seem then very little reason to need to go to the actual conference, to sit through marathon sessions where a fair number of speakers mess up or forget their lines (as I did).

Yet people attend. In the same vein later this month in Los Angeles there is a conference called SummitLA which features a “wellness” track and includes speakers like Wim Hof, “the Ice Man” who teaches people how to be cold. The price including a “medium” room at the Ace Hotel is $9,100.

Melissa Gayle / Wanderlust

The consumption of commodified connection doesn’t need to require a small fortune, though. In fact, it can’t, by any of the new, woke definitions of wellness. Hoess would like to get Wellspring up to 4,000 people or so, he tells me, in order to keep the price down. I met two seekers who were there on scholarship, and four who had won tickets through an Instagram giveaway (people actually do win those things). Hoess contrasted his model with smaller events like The Aspen Ideas Festival (which The Atlantic has long been a partner in producing), which tend to be more expensive at least partly due to scale.

The other way to make such things accessible is to inundate attendees with advertising—which can undermine the concept (by making us feel inadequate without this product or that, rather than by affirming our wholeness). Poolside, Hoess told me he believes there can still be profit in a less consumerist direction, but it’s just necessary to “redefine capitalism to where it’s not just about pure profit, it’s also about social profit. If we can merge those things I think business becomes a force for good.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Hey, you can roll your eyes, and I know there are bad [companies],” said Hoess, likening wellness to the health-care industry. “Obviously the system is fucked up, and it causes weird incentives, and eventually people get jaded and maybe lose their passion for doing good.”

So does the wellness movement keep perspective and stay focused on what matters? It’s not just about finding one’s true north but following it, day after day, year after year. Straying happens as more of a gradual slide than any single decision to go down a bad road. You start off doing what you think is right or helpful or normal, and then it feels good to make some money, and then it feels necessary, and you have an obligation to grow, and to be seen as flourishing and successful. Then before you know it, you’re running a huge company that’s preying on seekers and begging them off course.

Everyone strays; everyone tries to avoid pain instead of learning from it; everyone has ways of escaping anxiety that aren’t productive. At its best, wellness offers habits and practices around which to build a community that will help you feel whole, or at least distract from the sense of inadequacy that drives people to self-injurious behavior—whether it be substance abuse or gambling or mistreating others or spending three hours a day on Instagram despite knowing it makes us feel bad.

Once I understood this, Wellspring’s lingo and the community signifiers and the products over which people bond and become “obsessed” and build rituals seemed a lot less silly or predatory. I did leave the desert in a better state than I arrived, though with nothing that—at least hypothetically—couldn’t be had for free.

Article source here:The Atlantic

[jesusguthrie221-blog]

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