Connecting the Mountains and the Sea: Exploring the Full Release of Touhou Kinjoukyou ~ Fossilized Wonders, Part 2
This is part two of a two part post covering the origins of Fossilized Wonders' characters, if you haven't read part one, then check it out here.
Ariya Iwanaga
Picking up from where we left of, our stage 6 boss is Ariya Iwanaga (磐永阿梨夜), based on the goddess Iwanaga-hime (石長比売, also spelled as 磐長姫 or 磐永姫, meaning something to effect of “Princess [who is] Eternal [like] Stone”), who appears in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki as the elder sister of Konohanasakuya-hime. There isn’t quite as much to cover with Iwanaga-hime compared to the last two characters, as she’s only mentioned briefly as part of Ninigi’s marriage to Konohanasakuya-hime, but I will still provide a summary of the myth from both the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki.
It is said in the Kojiki that Ninigi, grandson of the sun goddess Amaterasu, having arrived at the cape of Kasasa in Ata, came across a beautiful maiden who identified herself as Kamuatatsu-hime (神阿多都比売), also called Konohanasakuya-hime (木花之佐久夜毘売). Ninigi was eager to ask for her hand in marriage, but Konohanasakuya-hime refused, stating that it was not her call to make, and that he must instead ask her father Ōyamatsumi. When the request was at last brought before the mountain god he was all too happy to comply, and had innumerable wedding gifts prepared for Ninigi, among which was Konohanasakuya-hime’s elder sister; Iwanaga-hime (石長比売). However, Iwanaga-hime was so hideous that Ninigi refused to spend the night with her, sending the elder sister back to Ōyamatsumi in humiliation.
Upon hearing of Ninigi’s ungrateful actions, the mountain god condemned him, stating: “The reason I sent you both of my daughters was this: I made a sacred oath that if you were to take Iwanaga-hime into your service, the lives of the the heavenly gods’ descendants would last forever like a rock, standing firm and unbending for all eternity through falling snows and fierce gales; and if you were to take Konohanasakuya-hime into your service, they would flourish like the tree blossoms flourish. But now that you have returned Iwanaga-hime and kept only Konohanasakuya-hime, the lives of the heavenly gods’ descendants will last little longer than tree blossoms in a pelting downpour.” Hence, the lives of Japan’s sovereigns have been short.
A depiction of Ame-no-Koyane-no-Mikoto (天児家根命) and a particularly monstrous Iwanaga-hime (磐永姫), from the Wakan Ehon Sakigake (和漢絵本魁).
In the Nihon Shoki, we are told that Ninigi, having descended to Takachiho peak in Kushibi, and passing through the land of Minasohi in Sojishi, received rulership of the country from the deity Kotokatsukunikatsunagasa (事勝国勝長狹). Resting at the shore, he then encountered a beautiful woman (In another variant, Ninigi first spots a palace residing above the waves, wherein two maidens were weaving jewels by hand) named Kamuatakaashitsu-hime (神吾田鹿葦津姫), also known as Konohanasakuya-hime (木花開耶姫), who claimed to be the daughter of the mountain god Ōyamatsumi, and the younger sister of Iwanaga-hime (磐長姫). Ninigi wished to take Konohanasakuya-hime as his wife, and so requested her hand in marriage from Ōyamatsumi, who agreed and had a great feast prepared for him.
At this time, Ninigi rejected Iwanaga-hime due to her unsightly appearance, and so slept only with the beautiful Konohanasakuya-hime. Shamed by his actions, Iwanaga-hime cursed Ninigi, saying: “If you had taken me, then the child born would have a lifespan as eternal as a stone. But now, because you took only my younger sister, the child she bears will certainly have the fleeting lifespan of a tree or flower.” Alternatively, the angered Iwanaga-hime states: “The race of man shall change swiftly like the flowers of the trees, and shall just as swiftly decay and pass away.” As such, the people of this world live short lives. Despite the lack of direct references to the myths provided here, Ariya is still a fairly blunt representation of Iwanaga-hime. She is described as a “goddess of stones” (石の女神), her ability to “make one give up on change” is pretty clearly drawn from the eternal life that Iwanaga-hime’s marriage promised, and even her animosity towards the Lunarians can be seen as an allusion to the rejection of Iwanaga-hime by Ninigi (who would be aligned with the Lunarians in Touhou). The fact that she wears a mask over one side of her face may also serve as a reference to Iwanaga-hime’s supposed ugliness, in a similar vein to how Hisami has her face covered due to being one of the “Ugly Women of Yomi” (黄泉醜女, Yomotsu Shikome). And though I’m unaware of any connection between Iwanaga-hime and fossils, the use of them in Ariya’s design does make her feel appropriately ancient and unchanging, while also matching her identity as a goddess of stones.
The holotype specimen of Zhenyuanlong, the impression of feathers are plainly visible, alongside the fingers being unfused, much like the wing in Ariya’s design.
On that note, I’ve seen the idea floating around that Ariya’s wing is supposed to be a phoenix wing, in-keeping with her theming as a god of eternal life. And though I don’t doubt this was part of ZUN’s intention with the design, it needs to be pointed out that the wing has unfused fingers, a trait that isn’t seen in modern birds. Instead, the condition of unfused wing fingers is seen in basal aves and non-avian dinosaurs, such as the Zhenyuanlong pictured above, a mid-sized (about 2m long) dromaeosaurid similar to Velociraptor. There’s nothing particularly diagnostic about Ariya’s wing, so it’s impossible to attribute it to any particular animal, but something like Hypnovenator would be a decent fit as a troodontid dinosaur from Japan. Notably, Hypnovenator is known from the Ōyamashimo Formation (大山下層), which shares kanji with the deity Ōyamatsumi (大山祇神), the father of Iwanaga-hime. Relevant to Ariya, is also the fact that Fossilized Wonders technically isn’t the first time Iwanaga-hime has appeared in Touhou. In Chapter 4 of Cage in Lunatic Runagate, we are told by Keine that the Yatsugatake mountains were originally taller than Mount Fuji, before the deity Konohanasakuya-hime tore them down out of jealousy. Unable to tolerate her sister’s actions, Iwanaga-hime then took up residence on Yatsugatake, taking the eternal flame of Mount Fuji with her. The same chapter also identifies Youkai Mountain as the original form of Yatsugatake, before Konohanasakuya-hime destroyed it, which would therefore make Iwanaga-hime, and hence Ariya, the god of Youkai Mountain. Notably, this story of the Yatsugatake mountains being torn down by Konohanasakuya-hime is taken from a local legend in the Nagano Prefecture, though minus the mention of Iwanaga-hime. I find it at least somewhat noteworthy too that among the eight peaks of Yatsugatake, Mount Tateshina, which, as we recall, is the mountain in which Kōga Saburō became lost in the land of Yuiman, is given the nickname Suwa Fuji (諏訪富士).
Cameos from Iwanaga-hime and Konohanasakuya-hime, from Chapter 26 of Forbidden Scrollery and Chapter 19 of Wild and Horned Hermit respectively.
Iwanaga-hime is also mentioned again in Chapter 19 of forbidden scrollery, as a deity worshiped by the Hieda family for long-life, naturally, this has lead people to speculate that the reason the Child of Miare has such short lifespan is due to Ariya being sealed away prior to Fossilized Wonders. On a related note, Konohanasakuya-hime is acknowledged in both Chapter 4 of Cage in Lunatic Runagate and Chapter 25 of Curiosities of Lotus Asia as “Lady Sengen” (浅間様, Sengen-sama), with the former case mentioning her association with volcanoes, and the latter noting her as a god of sake brewing. As I pointed out before, Sengen serves as another reading of Asama (浅間), and is the name under which Konohanasakuya-hime is venerated at Asama/Sengen Shrines throughout Japan.
Although Konohanasakuya-hime is worshiped as the main deity of said Asama shrines, it's significant that Ōyamatsumi and Iwanaga-hime are sometimes enshrined alongside her. This would appear to be the reasoning for Ariya and Yuiman being venerated together as the gods of Mount Asama-Jōe (浅間浄穢山) in Fossilized Wonders, even if Yuiman is almost certainly supposed to be understood as a surrogate for Konohanasakuya-hime, and not the goddess of Mount Fuji herself. After all, Ariya seems to act protective of Yuiman in Fossilized Wonders, and, if Chapter 4 of Cage in Lunataic Runagate is anything to go by, it’s hard to believe that she would act that way towards her actual sister. On the subject of Mount Asama-Jōe, I’m actually left quite mystified by all the pyramid imagery in the full release of Fossilized Wonders. When the demo came out, it was my guess that the incident would be in some way related to Mount Minakami, which was subject to a number of fringe theories that claimed it was actually a colossal ancient pyramid, though, to my knowledge, no such ideas are put forward in relation to Mount Asama. For what it’s worth, there is a small Fuji Sengen Shrine (富士浅間神社) located within the precincts of the Minakami Shrine on Mount Minakami, but this feels like a rather flimsy line of reasoning to base such a core piece of Fossilized Wonders’ identity off of.
An image of the “Masked Goddess” (仮面の女神, Kamen no Megami) dogū.
Another possibility is that the pyramid theming may be inspired by the triangular mask of the Masked Goddess dogū, which was excavated from the Nakappara Site (中ッ原遺跡) in the Nagano Prefecture. There is nothing to suggest that this statue is in any way associated with Iwanaga-hime, but this may be a connection that was inspired by Professor Munakata. In Chapter 19 of The Case Records of Professor Munakata, the titular professor puts forward a theory that the triangular mask of the Masked Goddess dogū, represents an act of deliberate disfigurement for the purpose of averting death, further linking the myth of Konohanasakuya-hime and Iwanaga-hime as a representation of this belief. Although I wouldn’t personally put much stock in Munakata’s theories, if my suspicion about the Lunar Capital being influenced by Professor Munakata is correct, then it doesn’t seem out of the question that this may be another instance of inspiration. Assuming ZUN was indeed referencing the Masked Goddess though, I think it would have been much more fitting if Ariya actually wore a triangular mask herself.
Nina Watari
Lastly, rounding out the cast of Fossilized Wonders, we have the surprisingly simple case of Nina Watari (渡里 ニナ). She’s based on the shen (蜃, read as shin in Japanese), a kind of clam (though sometimes depicted as a dragon) that is responsible for creating mirages (蜃気楼, shinkirō, literally “clam breath towers”) in Chinese and Japanese folklore. Accounts notably vary on exactly what the shen is/looks-like, with the Liji (禮記; “Book of Rites”) mentioning a belief in which pheasants were thought to enter the sea and become shen. The sixteenth century Bencao Gangmu (本草綱目) on the other hand, classifies the shen as a kind of jiaolong (蛟龍), which are generally malevolent river dragons, an idea that is also seen in the Wakan Sansai Zue (和漢三才図会), where a draconic shen is pictured exhaling a mirage. Nina herself draws pretty clearly from the clam-like image of the shen, as pictured portrayed by Toriyama Sekien in the Konjaku Hyakki Shūi (今昔百鬼拾遺), and her ability to “display mirages” is about as on-the-nose as you can get. Nina’s design plays into this too, as a humorous nod to The Birth of Venus, while also showing her producing the misty image of a cityscape from her hand, perhaps serving as an additional reference to the term kaishi (海市; “sea city”), which is an archaic term for a mirage. Curiously, her omake also says that she was once a fossil, though I have no idea if she’s based on any particular extinct taxa. This is reminiscent of Chapter 9 of Oriental Sacred Place, where a fossilized shen was unearthed by a landslide and created the mirage of a floating city in Gensokyo, but it can be assumed that this is not the same individual as Nina.
Toriyama Sekien’s depiction of a mirage (蜃気楼, shinkirō), and by extension a shen, from the Konjaku Hyakki Shūi (今昔百鬼拾遺).
The idea of the shen as a conjuror of mirages does link Nina to the broader ideas touched on in Fossilized Wonders however, as the shen’s mirage was synonymous with the image of Penglai and the Dragon Palace floating in the sea. I’d wager this is part of the logic behind Nina being born as a byproduct of the junk data that had accumulated in Gensokyo thanks to the Lunarians. Furthermore, her obsession with misinformation and conspiracy theories fits well with the shen as a yōkai that literally creates falsehoods.
With that being said though, I’m rather underwhelmed by Nina as an extra boss. Her concept, while a very funny one, feels like it would have been a better fit for a stage 1 boss, rather than taking up such a valuable slot in the extra stage. At least speaking personally, I would have vastly preferred seeing more representation from the legend of Kōga Saburō, or just more Suwa mythology in general, as opposed to a glorified joke about Zoltax and AI hallucinations. I also have to wonder what’s up with Nina’s name, as, unless I’m missing something, it has absolutely zero relevance to her basis. This is unlike most characters in the series, which typically have names that relate in some way to the creature/figure they’re derived from. So, unless this is a joke that I’m just not privy too, it’s another element that leaves her feeling pretty shallow.
Personal Thoughts
As for my broader thoughts on the cast of Fossilized Wonders, I’m ultimately very mixed. On one hand, I love the return to Suwa mythology with Yuiman, and a character based on the legend of Kōga Saburō has been a want of mine for a while now. The fact that Yuiman is also tied into the pre-established lore of Iwanaga-hime and Youkai Mountain was an especially clever touch too, though I may be somewhat biased there, as I’ve toyed with the idea of Yuiman-hime and Iwanaga-hime OC’s myself. Additionally, I’m very happy to see one of the Watatsuki sisters make another appearance. Given the general unpopularity of SSiB among the fanbase, I’d resigned myself to thinking that ZUN would be dissuaded from using them again, but I’m glad to be proven wrong there. On the other hand though, I don’t think the characters’ inspirations really get to shine through as much as they could. In Yuiman’s brainwashed state, she is treated as a pretty thinly-veiled LLM analogue, while her actual ties to Suwa are only vaguely alluded to by Kanako in the endings. As such, she feels like a character that’s made to serve a specific role in the game’s plot and theme, that just happens to have the identity of Yuiman-hime grafted onto her. This is a pitfall ZUN has fallen into a few times; as much as I love Hecatia for instance, she serves chiefly as a freedom-loving stand-in for America, as an extension of the themes of LoLK, rather than actually reflecting much about the goddess Hekate. Similarly, I suspect Megumu was only chosen to appear in UM because ZUN needed an important resident of Youkai Mountain to show up in his already commerce-themed incident, and just went with Īzuna Saburō (飯綱三郎) because they were a great tengu from the nearby Mount Īzuna. You could maybe make the case that the wealth-granting powers of the Kuda-gitsune were a specific inspiration behind Megumu’s inclusion, though in that case, it’s strange that Īzuna Arts (飯縄の法, Īzuna no hō) are never even mentioned in UM. In any case, these kinds of characters wind up being defined by the roles that ZUN needed them to fill at the time, which, at least for me, comes at their detriment; choking out their vastly more intriguing origins.
A favorite of mine as far as depictions of Īzuna Gongen go, not only is his pose based on Fudō Myōō, but Kongara Dōji (矜羯羅童子) and Seitaka Dōji (吒迦童子) can be seen in Īzuna’s retinue at the bottom corners.
With regards to Yuiman again, I honestly have to wonder if it even had to be this way. A large part of the game’s theming revolves around the rejection and acceptance of change, with the extremes represented by the Lunarians, who reject any new information that isn’t convenient to them, and Nina, who blindly accepts any new information at face value, even bogus conspiracy theories (as a side note, I find it funny that the fanbase interpreted the Lunarians as being the ones using AI, when they were the ones explicitly rejecting it instead). AI itself is more-or-less just a conduit for this idea; a new technology to be either accepted or rejected. But, I feel as though this same theme could have been just as effectively communicated in a way that also respected the characters’ inspirations. I mentioned before that medieval myths and legends, such as that of Kōga Saburō, were rejected by the authors of the kokugaku movement, who wished to retrieve, what they interpreted as, a pure and unaltered Japanese mythology, a mindset that resonates well with Touhou’s Lunarians. Using this as a basis, the conflict between Yuiman and the Lunarians, instead of feeling like an out-of-place addition to her omake, would be in service to the acceptance or rejection of new myths and legends. This way the game could still function as a subtle commentary on real-world events, but in a way that’s much more cohesive with the characters and their origins.
Another issue with the use of AI in the game’s plot, is that ZUN’s commentary just… isn’t very interesting. For the most part it just falls in line with his earlier milquetoast remarks about how “leaving the creation of something to AI, is to lose to AI. But to deny AI and reject it, because you dislike it, is also to lose.” And how he wants to see AI as “just a convenient tool”. While I understand that the discourse surrounding this topic is quite different in Japan, as compared to the West, this just isn’t a meaningful stance to take. I’m not going to claim to be an expert on this subject, but the problem with AI isn’t whether or not its results are good or not, it’s how the technology as a whole is marketed as a replacement to the same people whose data is fed, without consent, to train it. And even if an individual tries to use AI generation in an “ethical” fashion, there’s still the problem of just how much energy is wasted on a technology, which, let’s be honest, is a novelty first and foremost. But, despite having AI as such a central component of the plot, these are matters that Fossilized Wonders is completely silent on.
This would be bad enough on its own, but there’s also the fact that ZUN used AI image generation for some of the game’s assets, namely the spell card backgrounds. I won’t pretend that it’s the end of the world, thankfully the usage of AI is relatively minor and unintrusive, but it’s still something that doesn’t sit well with me. Elements like spell card backgrounds in prior Touhou games weren’t always very pretty looking, but they had a charm to them, much like ZUN’s character art, as something being made beyond their creator’s abilities. It’s something that very much added to the doujin spirit of Touhou, and it was interesting to consider how certain backgrounds related to their owner. With AI on the other hand, there’s a clear statement made that these are elements not worth looking into, they’re only there to serve a strictly utilitarian function. Not only does it end up taking away some of Touhou’s personality, but it ends up retroactively casting doubt on everything that came before FW. Did any of the background assets have a greater meaning to them, or were they just chosen for convenience? ZUN’s own defense of using AI images in the game has been a pretty flimsy one too, claiming that it’s justified because the game deals with AI as a central plot element. Not only are none of the known uses of AI in FW actually relevant to the story, but you can still comment on the technology without using it yourself, so this sentiment rings pretty hollow.
A comparison between the charismatic and reference-heavy spells of Toyosatomimi no Miko in TD, and the extremely basic lineup provided by Ariya in FW.
On the subject of AI generated content in Fossilized Wonders, I genuinely have to question if some of the spell card names are the product of it, as this is by-far the blandest they’ve ever been. I’d actually hoped with Yuiman that we might get a return to more bombastic spell names, like those from Mountain of Faith, but instead it looks like ZUN named them all in five minutes. Even Toyohime does the absolute bare-minimum of having spells named after Shiomitsutama (潮盈珠) and Shiohirutama (潮乾珠), but that’s about it. This might not seem like a particularly big concern to have, but it really exacerbates the concerns I brought up before with the AI backgrounds, and frankly makes it look like ZUN just doesn’t care about these more flavorful aspects of his games. One might be tempted to defend this choice by arguing that the AI theming of the game gives the strictly utilitarian spell names some thematic relevance, however, the series has been trending towards increasingly more shallow spell card names for around a decade now, so I’m much more inclined to believe this is just ZUN being lazy.
Additionally, there’s some strange choices made with the character names as well. I brought up Yuiman’s weird name structure before, but I also wonder why ZUN decided to give her the name Yuiman and not Yuima (維摩), from Yuima-hime (維摩姫) which is another name for Yuiman-hime in the Suwa Engi, this would have maintained the original reference, while also being an actual feminine given name. Returning to the demo characters, we also got a roundabout explanation for Chimi’s family name, Houjuu (封獣), which, according to her ending dialogue, refers to a grouping of beings that existed before yōkai. To be quite honest, this still feels like a very artificial grouping, especially as the word hōjū (封獣), as far as I can tell, doesn’t appear to have actually been used in this capacity. It’s not like the nue and chimei have anything in common either, aside from being old, and at that point you might as well group the taotie and baize into the category of hōjū too.
I understand this might have been a rather harsh note to wrap things up with, but it’s not just motivated by pedantry, hell I wouldn’t waste my time writing a 10,000+ word tumblr post over a series I didn’t care about. I do genuinely love Touhou, irrespective of my interests in Japanese religion, but I would like to see it, and by extension ZUN, held to at least a little higher standard. With the AI drama surrounding Fossilized Wonders I noticed that a lot of people took not only to defending ZUN, but infantilizing him, deflecting any criticism by claiming that he was just a hapless old man who didn’t know any better. Not only is this plainly wrong, as AI is clearly a subject ZUN has a fair amount of interest in to base the plots of 3 games around it, but it completely undermines anything clever ZUN does actually add to the series. With all that said though, I do hope we get a break from ZUN’s AI commentary in the next game; Touhou or not, it's become a rather exhausting subject to deal with. Speaking of future games, with Yuiman no longer brainwashed I hope she gets some interactions with the Moriya shrine in the near future. Hell, maybe we can expect the King of Hadai to make an appearance in Touhou 21.
In lieu of a complete bibliography, I’ll simply provide a handful of particularly relevant sources that I drew from here.
Gustav Heldt, The Kojiki: An Account of Ancient Matters Used to summarize relevant material from the Kojiki.
William George Aston, Nihongi : chronicles of Japan from the earliest times to A.D. 697 Used to summarize relevant material from the Nihon Shoki.
Terry Kawashima, Itineraries of Power: Texts and Traversals in Heian and Medieval Japan Used for its summary of the legend of Kōga Saburō, as recorded in the Suwa Engi.
R. Keller Kimbrough & Haruo Shirane, Monsters, Animals, and Other Worlds: A Collection of Short Medieval Japanese Tales Used for its summary of both the legend of Kōga Saburō, as recorded in the Suwa no Honji, as well as the Tale of the Fuji Cave.
Bernard Faure, Protectors and Predators (Gods of Medieval Japan vol. 2) Used for some of its coverage of Suwa Daimyōjin. Bernard Faure also just provides all around great coverage of Japanese religion and mythology.
Bernard Faure, Rage and Ravage (Gods of Medieval Japan vol. 3) Used for its coverage of Tokoyo-no-Kuni, Penglai, the Dragon Palace and Asama Daimyōjin.
Fabio Rambelli, The Sea and the Sacred in Japan: Aspects of Maritime Religion Used for its coverage of maritime deities and Tokoyo-no-Kuni.
Matthieu Anthony James Felt, Rewriting the Past: Reception and Commentary of Nihon shoki, Japan’s First Official History Used for its coverage of Tokoyo-no-Kuni, as interpreted by Kume Kunitake.
I can't exactly take credit for this discovery, as I was informed through Discord, but it would appear I was mistaken about Nina's name. Her name appears to be a play on the Watari-gai (車螯), a kind of clam that is listed in the Wakan Sansai Zue (和漢三才図会), where it is described as creating mirages. Given that its description is so similar to the Shen, it seems to essentially be another name for the same creature. As an aside, while it's obvious how Nina's family name, Watari (渡里, spelled with different kanji to the actual creature), is drawn from the Watari-gai, I can't help but wonder if her given name is a roundabout reference too. The suffix gai is used in the names of other shellfish, though spelled with the kanji 貝 or 螺 (which typically refers to snails, rather than clams), with the latter character also being read as nina. Thus Nina's entire name could be seen as another way of writing Watari-gai.
The Watari-gai (車螯), as it appears in the Wakan Sansai Zue (和漢三才図会).
Despite my familiarity with the Wakan Sansai Zue, this reference still slipped through the cracks for me even though it's even mentioned on the Japanese Wikipedia page lol. With this in mind though, I actually think Nina's name is really fun, and a great way of drawing on her basis in an appropriately indirect way.
















