Why there's actually NO love triangle in Inuyasha (looking at the story from an eastern perspective)
So, this is going to be one of my long posts - bear with me!
I see a lot of debate about Kikyo vs Kagome, and I wanted to share some thoughts on the love triangle aspect of Inuaysha. Although I am white British (originally American), I was raised with an Indian religion – and despite leaving it about 20 years ago, it never fully leaves your system. And I really think you really need to look at Inuyasha from an eastern perspective to understand the Kikyo / Kagome thing.
So, let’s first look at why I personally had such a problem with Kikyo in the beginning – and then we’ll look at why we have to see her in a different way.
I have two problems with Kikyo. The first is that she was a high priestess of the village, known to be so powerful that she was entrusted to purify the shikon jewel, and so forth. She dealt with demons on a daily basis. She knew better than most that they often took on dual forms and they were deceitful. And yet the instant ‘Inuyasha’ attacked her, she didn’t so much as blink at it. She accepted his betrayal without hesitation – which tells me she never truly trusted or loved him.
Exhibit B – her proposal to use the crystal on him, to make him fully human. Essentially, this would have eradicated the world of one more demon – she was slaying him under the guise of love. It was a means to de-claw him, which to me is symbolic of stripping away all his passion and strength - everything that makes him him. He would have been tamed and weakened and in her hands. It’s pretty realistic, because a lot of women fall for the ‘bad boy’ and then work hard to domesticate him until he is unrecognisable. I just don’t like it.
So, to my mind, Kikyo didn’t really love him. She didn’t accept him for what / who he was. He was fatherless, his mother died when he was young, and he had to look after himself in a cruel world of bullies and bigots. He naively fell for the first suggestion of kindness because it was the first he ever had of it – but it wasn’t sincere.
She sealed him to the Tree of Ages and the world moved on, while he remained frozen in an older time. I see this as metaphor for Inuyasha being emotionally and mentally stuck, unable to move forward from his trauma. This is why (apart from just being a demon) he doesn’t age. Kaede is an old woman and he’s still the young naïve reckless kid in desperate need of love and acceptance, unable to grow.
But Kikyo never grew either. She died and sealed away the crystal in her grave, freezing the whole moment in time. She still had lessons to learn – they both did. And this is what leads us to Kagome. She is drawn back to Inuyasha because they have unfinished business from a previous lifetime.
When Kikyo is first resurrected, her soul is removed from Kagome’s body and returned to its former body, Kikyo. But this is not how it should be – that soul is ready to move forward. It’s had time to learn lessons. In fact, an interesting question would be: what was that soul doing for nearly 500 years? Because it had to have gone through other incarnations between the feudal period and modern Tokyo. In that time, Inuyasha remained stuck in one moment, unable to grow, while his lover’s soul reincarnated again and again and learned the lessons it needed to learn in order to go back and resolve this matter.
So Kagome drags her soul back into her modern body – but leaves one crucial piece behind in Kikyo’s resurrected body: her hatred / anger. Kikyo is then a walking body of rage. Symbolically, we are seeing the soul (now in Kagome) leaving the past in the past and wishing to move forward, without the anger it held onto for so long. The anger then gradually becomes purified, we could say, through the infusion of other dead souls mixed in to keep Kikyo’s body alive a while longer. She gains the experience of other souls, to heal that anger so that it no longer lingers in the world.
However, as long as Kikyo is present, Inuyasha cannot move forward. It isn't so much about her as an individual - because we have to remember she's already there as Kagome. Kikyo's presence is a symbol of the guilt and anger Inuyasha needs to let go of. He is still emotionally stuck to the tree.
Kagome has had other incarnations to teach her the wisdom of letting go of those emotions. Her special innate skill seems to be healing – as Kikyo, she was a healer, but now she is even more so. The very birds flock to her. She is also a seer. She sees not just the shikon shards but into people’s hearts. She can read the emotions in their faces. She sees their vulnerability, and their worth, underneath all their bravado and anger. Her kindness touches people. She might struggle with algebra, but she has innate wisdom from lifetimes of experience. She is an old soul. In many ways, although Inuyasha is 200 years old, she is at least 500 and therefore older, despite appearing younger. This works in a way that ‘Twilight’ never did, because of the reincarnation angle.
Kagome is patient – she’s been patient for 500 years, after all – and continues to be there, waiting for Inuyasha to let go of the past, symbolised by the phantom of Kikyo.
This is not really a love triangle – Kikyo and Kagome are the same person. Kagome learns to realise this. At one point, she finds herself in Kikyo's memories of the day she was killed, and Kagome even yells at Kikyo something to the effect of, 'That's not him! He would never do that! Why can't you see it!?' This is her remembering her own past life and reflecting on how blind she once was. But not anymore - she has learned, and she is a seer.
Kikyo is not a threat. She is a figment of the past, and both Inuyasha and Kagome need to let that past go. This is symbolised when Kagome is tested and held over the cliff by a fake Kikyo, and Kagome has to let go of her hand and declares that she doesn’t need to worry about her – she is enough in herself.
Inuyasha finally comes to see that it’s time to move forward. This is him overcoming trauma, pain and anger. He doesn't simply move on with Kagome once Kikyo dies for good - this is him releasing himself from the past and moving forward with the same lover, but in her older, wiser form. This is the moment that the anger dies. All that matters about Kikyo lives on as Kagome. He isn't choosing one over the other, because there is only one woman.
By the end, when Inuyasha has faced his demons (Naraku and more), he is a whole person and finally able to embrace true love. Kagome, as well, in all these incarnations has learned to accept and love for real. She doesn’t want to de-claw him anymore. She never wants him to go full human, but also doesn’t want him to go full demon – because it is vital that we find balance between our animal and civilized sides. It’s a Buddhist notion, this treading the middle path. Inuyasha is the ‘perfect man’ (I mean that as the western magical term), in the sense that he is equal parts beast and human / instinct and intellect. Neither aspect overwhelms the other – and Kagome is the one who teaches him how to walk this path and be whole.
Kagome gives Inuyasha the acceptance he needs to love himself and therefore love her and see love in others. At the end, when he declares to the demons in the crystal that he was born to meet her and she was born to meet him, he doesn’t just mean as Kagome – he means first as Kikyo and now as Kagome. Their karma is entangled. They have been on this path for 50 years (for him) / 500 years (for her). They share a thread of fate. However, it wasn’t their time, 50 years ago. Neither of them was in the right mental place for it to work, yet. And so it was all put on pause, allowing her time to grow, learn, and come back and teach him what she learned along the way, through all those lifetimes of experience, so that they could both grow together and finally be together.
I even like to think that now he might begin to age, because he is no longer emotionally stuck to that tree.
When Kagome’s mother so quickly accepts that it’s time for Kagome to leave forever, this is such an eastern viewpoint, as well. Growing up on the location of a shrine, she clearly understands that this is not really her daughter – this is an old soul who incarnated as her daughter in this particular lifetime, and it is now her time to go back and do what she was born to do. She doesn’t belong to her mother. She was on loan, so to speak.
The ending reminded me so much of a novel I’ve read a few times called 'Mipam' by a Tibetan lama named Lama Yongden. It’s quite an interesting story, again about a romantic couple and their fate throughout incarnations.
So Kikyo is bothersome – but it’s because she is the immature form of Kagome before the benefit of 500 years’ worth of lives / experience. As a soul, she learned love along the way, to the point of becoming someone who can love nearly anyone and anything. Kagome forgives so much – including Sesshomaru and Kouga, who are rather abominable, if you think about their beginnings in the story. I see Kagome as a bodhisattva (another Buddhist concept), choosing to incarnate even when she no longer has to, in order to pass on her wisdom to others and teach everyone the path of love. And in true bodhisattva fashion, she isn’t really aware of it during this lifetime – she is humility.
So there you have it – a love triangle…but between two people! Inuyasha never chose one woman over the other, because they are the same - you can’t have Kagome without Kikyo. Kikyo struggles with it because she knows that part of herself will be gone forever (the anger). Kagome struggles with it because anger is hard to release, and yet she just wants it gone already! But they are not distinct characters, if seen from an eastern philosophical perspective - which we have to do, because the foundation of the story is that Kagome is Kikyo’s reincarnation.
That perspective is essential to understanding what’s happening, who they both are, and the ending / the path everyone takes. Inuyasha has that revelation by the end and accepts that she will return to him because they have been on this path for so long, and been separated before – by death, no less – and she still came back to him.
And when Kagome dies, I can only imagine he will wait for her to return to him in some other form, or he will die too and join her somewhere - because they were not simply born for each other as Inuyasha and Kagome but as their two souls underneath those physical forms.
