#about genichiro

[queenofnohr]

i really need to go to bed but also i spent 100000 years looking at the symbols related to Genichiro so you all will sit down and listen this fine 4 am

Anyway, lots of people have identified the Ashina family crest as the iris, more specifically, the iris sanguinea, in Japanese known as the ayame. As such, many people have also pointed out that the meaning in hanakotoba is good news/loyalty.

What I have not seen people commenting on, however, is the wordplay therein. That is - in kanji it’s  菖蒲 which can also be read as shoubu (when pronounced shoubu, it actually refers to a plant similar to a bullrush called the sweet flag with the first kanji of Ashina meaning bullrush, but I digress). And, in Japanese, shoubu has two homonyms that seem particularly pertinent to Ashina.

勝負 which means “victory or defeat” or “a match/bout”. In this case the yelling of “shoubu” can indicate the start of a duel; for something tangible, the most familiar one might be (for my followers, at least, aha) would be in the Shimosa Epic of Remnant chapter in FGO wherein every one of Musashi’s duels opens with a narrator introducing each opponent and then declaring SHOUBU to start the duel

尚武 which is the word for militarism or a “warlike spirit”

fitting, no?

Moving on, the flowers on Genichiro’s cloak... I originally thought the true blue and star shape might’ve been forget-me-nots but 1. don’t think i’ve ever seen that motif on a kimono and 2. after looking at soooooo many (like, SO MANY) kimono, I realized that the Chinese Bellflower, or kikyou, was stylized in the shape of a star and often attached to reed-like stems

Kikyou has many associations I won’t list here due to them not being relevant, but aside from being a flower associated with autumn (specifically September) it seems to mean an unchanging/eternal love. Which is cool, but this one also has some wordplay associated with it.

 帰郷 means “homecoming/to return to one’s home”. Normally I wouldn’t have mentioned it, but the Return ending in Japanese is referred to as  竜の帰郷 (literally, Dragon’s Homecoming). Make of that what you will.

other homonyms include  奇矯 and  棄教, which I’m grouping together since they amount to similar things in regard to Genichiro. The first literally means “eccentric/unusual/etc.” while the second means “apostasy/renunciation” - and what is it when you renounce a religion/belief? Heresy. Another homonym was actually a word (基教) meaning “Christianity” which, for those unfamiliar with Japanese history, was persecuted up until Meiji and even today only around 1% of Japan’s population identifies as Christian. The point being most of the homonyms are actually in line of being strange/odd/heretical/etc.

The other flower on his cloak seems to be a chrysanthemum (kiku). Notably, the petals are stylized in a very specific way, called  乱菊 (rangiku)

Chrysanthemums are considered the national flower of Japan due to it being the Imperial Family’s crest. As for meaning, because chrysanthemums are enduring blooms and used in medicines, they came to represent longevity (among other things). There’s actually not much wordplay with this one (or rather, there are so many fucking words and I could probably do some reaching with a number of them but the abundance makes me think it’s not so intentional). However, there is an interesting bit to note in regards to the name of the stylization.....

That is, the 菊 in rangiku refers to kiku, the actual flower. The  乱 means “riot/war” but also “disorder/disturbance” the latter of which makes sense because the petals are in a very “wild” and unsymmetrical arrangement (compared to the other ways chrysanthemums are stylized). Of course there’s the war + riot meaning, and because of this it’s used in many compounds for “violent” words. For example, 反乱 (hanran) which means “mutiny/rebellion/etc”. However, its verb form,  乱れる (not pronounced like ran at all, but uses the same kanji) means “to be disordered/discomposed/disrupted” but has a third definition which is “to lapse into chaos” usually in regard to veritable outside stimuli, for example, air traffic being delayed due to a storm or a country falling to chaos due to war.

Make of all that what you will all I know is I love flowers and I love Genichiro and I love looking too deeply into things