#junrinan

[Bleach 094]

Renji might not remember which captain belongs to Matsumoto, but Matsumoto knows Iba's fourth seat. She's on a first-name basis with him. She knows his self-assigned title! (I refuse to believe anyone calls Jiroubou the Kamaitachi except for Jiroubou and anyone ranked low enough to be impressed by him. And Matsumoto, apparently.) She's the Gotei's facebook queen!

My thoughts about why Matsumoto knows Jiroubou so well that it's because her encounter with Hitsugaya in the Ice Field chapter was hardly her first foray into Junrinan. If Soul Society had higher education I think Matsumoto is the kind of person who'd take her military-veteran free college to major in Cultural Anthropology with a minor in Gender Studies, and then do a Master's in Folklore. She's spent *all kinds of time* in Junrinan and other districts learning about Rukongai folkways and foodways (particularly food as ritual, rather than as sustenance). She probably did her senior capstone on souls and sex tourism. But uh, anyway, she knows Jiroubou because she knows Jidanbou, the Gate Guardian!

I headcanon Junrinan as having characteristics similar to Nagano prefecture:

This headcanon is based on 1) having been to Nagano exactly one time and really enjoying it; 2) simply it being "west of the big city" lol; 3) Subaru country <3; and 4) it having characteristics that seem to coincide with Hitsugaya and Hinamori's names. (One day I'll write about the shinshu ghost apples of Junrinan, but alas, not today.)

For the purposes of my current fic, I've expanded my Junrinan headcanon to include information about how I think the districts in Rukongai are arranged. I don't think the districts tend to be that evenly sized or populated, and I feel like the closer ones might be bigger just because there's less going on as far as Gotei business goes--then they get smaller as the conditions get dicier, but then probably start getting bigger again as you get further out, because the Gotei stops giving a shit at a certain point and it's just like "yeah okay that's all... the Northwest Territories... sure, whatever."

Since there's a lot of forest and mountain in my Junrinan, I felt like it would make sense if the rest of West Rukongai was not BEYOND all that forest and mountain--rather, in that direction lies ether (and the sea, naturally). And the other districts of West Rukongai actually sit below Junrinan (West 3, Hokutan, also needs to have some of this mountain range, as it houses Mt. Koifushi. So I suppose in the below image it'd be Wisconsin or something).

In my mind, Junrinan is kind of like Ontario:

--Except instead of Manitoba, there's ocean.

When shinigami think about "Junrinan", they're thinking about like, the Toronto metro area. But in actuality, there's a fuckton of Other Junrinan that extends way out. Meanwhile, the rest of West Rukongai is like the United States below it, making some districts of West a lot closer to districts in South than they are to other districts in West.

Anon, you are a precious gift! Thanks so much for engaging with me and also for sharing your beautiful interpretation! I totally agree with you the act of harvest, and I love the way you connect it to (canonically unseen) healing.

I got fixated on this burdock thing because one of my neighbors led a foraging walk and I learned a bunch of things about burdock that I thought were insanely cool. I am someone with a lot of overgrown headcanons about Junrinan, the tip of the iceberg of which is that it's a place where the souls there embody Rukongai’s “wandering souls” thing literally. They spend a lot of seasonal (spring and fall) time foraging in the mountains/forests in the fast west of the district, which they then sell to the relatively-nearby Seireitei. So my natural course of action after learning fun facts about foraging burdock is to then think “...what if HitsuHina.”

Which is also about the point where I get very “THIS IS SO METAPHORICAL” about things:

Burdock is a biennial, usually foraged in its first year before it grows tall and becomes fibrous. In the first year, you’d look for basal rosettes (flower-like growth of leaves low to the ground, or the base). While burdock grows wild in a lot of places, it does well in disturbed soil along paths, roadsides, etc. If you are looking to harvest the roots, you would wait until after the first frost, when plants send nutrients down to their roots. Burdock roots can go pretty deep and you don’t want to break them off and leave the bottoms in the ground, so you’d dig parallel around the root, deep deep, until you could harvest it in full.

Written (in my eternal tardiness) for HitsuHina Day 2022 and the prompt, seashells! Thank you so much for hosting, @rays-of-fire-and-ice​! <3

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Characters: Hinamori (POV), Hitsugaya, Aizen; parenthetical Kira and Renji Word Count: ~5k Tags: Blanket Fic, Junrinan lore, Academy lore, the Hanbantai Players - the eminent theatre of the Seireitei, the Junrinan puppet festival, all of Soul Society was ocean once Summary: As her Academy training draws to a close and she struggles to manage the sharpness of her own ambitions, Hinamori goes home. There is change afoot in Junrinan, too.

She could say I really missed you, but she wants Toushirou to believe that she's okay. (But why wouldn't that be okay? To miss someone.)

--

It's not so different from home, she'd told him after her first four months. They each get a futon, which they are responsible for keeping clean and setting away. They sleep eight to a room (all boys, or all girls). In each room there is an alcove with a tall, many-drawered chest. Each student has a drawer for personal effects.

"Almost all of that is different," Toushirou had pointed out, and she hadn't even told him about the talon through Kanisawa-senpai's torso. She still hasn't.

Hinamori keeps letterhead in her drawer. With this letterhead, she has written nearly five years' worth of letters to Junrinan, all unanswered, and several dozen copies of her resume. She has earned a dozen interviews. Nothing formal at this stage, but everyone knows you cannot wait until your final exams if you are to stand out amongst the graduates. She has interviewed with the 5th Division nine times.

Beneath the letterhead, Hinamori keeps one seashell. (She'd lent Abarai letterhead once. He'd failed to buy the regulation size. Actually, he'd failed to buy any size at all. "Honestly, this is Kanashiro's fault," he'd said, his only elaboration the way his fingers danced over the lockboxes. "Did she sell it by the seashore?" he'd enunciated, when he saw the shell.)

Hinamori has never seen the sea.

Hitsugaya’s grandmother gave him and Hinamori both their names. She’s an institution in Junrinan, and has lived there as long as anyone can remember. Long enough to have learned to write--and quite beautifully, though anyone with formal training wouldn’t give her hand a second glance. This has afforded her some social capital, in that she will take in hungry children, and the rest of the village will offer her goods, as a sort of payment for being the one who deals with them. She’s cared for many children, and will teach any who ask how to read and write. Hinamori has been her most eager student to date.

But back to the names. imho I think Kubo’s core characters all have baller names in general, but I’ve always wondered how all the Rukongai kids came to have such baller names in the first place. And family names at all, given that family lineages are not a thing in Rukongai, by definition--so you’d have to make one up for yourself, or have it given. And like, personally, I think “Toushirou” is a super clever name. I am EXTREMELY fond of that extra u, for the “tou” in 冬 (winter) instead of any the “to” in regular “Toshirou.” [Insert “I just think they’re neat” meme.] But I would also need to be aggressively convinced that he came up with that on his own, lol.

So I’m just imagining Junrinan Grandma coming up with these beautiful, outsized names for peasant children who aren’t expected to ever need them, writing them in sweeping brush script just because she can. Not all the children she names are destined for great things beyond the eyes of the village, and they don’t have to be; she will name them all the same. But to the ones who leave, she gives a family name as well. She likens the task to poetry.

“You’ll need one where you’re going,” she says. 

One unique and all your own.

Aww, thank you! <333 I’m glad you enjoy them. (OP is talking about headcanons that began here and turned up again here.)

I’ve actually never thought about what her own name might be. The first realization that came to mind was that I did not know @ippoddity's grandmother’s name, even though I knew her basically my entire life. (We called her by the Cantonese word for maternal grandmother.) But in between this morning and now I’ve realized that I actually do know her given name, but only because I’d seen it written, never spoken.

I imagine that’s how it is for most of the people in Junrinan—everyone calls her Grandmother (children and adults alike) because that’s what she is to the village, and she’s been there a long-ass time. No one knows how long. No one remembers a time when she didn’t exist.

I’d like to know from whom she learned to read and write, and to give names. Did she materialize into existence with these skills, or did she gain them over the course of centuries?

I’d like to think she has a tiny spark of spiritual power. Not enough to do anything with, had she the inclination (she doesn’t)—less than Tatsuki. Just enough to recognize it for what it is and to be able to recognize it in others. Even just that inkling lends itself to her Village Witch mystique, though.

She doesn’t live on the village outskirts and Junrinan isn’t afraid of her, per se; they like and respect her well enough. But she has a long-standing tendency to take in the weird kids and while the other villagers recognize this as a public service their desire to guard themselves against potential outliers makes them less forthright about their feelings about her. It’s kind of an awk vibe.

Not that Junrinan Grandma cares. She’s a fairly placid woman outwardly, more given to teasing conversations and personalities out of others than sharing her own.

But she writes. She burns everything she writes, unless it’s a name, because in having been written its purpose is fulfilled. Her words are for her and no one else in this strange, static, wandering place. Sometimes these words are poetry. Sometimes they are incendiary leftist political tracts. Often they are extremely racy romantic dime novels. For all her neighbors know, all of it is magic.