#ipopte

I think about this a lot for Ipopte.

The pressure put on Ainu people by the government and Japanese social society to assimilate was incredibly strong. It was common for Ainu youth to reject their roots and try to hide their Ainu background while assimilating into Japanese society.

Joining the military while still young, would have multiplied that ten fold for Ipopte.

Not only is he the only major Ainu character we never see wearing Ainu clothing, and the only one who commonly goes by his Japanese government name, he’s also the only one we never explicitly see communicating in Ainu. His father spoke Japanese fluently, if his mother did too, Ipopte might not even be as fluent in the Ainu language as he is with Japanese.

Ipopte, who had absolutely no context to that nickname, had no idea how to handle hearing it. He didn’t know why Kirawus was calling Kadokura an asshole peeper or what it meant, but he felt as if he might have heard something about Kadokura he shouldn’t have.

He never voiced his distress, and Kirawus never noticed, and continued to call Kadokura an asshole peeper the rest of the day.

Eventually, Ipopte learned of Kadokura and Kirawus’s relationship, and figured Kadokura’s nickname was in relation to their sex life, and it only distressed him even more. Every time he heard Kirawus say it, he’d blush furiously. No one ever noticed.