#yagyou

Mikettio is my top top fave rn (can you tell?) so I knew he had to be stunning. His outfit is slightly based off a piece by Sonehati (super galdelic hour character designer) that was very early 2000s sci fi. And obviously he takes from earth walker too. This was the start of giving too many characters those long sleeves. No, I did not mean to give him and Yagyo the same style.

Yagyo’s design is based off chinese opera outfits. No reason other than it is very pretty. I thought about making him like, an enma version like if he won in the enma note quest but I think it made him feel too evil ToT I was also thinking princess kakyuu from sailor moon with him. You can see it mostly in his headpiece and sleeves.

Shutendoji with almost nothing on. C’mon we had to go sexy. His outfit is inspired by shien and shuka, his two blorbos. I very much do not like the bottom half but had no idea what to do with it and just gave up in the end. His top half is so pretty it’s such a shame…

The first girl! See look, I am bi! Tsubaki is my fave hime and a very big 3 fave. I often go for a plant theme with her when designing outfits. She was the only design I outright changed.

Its not bad but when doing the lineart… geez I hated it… I think the sleeves irked me the most but I knew I couldnt do the hanging sleeve AGAIN. So we did a whole do-over with a western look. Yes it is princess tiana realness but that dress is adorable, I had to borrow it

Snow Rabby! I’m uh… not especially happy with this one. Maybe it was foolish to give her a princess look when she already has one that is mostly okay. But I just wanted to do my own… it suffices

Kusari hime had to go all the way. I did ask a friend if the design was too much lol but I stuck with it. She’s a sexy lady, she needs a sexy design. She takes a little from jashin’s design. This is another that had an existing design I didnt want to copy but this time it was MY OWN design lol. But I think she’s successfully separate

First let’s get the important thing out of the way, which is my answer to the question:

“I don’t know.”

This may seem a tad anti-climatic but yeah, I don’t actually know, BUT, the important part of this is gonna be my explanation of WHY I don’t know.

Because you see, the way things that may indicate gender work is slightly different in japanese than it is in english.

What I´m going to do here is, I will briefly go through what I believe is the two “primary” indicators of a character’s gender, explain a bit about them, and if they apply to Yagyō.

After that I will do the same with what I consider “secondary” indicators of a character’s gender.

And lastly I´ll give my final thoughts on the matter.

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1. Direct Statement

Of course the main indicator of a character’s gender is the character themselves going “I´m *insert gender*”, or maybe even just “I´m *insert gendered word.*”.

Note that in the case of the latter, what is a gendered word in english may not be a gendered word in japanese, so always double check if youre going to use something like that as “canon” evidence.

But of course it’s usually up to luck wether a character actually says something like this or not, so things often aren’t that easy. I haven’t seen any instances of Yagyō using a gendered word like that to refer to themselves.

Enma technically says:

“ それでいて 「新たな王」 などと よく言えたものだな！ And calling yourself the “new king” despite all that! “

But it seems to be directed at all three of them, so I personally would say it’s not a definite indicator. Plus I am not certain if “王“ would exclusively refer to male monarchs in japanese.

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2. Third Person Pronouns

This is the part where some of you may say:

“But kaialone, you use they/them pronouns to refer to Yagyō, both here and in your translations, clearly this settles it, right?”,

but let me explain why it doesn’t.

For starters, in the japanese language, you can often actually leave out the subject of a sentence, as long as the subject is known.

In english similar stuff can exist, for example giving a short reply like “Making toast!” to the question “What are you doing?”. In this case there is no definite need to go “I am making toast”, cause it is well understood that the subject of the sentece is “I”.

And basically in japanese this kinda stuff happens all the time, and as a result you can end up with characters never getting referred to with a third person pronoun at all, especially if their appearances are brief, like most yokai.

Adding to that, the relation of third person pronouns and genders work slightly different in japanese, too.

“Kare” and “Kanojo” meaning “he” and “she” respectively are used as gendered pronouns nowadays, but this is actually a rather recent thing in the language. I don’t know the exact time, but according to wikipedia usage of them as pronouns started to become common around the Meiji era (roughly 1868-1912).

And, from what I have heard and seen, they’re still not used as frequently as we use he or she in english. Depending on the context it can even seem rude or awkward to use them. (Rudeness and Politeness of certain words can vary greatly depending on the context, for example who you’re talking to, in japanese.) People are more likely to just use the names or titles of others when referring to them.

Because of that, you often end up with characters not being refered to with gendered third person pronouns either.

You may also see people getting referred to with gender neutral terms like “Aitsu/Koitsu/Soitsu”, or “Ano Hito”

“Aitsu/Koitsu/Soitsu” could literally be translated as like “this/that one”. (When not referring to a person you might translate them as “it”.) It’s considered rude to use to refer to someone, unless it’s someone you’re close to who is okay with you using it for them.

(Note though that in fiction characters tend to use rude language like that more casually, so you´ll probably still hear people use them rather frequently in anime and such.)

“Ano Hito” and variations of it just mean “That person”, and you might see it be used in a manner like a pronoun.

So, because of all this, a person may be refered to in a gender neutral manner regardless of their actual gender.

Thus, gendered pronouns like “kare” or “kanojo” could be used to confirm that a character is male or female, but the same tactic doesn't work to confirm a character’s lack of being female or male.

As for Yagyō, in all the texts I have seen they are never referred to with a third person pronoun. The closest thing I can find is Nekokiyo referring to them as “ あの者/Ano Mono“, which means “That person”.

For the reference, yes, Nekokiyo could have technically referred to Yagyō as kare or kanojo if they were a man or woman respectively. However the fact that he didn’t, by itself, is not certain evidence that Yagyō is neither of those.

So, going back to the very start of this section and my choice to refer Yagyō as “they/them” in my translations. It is just that, my own choice.

When translating a japanese text, you may end up with a character that is never referred to by gender directly, yet you will have to decide on what pronouns to use for them, because the english language can’t ommit pronouns completely like the japanese language can. So sometimes translators are just forced to just make a guess like that.

I chose “they/them” for Yagyō because to me this seems appropiate for a character whose gender I am uncertain about.

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Now; these two are really the “main things” that can be used to indicate gender, I believe. But there is still some secondary indicators that people may use.

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3. First Person Pronouns

In japanese there is more than one first person pronoun, i.e. more than one word for “I/me”.

Some of these first person pronouns are gendered, in that traditionally, only people of a certain gender (and/or sex) are expected to use certain ones, and using pronouns that aren’t associated with one’s gender (and/or sex) might be frowned upon in certain circles.

Yagyō uses the pronoun わたし/Watashi to refer to themselves.

Watashi is a formal, gender neutral pronoun. However, overall it is used more by women than it is by men. (See the statistics on the page I linked there.)

In fiction this seems to be basically the “standard” pronoun for women and girls, you’ll probably see them using that the most, but men use it too, more frequently than they seem to do in real life, even.

To give you an idea of how wide the spectrum of characters using this pronoun can be, here is some examples of Yokai Watch characters using it:

Katie, Inaho, Dr. Maddiman, McKraken, GoGoGo Godfather, Damona, Unkaind, Venoct...

Just to name a few that I can think of on top of my head.

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4. General Speaking Style

If you wanna read a bit more about this, Wikipedia has an article on it, but to summarize:

There are different speaking styles in japanese, and some are considered “harsher” or “softer” than others, with the harsher styles being considered masculine and the softer ones being considered feminine. (Note that this a very simplified explanation.)

There is a lot more than that too, there is speaking styles that are associated with old people, children, old-fashioned people, and much more, though a lot of that mostly applies to fiction which tends to exaggerate these things even more.

As a result you can often learn a lot about what kinda character one is supposed to be just by reading a bit of their dialouge.

From what I can tell, during the Enma Note quest, Yagyō uses a more informal, harsh, masculine speaking style, but during more peaceful situations, like getting them in a trade or meeting them at the Streetpass buildings, they use a more formal, polite, neutral speaking style.

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Final Thoughts:

First a little bit of warning:

Note that all these “indicators” of a character’s gender are still not 100% fool-proof, even the “primary” ones.

For example, technically even a character literally stating their own gender could be a result of them not telling the truth, for various reasons, and any instances of other characters referring to them as a certain gender can be a result of them not knowing any better, or even misgendering them.

So, if someone headcanons a character as a different gender than what you think they are based on evidence you’ve seen, this doesn’t mean the person in question is automatically “wrong” about this.

And when it comes to Yagyō, you may say:

“Well at every section of this you said that you don’t think anything is definite proof for their gender, but if nothing indicates that they are male or female, isn’t that like proof that they’re non-binary, presumably agender?”,

and well, it does make it more likely, but it doesn’t prove it.

I personally like to think that Yagyō is non-binary, and I´m happy to see that there doesn’t seem to be anything disproving it from what I can tell, but it’s still just a headcanon.

It is important to make the distinction, mainly because saying it’s confirmed is giving level5 credit for something they didn’t really do.

Maybe they specifically intended for Yagyō to be gender-neutral, maybe they didn’t. But for something that is this important, you shouldn’t say they did unless you know for sure that they did.

Be happy at the thought that they might have, if you want to, but don’t act like it’s a fact. They honestly don’t deserve the credit unless they are explicit about it.

Personally, I honestly believe they probably did not intent for them to be non-binary, if I had to guess I’d say they probably intended for them to be male... But hey, maybe that is just me being pessimistic.

Either way, I hope this cleared some confusion?