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In light of recent events, an important photoset for you all

Something I occasionally see in fanworks is depicting Keine as distrusted by the villagers and self-loathing as a result, which seems odd to me; there appear to be two misconceptions behind it, one about the school from Touhou itself and one about the historical institution. The school she teaches at is specifically supposed to be a terakoya – a so-called “temple school”, which is a bit of a misnomer. While the oldest historical ones were indeed founded as an extension of temples (usually Buddhist ones, Shinto terakoyas were extremely uncommon at less than 10% of the total number according to most estimates), and Buddhist clergy remained numerous among the teachers, with time all kinds of public educational institutions started to be referred with this name. In the late Edo and early Meiji periods (before the education reforms), when terakoyas were the most numerous, only one in five was strictly speaking a temple school. The teachers were usually commoners who themselves received some degree of education previously (eg. through another terakoya) or attained a certain degree of success thanks to education (the freshly emerging merchant class was a good example; additionally about one in ten terakoyas was ran by a doctor). Most teachers were men, though we know from both documentation and depictions of terakoyas in art that female teachers also existed, especially in the final few decades of terakoya activity. Regardless of the background, the work of the teachers was viewed as a prestigious public service (some of them operated strictly for profit, but most were already well-respected members of society working pro publico bono). Thus it seems weird to me to assume Keine wouldn’t be respected in the village, or that she’s hate her life. Canon appears to support my interpretation – PMiSS makes it sound like Akyuu not attending the school is seen as something unusual so the turnout ought to be reasonably high (irl the turnout in terakoyas is estimated to be at 70-80%, but many areas lacked them so literacy at the dawn of the Meiji era was at around 40% for men and 20% for women). The mention of it being unpopular, prominently displayed at the wiki, comes from BAiJR which supposedly describes the situation right after the school was opened rather than in the present day (plus Aya is a less trustworthy source than Akyuu, arguably). An additional argument that the school must be doing well in the present day is the fact that it has its own building in Forbidden Scrollery (and if I’m not mistaken there were more teachers shown?) – something very uncommon irl for economic reasons; most terakoya classes took place in borrowed temple rooms or at the houses of the teachers (or particularly affluent students). I don’t really think Keine’s status as a part hakutaku would impact this in any capacity – even taking into account that the hakutaku is a youkai, it is portrayed uniformly as benevolent and an omen of good luck and prosperity (hakutaku charms were very popular through the Edo period before the baku replaced it as the default symbol of prosperity), in a way a completely different kind of being to the spooks and boogeymen most youkai are in folklore. If anything it probably would boost her social standing.

Rumia waiting for someone to play with her!

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