Touhou Characters #7 - Kaguya Houraisan and Fujiwara no Mokou
Entry posted by Kaguya
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So, Kaguya. The final boss of Touhou 8, Imperishable Night, and also the character my whole profile is based on, and my favorite touhou character, all in all.
A long time ago, a bamboo cutter found a baby girl while working.
She was unlike all other babies he had ever seen, being really small, and much more fragile.
While he was a simple bamboo cutter, and didn't have much to provide, after some thought, he decided to adopt her.
And so he took the baby, and he and his wife continued to live their lives normally.
However, after adopting the baby, the man was blessed with fortune. Mysteriously finding gold while working, amongst other things. Everything in his life was working out more than perfectly, to ridiculous levels, and they became a very wealthy family over the years.
During that time, the girl grew up, with unnatural health and beauty.
The girl's beauty was unlike anything ever seen before on earth, and word of Princess Kaguya spread accross the land with shocking speed.
And so, tens, if not hundreds of men came to see the rumored princess. All of them proposed to her, and she refused all of them.
Even after being refused several times, however, 5 nobles would absolutely not give up on marrying her. Kaguya was conflicted, and decided to set them for a trial. She then set 5 impossible requests to bring her different treasures; She would marry the man who managed to bring her one of the treasures first.
The first request was to bring her the stone begging bowl of Buddha. The second was to take a jeweled branch from Mount Hourai. The third was to find the robe of the fire-rat of China. The fourth was to retrieve a colored jewel from a dragon's neck. The final task was to find the legendary Cowry treasure of the swallows.
Upon facing these requests, 2 of the nobles gave up, one tried to swindle her with a fake treasure and one decided to propose to her without any treasure.
One man, however, decided to seek the treasure to the very end, and tragically died in a storm, before he could even reach his destination.
With all of them rejected, word of the princess reched the emperor of Japan, who arranged a meeting with her.
Upon seeing her beauty, he too, could not help but propose to her, which she also rejected, wishing only to live with her family in peace.
Unlike the nobles, however, the emperor kept contact with her, and they would trade letters as friends for a long time to come.
With the passage of time, however, Kaguya began to act weirdly. She would be seen sobbing at night, and acting troubled and depressed.
It would later be revealed that she recovered her memories, and that she wasn't human, but rather a being from a species that lived in the moon, exiled to the earth temporarily as a way to pay for her crime of developing and using a drug that brough her immortality, thus leaving her unclean to the eyes of the lunarians.
That penitence, however, was about to end, and soon she would have to return to the moon.
Not wishing to return, she then decided to hide, and run away.
As a last apology, she made and left one drink of the potion of immortality, asking it to be delivered to her closest friend, the emperor of Japan.
And that would be the end of it, if not for Mokou.
Mokou is the Extra stage boss of IN, and she's quite an interesting one - She was the daughter of the Fujiwara family; The noble who died while doing his impossible request was her father.
She viewed Kaguya as a figure that's almost a demon - someone who charmed and tricked her father to his death.
She then decided that she would have her vengeance, no matter what. And then she stole the drug of immortality, and took it, determined to make Kaguya pay. The drug was completely beyond her expectations, and she felt tricked yet again, being forced into a curse of never dying, no matter what. Realizing her revenge was pointless, but still determined to have it, it's said that Mokou went on a ramapage for 200 years, burning everything that entered her sight to ashes, be it human or youkai, all the while she felt the pain of the fire in her body, searching Kaguya to make her suffer the same.
And that's the start of their story, basically. Though I haven't covered Reisen, Tewi or Eirin, all who are quite important for Kaguya. There's also a lot to expand on Mokou, but I'll leave that for when I explain Imperishable Night.
For now, cheers!
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