Prosthetic Tools IV. Mist Raven, Finger Whistle and Divine Abduction [Japanese in Sekiro]

Discussing original Japanese descriptions of Mist Raven, Finger Whistle and Divine Abduction, their modifications and related items.
I am a curious linguist, English and Japanese are my second and third languages respectively.
Orginal blogpost - shetanislair.c...
Other The World of Sekiro videos - • The World of Sekiro
Other The World of Sekiro blogposts - shetanislair.c...
Twitter - / shetanislair
Sources:
Sekiro Shadows Die Twice Official Artworks
English wiki - sekiro-shadows...
Read more:
TsukuBlog's post on Japanese aralia - blog.alientimes...
Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro
0:23 - Disclaimers
0:57 - Tiny Transcription Legend
1:06 - Sources
1:20 - Three-Story Pagoda Memo
2:00 - Mist Raven's Feathers
2:29 - Mist Raven
3:00 - Aged Feather Mist Raven
3:40 - Great Feather Mist Raven
5:44 - Slender Finger
6:28 - Finger Whistle
6:54 - Mountain Echo
7:16 - Malcontent's Ring
9:37 - Malcontent
11:11 - Large Fan
14:09 - Divine Abduction
14:32 - Double Divine Abduction
15:09 - Golden Vortex
18:47 - Conclusion

[@c.l.a.u.d.e]

I believe the story of the Senpou Monks and the Sunken Valley is to be seen backwards, with the monks originally inhabitating the place, and only then being spirited-away to Mount Kongo.
In the Sunken Valley, there's an entire section dedicated to various bodhisattva and the buddhist shrines symbolically display the statues holding snake skin, alluding to the cult of the Sunken Valley Clan merging with the Buddha: besides candies (which are found scattered throughout the area), the trading good that could have linked the monks and the Snake Eyes back then was metals for their guns. The monks probably employed their Centipede people as miners, with this being a real-life reference to the mining squad of the Takeda Clan, which were called【ムカデ】because of their duty to crawl in the narrowest of spaces to collect ores, and in fact both Long-arm Centipedes drops Yellow Gun Powder, that is specified to be unique of the Sunken Valley, and the lesser Centipedes are mostly found in caves.
Now, the reason why the monks were banished to Senpou Temple could be found in the battle between Ashina and the Sunken Valley Clan: the Gun Fort itself isn't build to protect the Castle, as it faces towards it, yet the key to its shrine is found inside the old library of Ashina Castle.
With the Sabimaru, also found in the Castle, Isshin's men had all the means to defeat Snake Eyes and, in fact, in the currect day Ashina we found some Cannoneer mercenaries (they drop Light Coin Purses like Shinobi Hunters and Spear Adepts) among Genichiro's army and in the Bodhisattva Valley we have Nightjars (probably) collecting the rare ores of the place.
The monks would likely side with the Sunken Valley Clan during the conflict and will end up spirited-away to Mount Kongo after the defeat, which also explains why that Prosthetic Tool proves lethal on them, as there's no return from a second abduction.

[@varsoonhks3211]

This has been such a lovely series--I really enjoy getting to see how the prosthetics work in the art while you also explain their mechanics as well.

[@Matveievtam]

Lmao 'Those are the temple donations. Thank you.'

[@nopenoperson8964]

I wonder if “Whining Whistle” would be a better translation than Malcontent.

[@hasiumcreeper5384]

Interestingly, English does have a word that specifically refers to giving money to a religious establishment -- tithe. However, I believe that it has specifically Christian connotations, and refers to more of a tax than a donation. It might not fit as well, but Christian language is often adapted to describe other religions. It would have been interesting to have called it Tithing Vortex instead of Golden Vortex.

[@BillyL_13]

Another amazing lore translation video! Really appreciate the work you put in to these, and you do an excellent job discovering and presenting the lore

[@scramblex2692]

a good translation for the golden vortex might have been "riptithe", a play on words for tithing, which is a donation to a church, and riptide.

[@Late0NightPC]

I'm not too sure if that would work too well personally. Shanti's mentioned in another comment that because "tilth" has such strong and distinctly Christian connotations it wouldn't mesh well with the distinctly Buddhist connotations that the original Golden Vortex name had. Plus, while a riptide is fitting in a mechanical sense, the fan is both closely tied to wind and the mountains, not the ocean, so riptide wouldn't be very fitting either.

[@baseai864]

I don't know japanese so I can't comment on that, but a word they might have been able to use instead of "golden" in Golden Vortex is "tithe" though it is an extremely Christian word

[@shetanislair]

I think, "tithe" won't fit contextually because it's specifically Christian but this word is a great find anyway! I've been thinking how Golden Vortex could be more accurately translated just as a standalone word, and "tithe" never occured to me. Thanks (￣▽￣)

[@Mayoegg]

Good video as usual.

[@TheDartLuke]

More comments to the god of the algorithm!

[@MadMax22]

Why does the finger whistle exist? There's only been one prosthetic unless Dougen made the finger whistle first. Omg... and that's how the Sculptor found Dougen??

[@Duv1995]

Aw yiss, I was wondering just yesterday when another of your vids was about to come out :3
Btw, are you going to cover NPCs dialogue aswell in this series? Because theres some lines that still bug me to this day, i dont know if its the right place to ask but one such line is this exchange between Kuro and Ema.
Kuro: エマ殿、平田から逃れてきた者、他には？
Ema: もう、ほとんど、残っておりません
In English the latter part gets translated as 'there are very few of us left' hinting at the fact that Ema herself was part of the Hirata clan, but that doesnt seem possible, since in the game Wolf never recognizes Ema as someone he has seen before and she admits to be a disciple of Dogen which seems more tied to Ashina Castle, not Hirata.
Sorry if this is out of place, and good job with these vids as always :>

[@kckc2286]

Yea it’s kinda mistranslated from what I saw in another playthrough, she is just saying that "there are few left" if I remember it correctly

[@shetanislair]

Thank you! I'd like to cover the dialogues although I don't really have an idea on how to organize them inside the project. Unfortunately, the Artbook doesn't have any dialogue scripts and I can't find them in JP wikis so I'll have to hunt those down manually (-ω-、) I'm definitely thinking about it! I feel like the project won't be complete without dialogue research.
Edit: in the dialogue you mentioned Emma doesn't say anything about herself. She just says "there's almost nobody left [now]", and that's all.

[@Duv1995]

@@kckc2286 do you remember whose playthrough was that? if there are any series of people fluent in japanese playing sekiro I'd be very much interested :o

[@kckc2286]

@@Duv1995 The channel name is "AromaLeo"~
Unfortunately he hasn’t played it through yet only up until the Lady B fight but he translates all the items and dialogues etc. along the way to his capabilities.
I’ve been interested in Sekiro lore for a while now and unfortunately without knowing Japanese it can be hard to piece things together especially when stuff gets mistranslated, certain nuances get lost or sometimes things are completely made up like in the divine grass item description.
Apparently the original text mentions absolutely nothing about Dogen in it yet in the English version it does lol

[@Duv1995]

@@kckc2286 Its a damn shame indeed, also compared to other fromsoft games people seem way less interested in sekiro's lore, even if it's one of the most cohesive and fascinating backgrounds they ever did imho.

[@whentheshroomish]

Maybe some of the centipede-folk stole the fan and took it to the shrine when they left the Senpou Temple's service? Really makes you wish we had more info on them.