On Furniture
(Apologies for discursive definition-talk..)
I believe the label of âfurnitureâ itself, like anything that isnât given a complete answer, to host a catbox of meanings, so Iâll list some thoughts and categorize them by factual/thematic v.s. (meta-)fictional. I am separating these categories based on the wordâs two âoriginsâ: [1.] the âin-universeâ coinage; and [2.] the first usage within the episodic structure.
Regarding/defining categories:
Factual/Thematic:
The canon, chronological storyline [1.] underneath the storyâs presentation tends to connect more to the FactualâI use this term to refer to the material events upon which everything else is built (âPrimeâ) because Umineko likes to play with the word âTruth.â Extra-gameboard events are as close to âfactualâ as we can hope for, as they should occur outside of the Catbox. I willfully ignore the gestures pointing otherwise, as that would completely ruin the entire gameâs truth-search, but I will concede differing âperspectivesâ as a means of obscuring, and stories told by catbox pieces to be dubious. Literal and Thematic are not oppositional here; all metaphor/hyperbole/concepts in this category are rational extensions of the in-universe ârealityâ because they remain as suchâby this I mean that they are not visualized as chairs or rabbits, but instead concepts as intuitive as love and evil that exist among the world's inhabitants. Although these themes are delicately woven into the meta-fiction, they are born from âreality,â not personified from a third source or a tool within the game.
2. (Meta-)Fictional:
The storyâs presentation [2.] aligns more with the subjective, fantastical elements within the story. Considering the nature of an âendless witchâ and voyager witches in general, the Meta-World falls into this category as well (Also... take my usage of 'Meta' lightlyâI am referring to fiction-within-fiction and the common term for the worlds, not asserting that Umineko is an effective work of MetaFiction). The gameboards in their entirety cannot logically exist without Meta interference, because their planes often (arbitrarily) merge. To simplify the discussion Iâm treating the layers somewhat like this: â> (Note: it would take me ages to map out a consistent meta layer system for Umineko, so bear with the simplicity)
Prime - Uminekoâs ârealâ universe. The fragment of authored message bottles and (pardon my presumption) Ange/Evaâs survival. + What can reasonably be gleaned chronologically from the following layer (2) along with flashbacks.
Gameboards and the pieces within them. Were written with an intended purpose & elements of reality. In order of importance: 1, 2 > 3, 4 > Chiru
The Meta-World 1. Where Battler and Beatrice fight & the presentation/narration of the board. Seems to seep into every other layer somehow. Hypothetically contains Yasutrice as-author
The Meta-World 2. Whatever the hell was going on with Featherine and Ange reading about MW1. Arguably any extra-catbox people (voyager&endless witches of the future) contribute to this layer.
My Factual-thematic category focuses nearly entirely on layer 1, with extrapolation from persistent themes/discussions in 2. My (Meta-)fictional category encompasses layers 2 & 3. 4 can be relevant but I largely dislike using it for theories. In other words, category 2 is everything that is non-factual, meaning mostly presentation and interpretation.
I. Factual / Thematic
The in-universe coinage of âfurnitureâ is only disclosed in Reqiuem. I find this to be an interesting choice considering the inverted âanswer sheetâ theme of EP7; Ryukishi is handing us a short, retrospectively logical explanation, but its brevity leaves much to be interpreted.
"This body that isn't even capable of love...!! / What's...what's the point in living like that?! / This isn't a Human's life...!! / It's like being furniture!! / That's right, I'm...furniture...!!"
The term is suddenly flipped on its head. Prior, furniture was presented as unable to love because it was furniture (implied to be status-based, seemingly just an effect of inferiority). However, itâs the other way around: one is furniture because it cannot love. The condition of the body precedes & defines worth. Unlike the dramatized, bodiless nature of Beatoâs fantasies, this solution is grotesque and earthly. Being physically alienated from the universe of two makes one sub-human. Yasu-Shannon-KannonâsâIâll use âYSKââmutilated organs make âthemâ (collective, not gender-neutral) unable to form a sexual union with any of their respective partners. Shannon cannot fulfill the marital duty of motherhood or even sex with George, Kanon is literally impotent, both physically and emotionally/volitionally in his pursuit of Jessica, and Yasu is so alienated from the feminine ideal that she cannot allow herself to âexistâ without performing through the former two (&Beatrice). None of them are sexually âcomplete.â
Continuing the material interpretation, its application to Genji is obvious: He loyally serves Kinzo as a friend and confidant, possesses a flamboyant, flirtatious fictional counterpart, and remains unmarried with a certain sterility towards women... He is gay. Blatant subtext aside this answer also ties up some of my personal qualms with his characterization. His senseless, sociopathic dedication to the head and his successor, complete unwillingness to intervene regarding Kuwatrice, and legitimate desirelessness can at least partially be humanized by lolgayforkinzo⊠If anything, a possible envy of Beatrice(s) could have solidified their doom. This unrequited love makes Genji too âsexually incomplete.â While not literally mutilated, there is metaphorical castration in being a sexual minority. Kinzo would never love him, and I doubt Genji even respected himself enough to wish for it. He is the other half-universe that complements YSK, and possibly the only one who could begin to understand them. Their dramatically fatalistic tendencies can be narratively justified by their banishment from (yet proximity to) the world of love. There is no purpose in âlivingâ without the single element of life.
On a simpler note, we can also reverse-engineer the label simply based on those excluded. On my first read, âfurnitureâ initially, obviously seemed to be a hyperbolic representation of servitude. Being barricaded from the rest of society by class would certainly render one âsub-human.â This, however, is self-eliminating by exempting Gohda and Kumasawa from the label. My immediate conclusion then was that the basis was not physical status, but psychological servitude. KumaGoh always felt far more human to me, which I chalked up to abysmally poor writing of ShKaGenjiâa belief I still hold to an extent, but have found ways to cope with. Kumasawa and Gohda are distinctly rebellious, obviously thinking little of their status as servants. They are petty, greedy individuals who fit in well with the Ushiromiyas despite their class differences. Kumasawa is a pathological slacker, and Gohda is a skirt of responsibilities, but this doesnât make them 'bad' in any sense. They have a passion for and qualms with their employment because it is their job, not their identity. The same cannot be said for SKG, who literally embody their vocation. I could never take their little spats with Beatrice seriously because of how bizarrely complacent they were in the face of reality; to this day I get irritated with searching for satisfactory answers in EP2. Thus, âfurnitureâ can be taken to mean a lack of humanity constituted by a lack of will & individuation.
In a similar (& more personally satisfying) vein, âFurnitureâ can represent a debt and unbreakable tie to Kinzo. ShKanon and Genji are closer than anyone to being his property, yet they obtain strange respect from him, bearing the One-winged eagle as both a brand and honorâprized possessions. The magical perspective refers to them as his âcreations,â which works literally with Yasu/Lion as his paternal creation and Genji-as-servant as a circumstantial creation. Genji owes Kinzo as his savior, his remaining existence eternally devoted to paying back the favor of being spared from death in the seizing of Taiwan. Serving for so long, and so absolutely, definitely degraded his sense of humanity and began to merge his identity with his masterâs.
(GEN): â......We must continue to return the favor we received from the Master...until our final moments."
YSK, on the other hand, are tied to Kinzo by blood. Even in their ignorance and physical distance, and much to their personal detriment, they cannot escape him. They merge with projections of Beatrice without even meeting him, they come to work in the mansion without knowledge of their ancestry, and they become treasured servants seemingly by coincidence. Both ShKanon and Genji have a sense of being Kinzo's above all else, to the point of being distrusted as servants by the rest of the family, an unfortunate state since neither has families of their own. I think of this as a semi-intended and enforced alienation by Kinzo, furthering their already lonely situations for the sake of dependence and loyalty (I do not find this entirely loveless, thoughâŠ). This loneliness could explain the affective resignation felt by furniture, and their inability to âlove.â YSKâs case is cemented in youth due to special treatment both inciting bullying and cultivating a strange relationship between them and KinzoâKanonâs mention of shooting with Kinzo and participating in pranks tugs on a heartstring I canât explain. I am particularly fond of this interpretationâŠ
II. (Meta-)Fictional
There is a stupid amount of facets to furniture in the 'fictional' portion of the story, to the point where itâs difficult to speculate on a cohesive definition. 50 new characters now fall under the label, and they must be encompassed as well. Is the term simply an extension of its connotation in reality, or is it morphed by meta-context like many of the other themes? My vote? Entirely Meta.
As I did earlier, I will begin with the first usageâthis time, the coinage within the episodic structure [2.]. Doing this, I found something interesting:
The first use of furniture is Self-Referential and used as a reason to not do something: Kanon not giving a real interactive greeting, or accepting sweets; Shannon not fighting off Battlerâs assault. It actually takes a while for the term to be used by non-furniture, making it appear entirely self-imposed. The word is persistently used despite the discomfort and intervention by others. Itâs not self-deprecation or knowledge of oneâs place; itâs a ruleâa rule seemingly ingrained into the fabric of their existence. This is what I assert in this sectionâit is.
Shannon, Kanon, and Genji to a lesser extent, are wholly pieces owned by Yasu as their author. Not in the sense that Piece-Maria or Piece-Eva are piecesâI mean literal fiction. SKG are Yasuâs characters. Their differentiation from âhumansâ all hinges on what can be ascribed to their fictionality.
They have an unchangeable position in the world because they are born with a singular practical purpose: to facilitate the gameboardsâ culprit. (The strife that appears down the line is due to the conflicting purpose of creation) They cannot obey promises, only orders. Furniture does nothing but rot with the passage of time (âŠdue to the triumph of new truths, I presume). Furniture is a reliable âtool,â aptly fitting for characters who exist to fit neatly into the logic of murders, allowed meta-sentience but not autonomy. Writing about Humans is inefficient; you must cater to their flaws and desires, bound by what they Would or Wouldnât do. What they are shown to be like is what they are like; the room for duplicity is small in stories corroborated by the Truth of the outside world. To surpass thisâto create the perfect culprit without constraints, morals, or ties to realityâone only must ensure they are embodied. Embodied, they must be, by someone who could feasibly be them, due to an intentional lack of information. The benefit of the ambiguous identity is the excusability of multiple identities and secret motives. Yasu, with the least history, is the default, practical culprit for such a scheme. It would be entirely possible for Yasu to have no motive against the family at all, and through a simple desire to write the most effective story possible, just happened to write herself as the villain (though I obviously do not believe this, based on⊠well⊠everything).
Genji is not quite âfictionalâ in the way that Iâm claiming ShKanon are, but his nature makes him the perfect culprit-tool. Little can be known regarding prime-Genji aside from his undying loyalty to Kinzo and his successor (and how this makes him starkly morally bereft). Without family or distinct loyalties aside from the aforementioned, he too becomes a motive-mystery, and can be written to feasibly facilitate and assist almost any act if dictated by the âMaster.â The role of Master is pretty significant regarding Genjiâs utility, considering that if the boards are chronologically honest (which they must be), Kinzo is dead and Yasu is âthe Master.â This aggressively recontextualizes most of Genjiâs references to being furniture:
(GEN): ".......I believe everything has proceeded as the Master has hoped and arranged for. ...To distrust that would exceed my role as furniture in service to the Master.â
(KAN): "...............I wonder if this means the Master's ceremony has already begun." / (GEN): "...Probably. However, that has nothing to do with furniture like us.â
Obviously, we could read this as commentary on Yasu literally carrying out the murders, but the passivity and strange sentience regarding the ceremony leads me to believe this comes from a character aware of his narrative function. He was Yasuâs original âpieceâ in reality, remaining her greatest asset in fiction as well. His loyalty was not just feasible, but real. Like ShKanon, he functions as a limitless Queen. Unlike SK, though, he does little to ever interfere or reject his status. Although, there is that scene of him knifing the butterflyâŠ
Before I discuss the other(s)â fictionality, I have to preface: I will not suspend my disbeliefâI do not think ShKanon was a âthingâ in prime. I donât doubt the mental manifestation of Kanon as an ideal, and am even open to a Kanon âalter,â but I cannot accept that YasuShannon regularly dressed up as him or that anyone knew of a Kanon (besides maybe Genji, and even thatâs tenuous). I honestly donât mind the impracticality of performing Kanon, more so the meaninglessness. Within a gameboard ruleset where absurdities being âtechnically possibleâ warrants its writing as truth, why would Kanon be real? Wouldnât that be stripping Yasu of her hilarious authorial tricks? His existence as âextra person without extra bodyâ is the perfect tool for a game, but totally worthless in reality. Itâs not unreasonable that he âexistedâ at Jessicaâs school festival as a favor, but I wouldnât push further than that. Besides, he was 90% covered and still considered strikingly young and androgynous, which only confirms the difficulty of genderswapping in reality. Plus, most of the âconfirmationâ of PrimeKanon exists among swaths of half-truths (i.e. Requiem stating that a whole separate kid is being summoned out of thin air and Yasu is doing magic). Donât take this as discrediting his significance, though; Beatrice also isnât âreal,â and sheâs more interesting for it.
As for Shannon, she is also largely fake. Yes, the servant named âShannonâ exists in Prime. That is Yasu (or, well, what was left after the Clair-trice fragmentation [Ironically enough, I do actually take this absurd plot point at face value. Because itâs interesting]). However, I truly believe that Gameboard Shannon (GS) is a fictional entity born to serve (exempting murders) the desire for conformity and traditional femininity as much as Kanon was born from loneliness and repression. Again, these facets and desires absolutely existed in reality, I just donât see them as being sustainable, performed identities. The fact that Battlerâs memories of his first love arenât remotely jogged by GS, and the fact that such memories would make the culprit obvious, insists upon the idea that GS is an intentional construction for the sake of the story. Battler isnât an idiot, his androgynous intellectual gf just morphed into a moeblob tradwife over 6 yearsâŠ
I feel like thereâs a sticking conception that either: 1. Shannon is literally mentally Beatrice le evil culprit mastermind and is just inhabiting a servant body; or 2. Shannon is completely disconnected and the evil witch is hidden in her head as a separate consciousness and possesses her and seriously fights her alternate personas. I find these neither compelling nor reasonable. As for the first, I really do not feel like labeling a characterâs entire real-world existence as a facade, no matter how boring they may be. Besides, it would be quite difficult to earnestly repress your true self enough to love not one, but two other people on the side. As for the second, a split personality is meaningless and nigh impossible when within the boardâs logic you can literally kill, resurrect, and swap identities at will. Theyâre all fiction. Thatâs it. Theyâre all Yasuâs characters. Granted, they each contain large, separate amounts of herself, but none are uniquely her. As Zepar and Furfur said, âTheir soul is less than a single person.â Existent, in a sense, but not fully ensouled.
It should go without saying that I reject Prime!JessiKanon or and ShaGeorge (for the most part). I think their inclusion in the story is a mechanic to solidify just how disconnected Yasuâs desires and âselvesâ are, and to provide ample commentary on Love. Itâs entirely likely that Yasu fantasized a romantic pursuit of George to distract herself from Battler, but I have a hard time reconciling her character with that sort of activity unless, again, Shannon was a literal split identity. Besides, the love square serves to soften the absolute disingenuousness of ShKanon for being what they areâtools.
However, Shannon does have an undeniable centrality, a âHeartâ that the others are not afforded, including Beatrice. My answer for this is that she is the only one truly Embodied outside of the board, pushing her into a strange half-furniture, half-human category. Kinzo is said to have made her by hand without a demon and to have given her a heart. This alludes to her being a child born from flesh, not contrived by circumstance. As always, Kinzo is paralleled by Yasu, who has a similar (meta-)relationship to Shannon.
Gameboard-Shannon does not âexist,â but she surely contains the most real rudiments of Prime-âShannon.â Though less than human, she is Named and privileged with a body the others could never have. Her higher existence can also be explained by her being the simplest to potentially âexistâ (no gender-bend, no blonde witch). The conflict between her narrative role as Yasuâs piece and the narrative constraints of her ties to reality affords her a special rebelliousness, manifesting as a stronger Heart. Shannonâs bindings to Prime are a hindrance from an authorial perspective, narrowing culpability, but a privilege to the piece herself, who may circumvent fate with her âhumanity.â This is why she always precedes Kanon, and why she wins the love duel (Yes, I think the duel was identity>love). I also believe that Yasu envied the conceptual GS (The Beatrice/Shannon clash is enough to evidence this) and that Shannonâs internal strife is a consequence of Yasuâs teetering consideration of embodying her completelyâhence the âheart that can know love.â By abandoning her Self and personifying this ideal, she could pursue a love beyond Battler, but it would be a charade. Thus the âShannonâ character was trapped in a dream she wasnât allowed, with a new purpose outgrowing the old, fighting her own authorship.
ââŠBurning with infatuation and worried by love, being tempted constantly and eternally with a way out was truly a cruel trial.â
This could easily be read as Yasuâs conception of Shannonâher last way âout.â However, her piece is not allowed to transgress its role, or the catbox games would shatter.
Though I have agonized over it, I donât think my thoughts here ignore the heart. To understand the nature of furniture, one must deconstruct each character and what makes them human. Metaphors & representation are crucial to Umineko and, by extension, Yasu. The motive compelling one to author iterative âselvesâ containing neuroses invisible in reality yet contained in one body for the sake of their nature being solved is far more bittersweet than reverse-engineering a split personality because itâs the only way to make the Logick Work. Applying the sentiment of Eva-trice and the black witch, internal conflict may be made comfortable through literal bifurcation, but the mind in reality is painfully united. The possession of multitudes can justify the inability to understand or accept yourself; to love yourself. Many but one.
I consider the Golden Landâs âliberationâ of furniture into love & bodies of their own to be the opposite of what it seemsâinstead of external fabrication, the identities unite cohesively within the single mind, thus allowing them âeachâ a body and the capacity to love.
TLDR; Furniture in the meta-perspective is the role of a character & narrative tool. Furniture in ârealityâ is a physical, psychological, and relational condition.











