Stealing Knowledge

Do you want to see a PREVIEW of Dijeh’s exhaustive translation work on the Shin Megami Tensei IV Fapocalypse artbook materials?

Are you interested in finding out more about why the backstory of Krishna included in these materials is not horribly xenophobic or rife with vile historical revisionism, in any WAY, SHAPE, or FORM?

Then, please click through to find out more!!!! This is not a joke, folks!

Shioda: Nobuyuki Shioda, freelance writer and interviewer
Miyata: Yusuke Miyata, SMT4F’s scenario writer, wrote the short story referred to below
Yamai: Kazuyuki Yamai, SMT4F’s producer

Shioda: Krishna was sealed at the Kanda Shrine, but the details can be found in a short story in this book. However, originally there was a different setting behind this.

Miyata: The Ark is at the Kanda Shrine because we used the Japanese-Jewish Common Ancestor Theory as the base. Basically it started from the interpretation that you capture Krishna together with Daikokuten and this also involves Ookuninushi and Sukunahikona.

Shioda: The enshrined deities of the Kanda Shrine are Daikokuten who is identified with Oonamuchi aka Ookuninushi and Sukunahikona or Ebisu, together with Taira no Masakado.

Miyata: There are three crests on the shrine of Kanda; if you gather the crests and insert them into the rock, the waterfall will split in two and will allow you to advance, but each crest applies to the deities enshrined there, Ookuninushi, Sukunahikona and Masakado. Also, you can find an area protected by angels inside the dungeon if you let yourself be led by the crests; there’s also an area protected by demons and only demons NPCs appear around there.

Yamai: It becomes submerged because the cold water ablutions or water used for hand washing turned into a barrier from a purifying spiritual power point of view. It’s the same thing in Buddhism or Shinto, where you purify with certain water and calm down with alcohol. Water acted as a seal. Perhaps you are protected from colds by the barrier of ions (laughs). I suppose the Kanda Shrine was chosen because of Masakado who, as Tokyo’s guardian, was enshrined together with other harmful gods in order to seal them. As the saying goes, fighting fire with fire.

Shioda: Thereupon, Krishna came to Japan together with imported Buddhism.

Miyata: Since he came along back then, he was quickly sealed by exorcists and came to be known as Kokuten, but the short story shows that after the seal was broken, Kokuten was active all around Japan but when he reached the relocated Kanda Shrine, he was sealed once more. In the beginning of the Edo period, Tenkai raised the Tokugawa Mandala with the help of Goshiki Fudou, but he also happened to get sealed in the process.The seal in Goshiki Fudou is thereby magnetite, and the colour is absorbed. You can’t summon demons in that area because when you are about to summon them the magnetite is absorbed. However, the magnetite that was originally there didn’t work, so during those times the demons in Japan were either defeated or sealed, ending in a clean situation requested by the shogunate’s orders.  

Shioda: In the early setting I saw an exorcist ancestor of Flynn had sealed him.

Miyata: But if we assume he was sealed in the Heian era, the huge rock had to be moved together with the relocation of the Kanda Shrine, so we decided to change this early draft. I think the Tokugawa Shogunate created the O-niwaban* rather late, but it already had a predecessor in the Oniwaban*, a group formed of practitioners close to exorcists who could summon demons and the Tokugawa Mandala was complete when these practitioners, among them the man Flynn had been in a previous life, risked their lives to seal Krishna. That is also the beginning of Sakoku. Short stories also have certain limits, so I couldn’t really include this, but the crucifixion of the Twenty-six Martyrs of Japan or the oppression of Christianity were conducted by him who was not called Krishna at the time. He met Dagda during those times and he knew that there was another target he had to destroy, but as a result he was sealed by Flynn’s previous self. The incident in this game is the result of the various schemes made since back then.

*DIJEH: Oh boy, language time! Both names are read the same, but the kanji are obviously different, so I tried to differentiate them in a way that makes some sense. The real life Oniwaban (御庭番衆 Oniwabanshuu) literally meant ‘the people (衆 shuu) of the guard (番 ban ) of the great (御 o) inner garden (庭 niwa)’. The ‘o’ is supposed to be a honorific prefix, so I wrote it separately. Think O-Ren Ishii. The fictional Oniwaban (鬼倭番衆 Oniwabanshuu), on the other hand, means ‘the people of the guard of the demons (鬼 oni) of Yamato (倭 wa/Yamato) or something along those lines. And no, they’re not guarding the demons.

So, to construct Krishna’s timeline (it’s a bit confusing and the above information isn’t really constructed in a linear fashion, but that doesn’t change the NOT xenophobia or NOT historical revisionism):

• Masakado dies, is enshrined at Kanda; Masakado protects Tokyo, any harmful demons who get sealed there are enshrined with Masakado
• Krishna and Buddhism appear on the Japanese scene (though the chronology with Buddhism makes no sense since this has to be happening after at least the 10th century per Masakado’s death and the historical introduction of Buddhism to Japan was in the 6th)
• Krishna gets sealed in by exorcists
  
• The seal breaks after a while; Krishna breaks out during the Heian period as a god named Kokuten (黒天; same kanji as in Daikokuten, maybe it should be Kuroten but whatever) and wreaks havoc across Japan
• This is the good stuff: His misdeeds include causing the persecution of Japanese Christians, including the Twenty-six Martyrs; of course this had nothing to do with the shogunate, you ignorant baka!!!
• A few years later, Tenkai, aka SMT4’s stone-faced monk, is building temples as part of the Tokugawa Mandala (a complex of temples along ley lines)
  
• Kokuten/Krishna passes a relocated Kanda and gets sealed again by the Oniwaban and they complete the Tokugawa Mandala

Anyway, Krishna is the one responsible for the deaths of Japanese Christians. A foreign god taking the blame for the actions of the Japanese shogunate. Doesn’t that just make you feel good inside? There may be more details to come as Dijeh reads more of the short story; they will undoubtedly be included with the translation post. Please look forward to it!