Lee

I think everyone who has ever touched any Nintendo or Japanese related media has ran into the concept of 'kegare', or 'spiritual uncleanliness' multiple times without realizing it.

Kegare (穢れ or 汚れ) is the concept of 'spiritual dirtiness'.

Translated as 'pollution' or 'defilement', to be kegare'd is to be dirtied in some form, often times through action. Generally speaking, kegare is a negative energy typically generated upon contact with death, childbirth, disease and menstruation. But it can also come into state through particularly powerful, negative state of emotions such as hate, jealousy, guilt and anger as well. Note that Kegare isn't by itself a moral or judgemental concept, but rather a force of nature. Kegare is not sin, and therefore cannot be seen as such!

You can think of kegare as bad vibes, bad juju, or even miasma. They're very similar concepts.

With enough bad vibes (basically), a place, object, or a person can be polluted so hard that evil spirits might manifest and cause harm to both them and their surroundings. Hence why Japanese media loves depicting places with bad vibes like the hospitals to be full of yokais or ghosts looking to cause harm.

This is why characters who harbor ambitions of taking over the world are seen as Maous. It's why characters like Hegemon Husk!Edelgard, Grima, Ganon, Mr. Grizz all fit into this evil, ambitious, resentful, almost force-of-nature-like beings who brings with them death to the world. Because they aren't just bringing death with them, they're about to unleash the largest tsunami of bad vibes they can into the world too!

But, the state of kegare can be purified away. There are 2 main ways to do so. Misogi, and Harae.

Misogi (禊)

By standing under a waterfall or washing the body with water, kegare can purified. Notably though, one must be dressed in white during this ritual cleansing. This specific concept is known as Misogi, and you might have come across it in botw already:

In BoTW, Zelda attempts to purify herself in order to unlock the power of the Goddess. By visiting important spiritual places and washing herself in its water in white, she's performing Misogi.

In Fire Emblem Heroes, Naga will suggest this to Kiran, the Player Character:

But misogi isn't exactly why big bads get the holy weapon whacking treatment. If you have noticed, misogi affects only the willing individual taking part in ritual cleansing. The real reason is actually...

Harae (祓)

Harae can mean 2 things. To drive out, or, exorcise. Consenting or not, harae essentially drives out or purifies kegare in another person, place, or object through rituals.

Harae can involve ceremonies, song and dance, using a ritual cleansing tool(!) such as the onusha.

As an example of the former, Azura in Fire Emblem Fates essentially embodies the power of misogi through her association with waters and purification. Here, she tries to exorcise the evil inside of Garon. She is actually performing harae!

As an example of the latter, the cleansing tools.... Why, it should be sounding familiar now.

Be it the Falchion, Yato, Fire Emblem, Breidablik, The Creator Sword, the Master Sword, Ocarina of Time, The Twilight Bow, they all share 2 very similar traits:

Be powered up by the good juju power/light

Whack the big bad maou with it, sometimes unleashing light in the process

In this context that I'm presenting, they are all tools of purification/exorcism. Sit down and think about this. Think about all the Japanese JRPGs you've played so far and see how much this clicks.

The Hero gains a weapon/tool/relic, powers it up in some way or is inherently already powered, and then uses that to smack the big bad and win. Sometimes the tools can be the heroes themselves, but it is often the very similar song and dance (heh). Hell, you can even extend this beyond Fire Emblem and Zelda. Maybe even extend it to anime and manga, and you might find the same themes in places you don't expect.

It's kind of neat to think about. Essentially, the hero not just defeats the big bad, but kind of purifies them as well.

But! There's another reason why weapons are often the divine relics needed to deliver the finishing blow in video games, and why they are almost always associated with characters of authority.

The Imperial Regalia of Japan/ The Three Sacred Treasures

There exists 3 treasures which represents 3 primary virtues and are part of the enthronement ceremony in Japan. They have never been shown to the public to symbolize authority, so no one but the authority knows what they look like. The above image is just an artist's impression of what they might resemble. They exist, supposedly.

The Sword is known as Kusanagi no Tsurugi, the mirror as Yata no Kagami, and the jewel as Yasakani no Magatama. They represent Valour, Wisdom and Benevolence respectively. They are said to be brought into this world by Japanese gods, passed to the first emperor of Japan, Emperor Jimmu, who said to be a descendant of Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess.

Yep, this is also why Fire Emblem is always about noble blooded people with divine weapons.

Yep, these are also the original inspiration for the triforce in The Legend of Zelda.

I won't get into the details behind the Regalia's story in this post, it's too long! Linfamy has done a video about the Regalia if you're interested.

Hopefully this was interesting. Again, feel free to take the ideas here and read up on it externally. So many, many videos and posts and I've not seen people talk at all about this. Sadge.

But before I close off this post, there is a negative side to this kegare concept, in which real people are discriminated against in Japan. ...Remember the association with death for kegare? Yeah... Uhm, someone needs to take care of the dead in any society and butcher livestocks for food, so what happens to those people? ...Messed up things, actually. If you are interested to learn about this, feel free to check this video out (link). Warning: it's a huge downer of a video.