Fujiwara no Mokou is interesting

 

Deep within the bamboo forest of the lost is a ramshackle little hut, within that hut is a girl and within that girl is the burning rage of a woman scorned. Fujiwara is a character from the Touhou franchise who, like Alice and Yuuka, straddles the line between the species but instead of being a yokai who might be a human or a fairy, she's a human who might be a yokai but unlike Alice and Yuuka, we know a lot about Mokou's past and how he came to be who she is now.

Mokou's story starts 1400 years ago in Japan. A princess, Kaguya Houraisan was exiled from her kingdom, the moon, for inventing a potion that would make her live for eternity. She decided to live in japan and was quickly set upon by suitors who were captured by either her beauty or greed for her immortality. One of these men was called Fujiwara no Fuhito, an actual historical figure. He approached Kaguya who promised to marry him if he completed a number of tasks, when he failed he was humiliated and shortly there after he passed away.

Mokou was young at the time and sought revenge but Kaguya had disappeared from our world and fled to Gensokyo, the only thing that was left was a single draft of the potion Kaguya and her staff had created. It was in the possession of some soldiers who saw it as demonic and attempted to destroy it but Mokou saw it as a way to get revenge. She drank the potion and began wandering the land. After about 300 years of trying to cope with what she had become and learning to deal with her immortality she found her way to Gensokyo and thus, Kaguya. (Both of them probably made there way there with the 'help' of Yukari, who we will be covering later)

For the next 300 years she and Kaguya would fight each other, killing each other over and over fruitlessly as both knew the other would rise again before the day was out. After this the killing wained and became less frequent though she and Kaguya do still clash from time to time. The next 800 years of Mokou's life were somewhat less eventful, she set up her home in the bamboo forest, a place that only she has learned to navigate, leanred magic that granted her the ability to control fire and supposedly started to run a grilled chicken stand or a charcoal burning business though both are possibly jokes.

What makes Mokou interesting is her immortality and how fans and fan-works deal with it. Kaguya and Eirin, the only other people to have drank the potion, seem to be contended with their immortality but Mokou is often seen to hate it or at least, dislike it. Everything around her decays and dies, human lives go by, trees grow from seeds and rot into nothingness before her and even the seemingly immortal Yokai are killed or disappear but Mokou lives on, whether she wants to or not.

It's an age old question, would you live forever if you could? could you stand to see all that you love and hold dear die? Mokou would rather not and so she tries not to connect with people, she's shown to be happy with her self imposed loneliness and content to help people navigate the bamboo forest without getting attached to them but there is  something that gets in her way. Keine Kamishirasawa, a half human, half yokai who protects the human village from yokai who would do it harm. Keine and Mokou's relationship is what adds depth to Mokou's character.

Through Keine, who tries to befriend Mokou, we can see Mokou's reluctance to make friends, her sadness about her friend's mortality and perhaps most importantly, her anger. It's a theme that runs throught a lot of Touhou as nearly all of the human characters have an immortal character they are often paired with, Alice and Marisa, Yukari and Reimu, Remilia and Sakuya, but it comes to it's fore with Mokou and Keine. Alice, Yukari and Remilia are fine with living forever but Mokou sees her immortality as a curse and this disdain, this anger, works with her backstory very well. She can take her anger and her sadness and use it to keep her mind off the thoughts of death by getting into some pointless fights with Kaguya, the only constant in her life.

I also wanted to talk for a second about character design, somthing I have avoided until now but can't avoid here. Mokou's design is a very unique one in Touhou for a few very important reasons, First of all it's one of the simplest with only really three components, her shirt, her trousers and her talismans, the things plastered all over her trousers and tied into her hair, second of all it has a very utilitarian look to it, Mokou is often shown to be one of the few characters who gets any reasonable amount of work done, and third of all, it includes trousers. This might not seem like an important fact but it rasies some interesting points and contrasts with the previous point. The trousers she wears were, in the time she comes from, something of a status symbol and it's strange that someone of her status would be doing hands on work like burning charcoal, cooking or guiding people.

This goes hand in hand with another fact we know, at least before she met Keine, she was content with her life, she wasn't upset about her long life because she didn't get attached to anything and it was refreshing for her to be in a land where a long life was not instantly a bad thing. It was almost like the place she belonged. She's quite often shown as rather a happy character making the contrast between her normal self and when she is depressed even bigger and even more interesting.

Fujiwara no Mokou is interesting because she is always a black sheep, she stands out from the yokai because she is human, she stands out from the humans because she will live forever and she stands out from those others who will live forever because she doesn't want to. She stands out, like a candle in the dark, or like a fire in a forest.

Our three days are up now and it's time for us to move on, so pack up your things and lets see what weird customs we'll need to deal in the next leg of our journey.