See, the deity Jizou is a patron of children, pregnant women, dead children, and aborted fetuses, so I think the reference to a word measuring numbers of “ Small (not human)Animals” is being used to reference children, and maybe even specifically fetuses or unborn children. But I think it’s a more obtuse reference here… The obvious literal usage of this would be for things like rabbits being counted by a hunter or farmer: things you collect in large numbers and that are smaller than livestock. But the reference I think Kubo is actually making here is that this kanji is used to count what most dictionaries seem to refer to as “small animals,” which is a little vague, but it does implicitly tells us a few things. The kanji 疋 is used as a counter word for a number of things, including measurements of cloth, so I think it’s actually just a sloppy translation into the English “ foot,” as in the unit of measurement.
#BLEACH MAYURI ENGLISH TRANSLATION SERIES#
So, there’s really not a lot to talk about with Mayuri himself, which is why this only sorta fits into my series of Bleach name posts… But so long as I’m looking at kanji related to Mayuri, I want to address the egregious mistranslation of his sword, Ashisougi-Jizou as “ Leg-cutting Jizou.”įor one it’s not the word “ Leg” at all, it’s “ Foot.” And I’m not even sure it’s referencing an anatomical foot. I don’t think that really carries a direct “meaning” in relation to his character so much as it just establishes a general theme, though. And his sword, Ashisougi-Jizou does reference the bodhisattva, Jizou (aka Kṣitigarbha) so that may have been intentional. It is written that same as a common abbreviation for Nehan which refers to the Buddhist Nirvana. It means literally “ Black Soil” (and sounds exactly like Kuro “ Black” and Tsuchi “ Soil”) but the phrase specifically refers to “ Mud” or “ Slime.” Real obvious character qualities being evoked there, and there’s honestly not much more to it beyond that. The surname Kurotsuchi is actually pretty straight forward, by Kubo’s standards anyhow. Nemu is the same, although we learn later that it’s shortened from Nemuri Nanago meaning “ Sleep(er) Model-7” denoting that she was the 7th in a line of “ Sleep(er)” experiments. As you can see the given name, Mayuri, isn’t written with an explicit meaning, which is something Kubo generally does pretty deliberately.
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