Man, I wonder what people in the outer Rukon think about shinigami captains.
Obviously, they are known to some degree in the low-numbered districts. Ganju declares Byakuya to be the "most famous of the 13 captains," suggesting that he has a full set of their trading cards. Jidanbou also recognized Gin on sight, but again, he's sort of like a Gotei 13 hourly contractor.
On the other hand, in Episode 312, the one where Oomaeda lies to some children so they think he's a captain, none of the adults in whatever district he's in call him on his bullshit. Presumably, they aren't even that far out, since he was napping there in the middle of a workday and the children are later able to travel to the Seireitei with little difficulty. Obviously, though, the roster of current captains doesn't seem to be common knowledge*, or even the fact that a captain ought to be wearing a haori and accompanied by an adjutant.
*Insert renji_matsumoto_who_is_your_captain_again dot jpg
Anyway! I don't care about the inner districts, where you can still probably get a copy of the Seireitei Communication and the Hanbantai Players occasionally darken the Bonnaroo lineup.
Rukongai is a big place and contrary to popular opinion, it is not the mandate of the shinigami to protect it. Upwards into the double digits,most people have probably never seen a shinigami, and even if they have, their understanding of what shinigami are capable of ranges from incomplete to wildly inaccurate. Imagine being a kid from District 58 or so who gets saved from being eaten by a Hollow and is thus inspired to shoot your shot at the Academy. At what point does someone reveal that person whose sword made you pass out was no one. That there are tiers of people above them, and at the very top are people who come with their own gravity wells. Some day, "captain" will just mean "weird, very dramatic personage who signs your paycheck and doesn't remember your name", but the first time you see one, and your entire peripheral vision goes black? Whew!
They have to know about shinigami captains out in the deep Rukon, though, because they are the stuff that folk legends are made out of. Some are heroic, some are monstrous, most are both. Occasionally a Rukongai district manages to spit out a captain--do they have any memory of him? Is there a notion of hometown pride, regardless of the fact that no one bears any love for the hometown, certainly not him? Certain names are common among shinigami captains, so it's not always clear which Shihouin-taichou a given tale belongs too, but maybe it's also not important. Captains are long-lived, and it's hard to know if the one from your favorite drinking song kicked the bucket centuries ago, or if she gets a fit of the sneezes every time your pub mates are feeling musical. There are some captains that show up in Rukon-stories whose names don't appear in any sort of official records, and it's a matter of speculation which ones are fully apocryphal and which ones might simply be an epithet and for whom?
(Unohana. They are nearly always about Unohana).
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