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every1sno1fangirl · 6 months

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Had some thoughts about the history and foundation of the Human Village

These thoughts came about after researching what the literacy rates and societal organization would have been like for rural Japan, and springboarded from there about the other implications it should have on the Human Village because of what village life in Edo period and early Meiji Restoration era Japan was like. If I'm wrong about anything here, feel free to correct me on it please! These were just my observations:

Essentially, the Human Village does NOT match those expectations.

Namely, the Human Village does not have strong leadership despite how utterly impossible that would be if the village existed before the erection of the Great Hakurei Barrier.

We know that this is by design—if the humans had strong leadership, it could pose a threat to the balance of Gensokyo because then the Youkai could be eliminated by a strong enough organizational force. But it wouldn't explain away how the village came to be this way. In the Edo period the organization of Japanese society under the bakufu made this an utter impossibility.

For a summary of sorts, it's important to understand that the organization of Feudal Japan was not anything like the organization of Medieval Europe. Instead of administration being done directly by the lords for instance, the villages themselves were self-administrating. Before the Edo period Samurai did administer the villages, but the Separation Edict of Toyotomi Hideyoshi changed that and created a strict separation of the classes. Gone were warriors who became farmers who became warriors; he outright forbade it. They had two options: remain as samurai and move to the castle towns of their daimyos, or abandon their swords and become peasants. There were a lot of reasons for this (So a centralized government could be created, so the populace was easier to control, etc.) but it created the quirk of the those who chose to remain becoming wealthy elites who could leverage their education as the upper class of their villages and maintain control over them and those who left for the castle towns no longer being primarily warriors, but rather government bureaucrats. Since the villages were now self-administrating, literacy was more widespread among the peasant class as well because they had to manage their lands directly; most farmers actually owned their own farms for instance. And they weren't taxed individually, but rather on the village level. Meaning a 'headman' had to be chosen among these village elites (how they were varied wildly) to keep track of everything and distribute the tax burden. I could talk more about that but the more important thing about this is is that it basically created a lot of local power in the villages themselves, born out of necessity.

The Human Village in Gensokyo does not have a strong amount of power. This is explicitly by design as noted by various youkai like Mamizou and Aya. If the humans had a strong leadership, it would pose a threat to the youkai and thus the balance of Gensokyo as a whole.

While society would become structured in a different way with the Meiji Restoration and it's effective abolition of the samurai as a class, and it would bring many changes to the peasantry, things largely remained the same for them as they did in the Edo period in the early years. The same people would have held power in the villages for the most part, and Gensokyo itself, having existed for a few hundred years beforehand, only became separated from the rest of the Outside World in 1885—only 17 years after the Meiji Restoration. Furthermore, this is even something that Miko comments on after her resurrection—she's astonished at how flat the social structure is of Gensokyo and particularly how the human society exists. (I'm told she talks about it a lot in SoPM but as I haven't read that myself, I will not address it in great detail)

So how the hell does the Human Village not have a strong central leadership? The closest thing we have to that is the notable mention of the Hieda family and Akyuu's role in the village. And it is incredibly important to emphasize that the Hiedas are not samurais, ex or otherwise. The actual Hieda no Are, Akyuu's real life inspiration and her original reincarnation, existed in the year 712. This is over 400 years before the samurai as a class rose to any power. The Hiedas are prominent because of the Children of Miare themselves, not on their own.

It is my belief that the Human Village did not exist prior to the erection of the Great Hakurei Barrier. I believe it makes a lot more sense for it to be a (relatively) recent creation that came about during it's formation. It was already inferred as being fairly artificial in a lot of ways—like it's unusually large size, and it's self-sufficiency and previously mentioned lack of leadership—but I believe that logically it's very formation has to have been artificial as a result.

To support this, we know from the prologue to PCB that youkai exterminators settled in Gensokyo but at the very least, their practices did not pass on those who now live in the Human Village. While the village does produce the occasional youkai exterminator—notably the Hakurei Shrine Maidens of Reimu's lineage—their practices certainly didn't pass on to the village as a whole. And again, there is no central power in the village because of the threat they would be to youkai so youkai exterminators certainly aren't that.

And then there are other things, such as this interview from SCoOW where we are told the know the following about Okina, one of the Sages who created Gensokyo in the first place (In what is also incredibly based about ZUN):

It doesn't confirm that the village was created for that reason but it certainly adds weight to the idea, that even before one acknowledges that it's population is made up at least in part of the occasional outsider who gets Spirited Away and never returns, the population certainly wasn't 'naturally' formed.

Furthermore ZUN did some writing about Mayohiga in Gensuo Narratograph. It is a doujin TTRPG and published as much so anything contained within cannot be treated as hard canon, but he did write significant portions of the book (And was one of the players in the 'Examples of Play' section which is over a 100 pages long, because Japanese TTRPGs and how they are written is utterly fascinating). Namely, descriptions for locations. What did he write about Mayohiga? Well...

Only that it was "a private estate that existed before the Human Village’s founding, and was abandoned afterwards".

Which leads directly into my theory. Namely, my belief that the Human Village was created at the same time as the Great Hakurei Barrier as a result of the other villages in Gensokyo being artificially consolidated into one.

Gensokyo itself existed before the establishment of the Great Hakurei Barrier after all—it was originally separated from the rest of Japan by the "Barrier that divides Reality and Fantasy" that was created roughly four hundred years before the Hakurei Barrier. Humans certainly lived across scattered settlements such as Mayohiga—regardless if one acknowledges the specific details in Gensuo Narrograph as 'canon' or not—and we know as much because of the prologue in PCB. There had to be humans living there prior to the establishment of the barrier.

But they didn't have to have lived in what is now known as the 'Human Village' then.

If you think about it, it's really quite simple. The plan really only works if you start everything from 0 with the humans who will now be living in your closed system anyway. Established power structures needed to be eroded so the humans were easy to manipulate and their influence neutered, and starting with the humans already there just makes more sense. The region Gensokyo is speculated to be in is roughly what was recognized as a rural nothing-notable-there-at-all region at the time to boot.

The reason why there is no strong leadership of wealthy elites in the village now is because there was never any to begin with. Because when the Great Hakurei Barrier was created, the youkai came together and created some kind of calamity that ran the humans out of their villages and destroyed their homes, leaving nothing remaining but ruins like Mayohiga. I can only speculate as to what those calamities or disasters may be, but the end result was making it so the humans started over at zero in one, safe place where they were all relatively equal...And without any of those wealthy elites to muck it up and gather their power again. There is no better way to put it, but in all likelihood, they were likely excised as a result.

Which is why the most famous people there, the ones with the most amount of incredibly meager power and control that persists through generations—political power so meager that the villagers can go around their backs and hassle the shrine maiden into essentially breaking up their parties symposiums because it makes them uncomfortable—is the family of the obscure dustbin-of-history Hieda no Are's reincarnations.

Furthermore, this creates some interesting implications about Keine Kamishirasawa. In BAiJR it is mentioned that there is a 'secret society' with the aim of tracing the beginnings of the human and youkai in Gensokyo and discovering the secrets of such things. While a village that has existed for a very long time would certainly have it's founding fade from memory, this same village would have the previously mentioned powerbase and existing elite class as well.

No, it makes more sense if the Human Village was itself founded as part of the calamity and the nature of it—as well as those other villages—was forgotten.

Keine has the power to eat (and create) history. She uses this in Imperishable Night to make it so the village effectively disappeared by making it as if it had not existed there in the first place. Akyuu also had this to say about Hakutaku in PMiSS:

This poses an interesting thought about her role as a Hakutaku. Is it possible that she revealed herself when the new village was founded and in her own way, fulfilled that role as a hakutaku? Did she create this new favorable history by erasing the unfavorable histories that came before of those merchant families and established villages? (I wonder what they would have tasted like...) While I wasn't personally 100% confident in the idea that Keine is roughly at least 140 years old and would have been around back then when writing this, it is certainly a possibility and one I actually like the more I think about it. It certainly explains her absolute loyalty to the Human Village and simultaneous condemnation of any talk about driving the youkai out of Gensokyo or even just mere investigations into the history of the village itself. Why, I bet that secret society, as is only appropriate, is made up of the descendants of those powerful families! They know that something is wrong with the world but they don't know what! In the deepest, darkest parts of their mind they still remember! The truth will come out! They will reclaim their birthrights after vanquishing the evil youkai and...

Alright, I'll stop pretending to be like Aya now. She wouldn't even necessarily have to be that old either; she can obviously conceal the history of things that existed before she did, even if I'm pretty certain now that she's older than the Great Hakurei Barrier the more I think about it. I merely think it would have been remiss not to consider both her status in the village and the connection she has to certain aspects of its politics—that of its relationship to youkai and the humans not knowing their own history—in relation to this theory. If she isn't that old, her hakutaku-ness was an acquired condition—she might have possibly inherited it from the person who previously filled this particular role in the maintenance of Gensokyo.

All in all, it is my belief that the Human Village simply must be an artificial construct created simultaneously with the Great Hakurei Barrier and it explains so many of it's various strange quirks and otherwise impossible to logically deduct peculiarities, making it truly worthy of it's inclusion into the fabric of Gensokyo's strange history. Of course the Human Village is weird and it's foundation itself shrouded in mystery—it's only fitting!

Hey, do you think that means the village itself could be a youkai?

How spooky...

(Of course, the far more likely answer is that ZUN did not put nearly as much thought into it as i have, but that isn't as fun, now is it?)

#touhou project #effortposting #keine kamishirasawa #hieda no akyuu #the human village is a weird place if you think about it #thanks to touhou spec hell for helping me formulate some of my thoughts I appreciate it

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