#obata

Yeah

Tragic backstory. Parents, murdered in cold blood.

Oh no

Right? Obviously traumatizing for her, incredibly damaging. Yet she is strong, she moves on, actually gets quite successful.

Yeah? What's she do?

Well, she's a model. But not just any model! An incredibly famous one, like WORLD famous. She uses her looks, as well as her charm to woo people. She worked very hard to get to where she is, and her talent is very recognized.

Wow, that's very impressive for someone with such a troubled past. She must have a very strong will.

Absolutely. But it gets better. You see, she knows how to use that charm. So much, she charms the supernatural.

Woah.

Yeah. She cozies up to a literal God of Death, and makes a deal with them. She gains incredible powers, and uses these powers to avenge her parents.

Wow! Good for her!

Right? Even more, another Death God falls in love with her, and sacrifices their life to save her when a crazed fan tries to murder her!

A being so powerful throwing away it's life for her? That's astounding!

It gets better. Through her sheer wit, cunning, charm, and smarts, she is the only person to, by herself, along with her powers, manage to find the identity of an incredibly powerful and wanted serial killer. The entire world is after this person. He's also using similar powers as her, and she not only finds him before anyone else does, including quite literally the most famous and powerful detective on the planet, a man who's NEVER lost a case, but she does all this without him even knowing he was being tracked!

Wow! This character sounds incredible! So much talent, so much depth! Surely the media she's in revolves around her right? She HAS to be a main character!

Huh? Oh, no. She's like, a side character at best, played up for her looks and used as a pawn, then basically forgotten about and treated like a bimbo. The main character is a cop's son with a God complex who throws temper tantrums when he doesn't get what he wants and treats her like garbage. Oh, did you expect anything more for her?

In Kanramachi in Gunma there is a garden called the Rakusan’en 楽山園, designated as a national Place of Scenic Beauty in 2000. This garden was believed to have been built by Nobunaga’s second son, Nobukatsu, after being awarded the Obata domain (where Kanramachi now is) by the Tokugawa shogunate. 

In the grounds near where the mansion/residence formerly stood, there is a statue of two people pounding mochi. It looks like an arbitrary statue at a glance, but at closer look, it turns out to be a depiction of the famous satire poem often referred to as the “Tenka mochi poem” (天下餅の歌 Tenka Mochi no Uta):

織田がつき　羽柴がこねし　天下餅　すわりしままに　食うは徳川

“Oda pounded and Hashiba kneaded the Nation mochi, and in the end the one who sat and ate is Tokugawa”

The mochi mortar has 天下 (the nation) engraved into it, and the statue kneading the mochi has a monkey-like face to represent Hideyoshi. Nobunaga looks rather generic, but once you recognise the other two elements, the statue with the large mochi pounding mallet can’t possibly be anyone else.

The curious part here is that there’s no depiction of Ieyasu eating the mochi. I’ve searched around for explanation, but there doesn’t seem to be any provided, either by the city’s official materials or by visitors. The guests seem to be confused, and a lot of them don’t even seem to realise what this was in the first place. One blog says “I think these are vassals/employees?” and another says “I don’t understand what these mochi-making statues are all about”.

Perhaps it’s because that last part of the poem about Ieyasu eating is a slight against him (it was basically saying that he contributed nothing to the unification). Even if the statue is modern and not built in the Tokugawa era, people still tend to avoid making any of the historical figures look bad in official sites and displays like this. 

the kibaraiji devil hunting agency