I want to take a closer look at this afterword illustration from volume 13.
First: huge shoutout to olgierdou for this post, which made me want to look more closely at this illustration in the first place! And many thanks to my Japanese colleague for teaching me some new vocabulary, offering some cultural insight, and confirming some details for me! She’s not on social media, but credit where credit is due =u=
I’ve been doing a lot of reading about traditional Japanese patterns/design (和柄 わがら), Kasuri (絣 かすり) – textile dyeing/weaving, and floriography (花言葉 はなことば) to get a base level of understanding before trying to do any interpretation here. Disclaimer: I’ve yet to make it to a university library to borrow some published/more academic materials, so for now I’ve had to rely on a whole slew of websites for information about wagara, kasuri, and hanakotoba. Given how much I’ve read through, however, I feel confident enough in the consensus I’ve reached regarding the symbolism of the elements in this illustration to examine it more closely.
Assuming the fabric Matoba has presented Natsume with is a men’s obi, the width of it makes me think it’s a heko obi (兵児帯 へこおび) – a casual obi, generally worn with kimono at home. Olgierdou already identified the kasuri used for the fabric as yagasuri. I’ve yet to find any information to corroborate “masculine” or “feminine” counterparts/variations of this pattern – just the historic prevalence of yagasuri in men’s garments and the more recent adoption into women’s fashion. (More on that below.)
Yabane and yagasuri seem to be used interchangeably to refer to the same pattern.
Yabane (矢羽 やばね) simply means “arrow feathers.”
Yagasuri (矢飛白 やがすり), however, specifically refers to the pattern of arrow feathers on textiles. It requires a labor-intensive process of dyeing and weaving to create.
Billy Matsunaga has a great video on kimono that goes into the difference between casual and formal kimono and the methods used to make them. For our purposes here, though, what’s relevant is that the fabric gifted to Natsume would have taken great skill to make, which would come at a higher cost despite the obi being meant for casual wear.
From what I’ve read, this pattern was historically worn by men due to the association with archery (kyudo).
The symbolism is clear. Once an arrow leaves the bow, it flies forward and does not return. That idea of a clear path and firm resolve made this Japanese pattern a favorite at life milestones. (x)
Weddings were one such milestone, and brides in the Edo period often received kimono with this pattern to signify a wish for happiness – “that they would not have to return to their original family home and that the new household would be stable and happy.” (x)
In more recent times (late 1800s – early 1900s), yagasuri became a popular motif among female students to symbolize “study, discipline, and progress.” In modern times, it’s a rather fitting motif to wear to school graduations or university ceremonies, to show that one is “aiming straight toward a bright future” (x).
If we consider the context within Natsume Yuujinchou – specifically the meaning of Matoba’s family name (archery range), his status as head of an exorcist family, that he is a skilled archer himself, and that archery seems to be his favored method for exorcism – the cultural significance cannot be missed.
One of the sources I came across while reading about yagasuri used some particular phrasing that made me chuckle:
Indeed, once shot, the arrow is unstoppable. Its trajectory is not altered in any way unless it hits the bull's eye, in other words, only after it has reached the target and thus its objective.
The first kanji in Matoba’s name literally means bull’s eye. It’s even his family crest. He is the Moon Moon of exorcists.
The yagasuri symbolism is very on-the-nose, now that I have all this context. I wonder how many Japanese readers saw this afterword illustration and didn’t even have to think for more than a few seconds to understand the implications of that pattern…
Alright, so that’s the obi. What about the flower?
I did a ton of digging on this one, and I’m quite confident that it’s not gentian/rindou (竜胆 りんどう) – it’s platycodon grandiflorus, one of the seven autumn flowers* of Japan. Its traditional name is 桔梗 (ききょう kikyou), while its modern name is written in katakana: キキョウ.
(* Matoba is often associated with symbols of autumn, such as maple leaves, red spider lily, and dragonflies (specifically the autumn darter). Matoba presenting Natsume with a significant autumn flower is extremely on brand.)
Known to me as balloon flower, kikyou has cultural significance beyond being one of the seven autumn flowers. The Bellflower Seal (桔梗紋 ききょうもん) is the family crest of some clans, most notably that of the onmyouji Abe no Seimei, a legendary figure in Japanese folklore. On the 1,000th anniversary of his death, the Seimei Shrine in Kyoto planted 2,000 kikyou on the temple grounds in his honor (x).
Kikyou has a few meanings, all of which I feel Completely Normal about. After talking to my colleague mentioned at the start of this post, I understood that I shouldn’t just rely on whatever given English translation I see for the flower meanings. There are multiple ways to write the same word in kanji, but the exact characters convey a level of nuance that you can’t get by just looking at a simple translation. So, let’s take a closer look at a couple of Japanese sources for this one.
From this site, we get these meanings for kikyou:
「変わらぬ愛」 かわらぬ あい kawaranu ai – constant/unchanging/enduring love
「誠実」 せいじつ seijitsu – sincere; honest; faithful
「従順」 じゅうじゅん juujun – obedient; submissive; docile; meek; pliant
And from this site, we get a fourth meaning added to the same three listed above:
「清楚」 せいそ seiso – translating the above website into English, we get “purity” (this is also how my Japanese colleague translated it). Jisho.org’s translation, however, gives us “neat and clean; tidy; trim” – but it’s the meaning of each individual kanji used to write seiso that makes me feel a little bit unhinged.
The kanji for sei (清) can be read another way -> specifically, it’s used in the verb kiyomeru, “to exorcise” (清める).
The kanji for so (楚) can be read as suwae (すわえ) to mean “switch” (i.e. a cane used for flogging).
…Is it a stretch to read this as “purifying whip/cane?” Maybe. But damn if it isn’t an accurate descriptor for Matoba himself…
(On first glance, my colleague looked at the flower Matoba is giving Natsume and thought it was either kikyou or shoubu, either of which would carry meaningful symbolism. But after looking more closely at the five petals, she was certain the flower is kikyou. There’s also this fanart (the 9th one down), by a Japanese artist who likewise identified the flower from this afterword illustration as kikyou.)
Anyway, here are a handful of English websites that back up the meanings of balloon flower/kikyou.
I might have made myself a little sick thinking about all this for the past few weeks ngl lol.
While the afterword illustrations aren’t part of the actual story, Midorikawa certainly uses them to complement, and sometimes outright foreshadow, the change in characters’ relationships as well as events yet to occur in canon. (The volume 30 afterword shows that Matoba and Tanuma are getting much closer to actually meeting each other, which we finally see happen in the most recent chapters currently only released in Japan.)
This illustration comes at the end of volume 13 – after the “Behind the Chains” story arc (chapters 52-54), aka the shiki!Natsume arc. In the manga, Matoba asked Natsume twice to join the clan – Natsume turned him down thrice. In the anime, they inserted a more explicit third invitation to join the clan (after Matoba drew the protective spell on Natsume’s palm) to even it out. So, three times Matoba has asked, and three times he has been turned down. Natsume makes it clear he is Not interested in joining the clan – he has his own way of forming attachments with others.
I don’t have the post on hand (someone please link me if it sounds familiar!), but someone in the fandom has already noted that this arc is the last time Matoba asks Natsume to join the clan. He saw that paper doll fly out of Natsume’s hair – he knows exactly who that doll belongs to. He knows Natori is keeping a close eye on Natsume. But even though he doesn’t ask Natsume to join him after this arc, the afterword illustration very much shows that Matoba still wants him to. The depths of that desire are made clear in the gifts he presents Natsume:
The yagasuri obi – with all its archery symbolism of flying straight toward the bull’s eye (hah), of not returning to one’s original family home, of happiness in marriage, heading towards a bright future…
The kikyou – with its promise of enduring love, sincerity, obedience...
Matoba is all but down on one knee.
kaledo-art
areudirty
dededos
theartofmadeline
dailybridgerton
