Going Postal in Soul Society
I just spent an entire hour talking a 70-year old woman through how to print/mail a newsletter, and a few weeks ago spent half an hour explaining to 19-year olds how to format a postcard, which leads me to believe that absolutely no one, no matter their generation, knows how use snail mail. But anyway, as I was staring into the middle distance on this phone call I kept myself alive by thinking about the Gotei 13′s “how the mail works” onboarding workshops, explaining how all the communications systems in Soul Society work, and what each is supposed to be being used for.
Kidou Mail: There appear to be multiple forms of kidou that can beam messages out, though not every seems to know how/have the capability to use them (if you’re really pro you can cc: ryoka!) – but I guess these would be the equivalent of like, your national/regional emergency phone alerts. And butterflies can also do a version of this, maybe more regularly? Here’s an emergency butterfly SMS from Chapter 231:
Walking Mail: But we also know the standard for Gotei reports is handwritten paper communication. These are also notably, often not mail; they are a bunch of people walking reports to different places. (A bunch of captain/VC-level people, often, walking reports to different places, no less.) Maybe this is a chain of custody issue?
I was going to use Episode 317 as my example, but going back it sounds like this was actually an oral report. I’m still keeping this in here because I suppose that’s another form of standard Gotei communication:
^ That’s Hitsugaya talking to Ukitake and Kyouraku at 1st, because they’re all hanging out there, and Hitsugaya has just finished giving an oral report on something it sounds like he only has… secondhand knowledge of? So I’m not sure why that would need to be in-person, and definitely seems like a “well, this could have been an email” moment, but–
Anyway, here are Hinamori AND Isane–so, TWO vice-captain-level shinigami!–personally handing out extremely non-confidential mail (notice of a VC meeting) in Episode 230:
And we know the SWA has the budget for mailers if they wanted!
Mass mail does exist, re: that Oriental Trading catalog that they have that you can buy stuff from – it has a name! The Rengoku Shoukai catalog. Though I guess who’s to say catalog distribution isn’t handled privately by the catalog company, and there are various newsstand drop locations across the Seireitei. edit: Hisagi is to say! Apparently they just slide it into the SC, lol. You can also mail goods back to the Rengoku Shoukai is you pay the return postage, so there’s at least a mail system for goods:
(This ad also seems to insinuate that you can place orders on a website? At least an Intranet-type deal. Or via SMS/page.)
The SC also has postcards it wants people to send in, which suggests that those might be able to be mailed, though IDK MAYBE THEY WANT THEM TO BE HAND-DELIVERED. The SC claims to have a subscription service, but that might just be… Hisagi walking around? As in Chapter 230:
Not that I would reject the idea that the usual SC subs go out via mass mailing, but Hisagi cherry-picked Ukitake’s to hand-deliver, because he wanted to go on a perambulation and talk to Ukitake, rather than be sad and lonely in his stressed out, captainless Division for once. D:
There’s also Denreishinki, as mentioned re: placing Rengoku Shoukai orders, so they don’t seem to be a purely “on assignment in the Living World” thing (and they use them fairly prolifically in Soul Society in one of the light novels, right?). But again, given how much walking around happens it also seems like they mostly forget about them when in Soul Society. Or maybe the denreishinki have a garbage coverage map in Soul Society, so it is literally less frustrating to just find someone in person to talk to them.
Butterfly Mail: Mostly I think it’s amusing that using butterflies to send letters to the SC is explicitly DISallowed (at least for surveys). From Colorful Bleach pp. 46:
In my mind this rule came about for two reasons:
1) Upon arrival, the butterflies would need to be stabled somewhere before being sent back to their original locations, and the SC was just like “wtf, we need a budget line for a ROOKERY now? for food and water for these butterflies???” And it was a whole Thing, because they tried to use a portion of the 9th division butterfly enclosure but then the butterflies got territorial and then they started cross-breeding and it was a whole butterfly civil war. Also maybe like one person could tell which ones were the 9th’s butterflies and which ones were guests and it was all very frustrating.
2) The butterflies serve the primary purpose of safe interdimensional travel; the idea to use them for (“important”) messages is more of an afterthought/added bonus/questionable second act. But really, they’re intended for messages that are 140 syllables or fewer (haiku-length = best transmission quality), so a lot of the stuff the SC was getting from these appropriated butterflies was either unusable, OR the senders would compensate by sending MULTIPLE butterflies, each with a portion of the letter they wanted to send, like the equivalent of a (1/157) Tweet thread. Which only made the problems in #1 worse and was also just a nightmare for the scriveners to work through.
And that’s why the SC offices are now a strictly no-butterfly zone!
This is all to say, it seems like the mail system in Soul Society kind of sucks, and I hope that now that they are more openly trading with Urahara Shouten, Yoruichi takes it upon herself to open a Kuroneko branch in Soul Society and revolutionize their world.
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