In the first data book states that hinamori momo hates plum ? How that connect with her as a characters and her zanpakutou?
I'll be honest I'd assume as a random databook factoid that it's just a cute bit of irony. But if I had to try to interpret it as a read on her character more directly, the fact that her sword, Tobiume, evokes the Plum would at least superficially suggest she has some kind of self loathing issues, or at least maybe a bit of a self image problem.
But really that goes for almost all the shinigami who haven't achieved bankai: it was showcased pretty well by Yumichika and Rangiku when they were trying to meditate in between two of the arrancar attacks on karakura and both described their swords as being irritating only to describe their own character flaws. And then is brought up again with Hisagi and Kazeshini. And even just Ichigo and white. It really seems like the standard syndrome for shinigami in middling levels of development is to have a very Jungian confrontation with the Shadow Self, where they just struggle to accept the worst of themselves as a part of their identity, and Hinamori would be no exception.
But while we're here I'll just pick at a few little loose bits of Hinamori's design that I don't think I've really had much reason to bring up before...
For one, her original design very conspicuously kind of centers around what I guess would be considered a zicuo[缁撮](?) a kind of chinese hair cover that gets a lot of use in period dramas, although I couldn't for the life of me tell you what precise time period(s) it's associated with. It's also just the Chun Li twin buns thing.
Also, I don't know enough about chinese clothing/accessories to say if her later designs do or don't echo this cultural aesthetic...
Speaking of which... even though I don't always give a lot of credence to the anime designs, Tobiume's humanized form does have a seemingly Chinese design as well —although the anime's kind of lack luster art makes it a little hard to tell as it lacks a lot of key details. But her outfit does seem less Japanese at a glance, and in conjunction with her plum(blossom) motif seems to evoke a kind of tiānnǚ[花天女] aesthetic, with both the general classic beauty and the kind of angelic floating silks.
But depending on just how bad the art/design job here really was, it could almost be argued that this might have be a botched attempt at a korean hanbok?? Honestly, I don't really think that's the case, as the Chinese connection feels much more obvious, but I only suggest it as a possibility because...
Tobiume itself is based on what's called the "seven branched sword" an ancient Japanese artifact said to have been gifted to Japan by a Korean Emperor. I don't think that's super meaningful in and of itself —I assume the only real idea behind it was that it's a ""branched"" sword and thus evokes a tree— but it is interesting that, even if only by coincidence, Hinamori seems pretty consistently, not-quite-Japanese.
And i'm not super well versed on this subject, so maybe there's also a prevalent Chinese equivalent, but throughout a few periods of modern Japanese history there has been a kind of controversial issue with "secret koreans"; the korean immigrants who were living in Japan prior to the invasion of Korea in WWII, and who changed their names, adopting Japanese names, in order to hide their ethnic identity from the wartime government/society. In turn their descendants have struggled with the effects of their identity in social and professional life in post-war Japan.
Still, there seems to be some suggestions that she could be something other than strictly ethnically Japanese, which, in integrating into an otherwise Japanese by default setting, might account for any number of self image problems.
But much more likely, I would think, is that the apparent dislike of her sword's namesake tree/flower/fruit is just a matter of her being a little insecure as a kind of underdeveloped member of the gotei, in terms of skill and physique, even in spite of her apparent talent for kidou.
Anyway, thanks for the question! I haven't really had anything to add to the big pile of Bleach posts in a while and this random bit of trivia was just the right amount of content to dig into without it turning into an unreasonable wall of text, even if I don't really have any strong conclusions to offer from it.
