Analysis: Forbidden Scrollery - The Power of a Compelling Story

Note: This analysis contains spoilers for the manga Forbidden Scrollery.
Elements of this will be later incorporated in a larger text that deals with the types of youkai-related narratives in Touhou.

Touhou Suzunaan - Forbidden Scrollery is an official Touhou manga that was serialized from October 26, 2012 to July 26, 2017. This manga is centered around the Suzunaan rental book store, which holds many rare books, including dangerous and magical youma or demon books. These books are related to youkai, and tend to draw in more youkai. The main character of the manga is Motoori Kosuzu, a young part-time worker of the shop who is intrigued by the youma books and youkai, and begins to develop an unusual ability to decipher text by simply touching it. This grants her the ability to understand books written even in youkai languages, which starts leading to all sorts of trouble that kickstarts the narrative arc of Forbidden Scrollery.

Kosuzu is naturally not the only character featured in the manga. She is friends with Akyuu no Hieda, the chronicler of Gensokyo who remembers the lives and memories of all of her previous incarnations going back over 1200 years. Akyuu serves as the deuteragonist of the story. As Kosuzu’s interest in and ability to understand youma books gets her entangled in all kinds of little incidents, this inevitably gets the two troubleshooters of Gensokyo, Hakurei Reimu and Kirisame Marisa involved. Other frequently appearing characters are Futatsuiwa Mamizou, who disguised as a human tries to get close to Akyuu, and later on Shameimaru Aya, who manages to convince Kosuzu to carry the Bunbunmaru newspaper in the Suzunaan bookstore.

Youma books aren’t the only source of incidents and conflict in the manga though. Forbidden Scrollery features many stories that are creative reinterpretations or combinations of older youkai legends. The stories that make up Forbidden Scrollery are bound together by several larger themes. The first theme is that of the power of information, narratives and beliefs. The manga offers an account of the origin and purpose of Gensokyo, as well as the belief-driven ontology of Gensokyo. As one can imagine, in a world where beliefs shape reality very directly, the control of various forms of information and narratives becomes of crucial importance. Ultimately Forbidden Scrollery is about the battle of influence over humans which youkai wage between each other in various subtle and non-subtle ways.

Another major theme of the manga is the complex and blurry relationship between human society and youkai in Gensokyo, and how this blurry line is negotiated and enforced. It is ultimately revealed that humanity and youkai have a strange co-dependent relationship built on a fragile balance of power and a kind of easily shattered veil of ignorance. Forbidden Scrollery contextualizes a lot of aspects of Touhou which come off as being paradoxical on the first glance, such as the “youkai exterminator” Hakurei Reimu constantly befriending youkai, or how the supposedly youkai-free Human Village has youkai visiting or even living in it.

A third theme, related to the power of narratives is the idea that there are infinite possible truths. This idea is brought forth in a pivotal moment towards the end of story, but it also manifests in more implicit forms in earlier stories which deal with conflicting viewpoints and interpretations of events. Truth is shown to be subject to interpretation, malleable and fluid. Controlling who has the last word on what is “the truth” is at times revealed to be of existential importance. Interestingly enough, Forbidden Scrollery is also critical of this idea, correctly presenting that it can be used to justify “anything”. Rather than truth being something that is determined by mere individual whims or interests, it appears in Gensokyo to be a compromise that serves to maintain the existence of Gensokyo and its inhabitants.

The fourth theme that emerges from these three themes is that in Gensokyo, almost nothing is quite like it initially appears to be. This is quite fitting for the “Land of Illusions”. Many of the smaller stories that make up Forbidden Scrollery feature a mystery or incident that is often revealed to be something else than what it at first appears to be. While in the Outside World investigations into youkai phenomena have often been done in order to explain away mysterious things, or then to gain insight into why humans believe in and experience supernatural events, in Gensokyo investigations into youkai phenomena seem to reveal mostly more youkai hijinks. In doing this, Forbidden Scrollery presents youkai mysteries as they might be in a world where magic is real and belief shapes reality in very tangible and immediate ways.

The purpose of this analysis is to take a deeper look at Forbidden Scrollery, the themes in it, and how these themes are manifest in the story. While the power of belief doesn’t manifest quite so dramatically here in the Outside World, the themes that Forbidden Scrollery deals with are all relevant to us too. In fact, certain stories feature elements which are analogous to modern things in our world, such social media. Many aspects of Gensokyo in Forbidden Scrollery, such as the battle of hidden interests behind the seemingly calm surface of a “false paradise” are perhaps as much about contemporary Japan as they are about Gensokyo itself. Thus Forbidden Scrollery is part of the long lineage of using youkai to tell stories about humanity and human society.

Let’s start this analysis of Forbidden Scrollery by taking a closer look at youma books and how they stand in for one of the major themes of Forbidden Scrollery, the power stories, beliefs and narratives.

Youma books and other infohazards

Youma books are an important element of Forbidden Scrollery, serving as fuel for the narrative engine, causing incidents or becoming objects of interest which various characters and factions compete over. They also serve as an embodiment of the central theme of Forbidden Scrollery, that being the power of information and narratives. A book is, after all, a certain kind of narrative or certain type of information literally bound together, the invisible and personal made visible and accessible to others.

The term “youma”, written with 妖魔, translates as a ghost, demon, monster, phantom or apparition. The first kanji is the same “you” as in youkai, meaning attractive, bewitching or calamity, and the “ma” is the kanji for demon. The way the books lure in Kosuzu in the story seems to play on the “attractive” and “bewitching” quality of “you”, so simply translating youma books as “demon books” loses a bit of context in my opinion.

Youma books are described as being books that are either written by youkai for youkai, have a youkai sealed inside them or hold the power of a youkai. They are also said to be the last reserve for youkai whose existence has been denied. One can draw a parallel to real-life historical documents and books about youkai. In a sense, these texts have youkai if not sealed in them, then at least descriptions and narratives about youkai bound between the covers. For many of the more obscure youkai, old records might very well be the last trace of people having told stories about them. In fact, one way to view youkai is that they are in itself kind of stories that people have told to explain the unexplained, to entertain each other, to serve as symbols or to scare people. If one wishes to subscribe to this kind of narrative view of youkai, they very much are “sealed in books”.

If youma books are so closely linked with youkai, why are they not simply called youkai books? I think it might have something to do with the kind of entities bound in them. These books conjure forth entities that are more primordial, less humanoid, closer to historical depictions of youkai than the humanoid youkai that are the norm for Touhou. At times these entities are highly aggressive and dangerous. I think that even though these creatures are also called “youkai”, there is a kind of different quality to them compared to the more human-like youkai of Gensokyo, who are shown having great restraint when it comes to harming villagers of Gensokyo. This might have influenced the decision to call them “youma books” and not “youkai books”. It’s also implied towards the end that “youkai” and “youma” might be different types of entities, as Mamizou calls at least one “abnormal youma” an ancient being with inhuman power that “can’t be called a youkai”.

Many different types of youma books make their appearance in Forbidden Scrollery. Some of these books include actual historical youkai compendiums. An example of this is the Konjaku Hyakki Shuui, a real life 18th century youkai bestiary appearing as a youma book. It is unclear whether all historical youkai compendiums have such power in Gensokyo, but it appears that if they do, it does not transfer to modern commentaries. A modern commentary on an old youkai text is explicitly stated not to be a youma book, perhaps serving as a statement on the felt power of old “authentic” texts or how modern books aren’t “magical”. Some of the youma books are more fanciful, such as a tengu text that is a reference to the legendary apology letter from tengu given to the abbot of Butsugenji temple. The most amusing and harmless example of a youma book featured in the story is a kappa cookbook.

While not all youma books are particularly troublesome, the ones having a sealed youkai in them or holding the power of a youkai become active when reading them. The implications here are quite obvious: narratives can’t influence those who don’t become exposed to them. Kosuzu’s newly found ability to comprehend any book then becomes especially dangerous in the context of youma books. It almost feels like she was gifted by this ability by some kind of youma influence to enable her to understand and therefore actualize the potential of these books. Perhaps one can’t just collect information without eventually feeling the desire to understand and therefore be potentially changed by it.

Some of the youma books don’t simply seal a youkai or hold the power of youkai, they are tsukumogami youkai in itself. Tsukumogami, objects that have been turned into youkai, and a scroll depicting a tsukumogami night parade appears repeatedly over the course of the story. One of the first incidents is the appearance of a tsukumogami parade caused by Kosuzu reading a scroll depicting such a parade. This scroll is based on a very real historical picture scroll, and it comes back to haunt the narrative at the apex of the story, the potent youkai energy in it completely overtaking Kosuzu. This entity is defeated by Mamizou transforming into a fake sun, completing the narrative in the youkai scroll where the youkai flee from sunrise.

It should be noted that in the past, the youkai night parade was thought to be lethal to even see. Thus Kosuzu suffering terrible consequences for “witnessing” the parade too deeply by becoming fascinated by youma books is quite resonant with this historical idea. Some of Forbidden Scrollery’s ideas about information, particularly that related to or coming from youkai, being troublesome can be seen as an extension of this idea that there are things in the world which are dangerous to even perceive.

Youma books are also the ones who become the most “violent” tsukumogami when the Suzunaan shop becomes affected by the magic of the Miracle Mallet and its power to bring objects alive. It’s not unexpected that the story finds such strong connection between “youkai books” and “book youkai”. Another way to look at this tsukumogami connection is that perhaps Kosuzu’s deep fascination with youma books makes them more “alive” not only to her, but Gensokyo being Gensokyo, in shared reality too.

Not all troublesome texts or pieces of information in Forbidden Scrollery are youma books though. One of the most infamous story arcs in the manga is kicked off by a non-youma book on divination, which causes the spirit of its previous, now dead, owner to manifest. This is caused by a strange, esoteric loophole based on the Japanese idea of the spirit of the author watching readers which comes from Yasuo Miyaoi’s book Minka Youjutsu. It’s thought that discarding bad parts and taking good parts and presenting it as your own will cause the spirit of the author to become upset. The previous owner of the divination manual abuses this belief to come back from the dead.

Another non-youma book text that causes trouble is the Bunbunmaru newspaper, written by the tengu Shameimaru Aya. She uses it to advance tengu interests, and gets involved in various incidents, deploying the newspaper to alter people’s perception of things. This isn’t always malicious, but it’s always in her interests, which sometimes just happens to align with broader collective interests. Hearsay and rumors, sometimes fueled by Bunbunmaru, sometimes by other youkai and even a kind of fantasy-equivalent of social media botting are also represented as troublesome, albeit non-textual, forms of information in Forbidden Scrollery.

There is also a more abstract sort of information which is portrayed as having harmful potential, and that is the truth about what kind of a place Gensokyo is. This seems to be some kind of an open secret, held back from the masses only by the fact that people find Hieda no Akyuu’s chronicles boring and don’t read them. There also seems to be an agreement among those who know not to talk too much about it as to not rock the boat. When Kosuzu starts learning the truth about Gensokyo, she enters into a crisis which has drastic consequences and requires a powerful intervention to resolve. This can be read as a two-way commentary on the potential for conspiratorial information or misinformation to have a severe impact on people, but also on that people might voluntarily keep themselves ignorant and not engage with complex or difficult information.

The idea of harmful forbidden knowledge is an old one, and Forbidden Scrollery refers to one popularizer of this idea, H.P Lovecraft, in the very first chapter, containing a brief mention to the “first kanji edition of Necronomicon”, the famous forbidden grimoire from Lovecraft’s works. As with Lovecraft, the true dangerous power of these forbidden tomes isn’t just some sinister occult potential, but the way they reframe the world for the one who comes in contact with their contents. Forbidden Scrollery’s treatment of this is much more lighthearted than Lovecraft’s, yet it does also touch upon very serious subjects. The real brilliance of the Forbidden Scrollery is that the most dangerous and impactful information does not sit in occult tomes, but rather in more mundane places, and how it connects this topic with great relevance to our Outside World into the fantastical world of Gensokyo and its magical narrative devices.

Without the character of Motoori Kosuzu to actualize the potential of the youma books, they would simply gather dust at the Suzunaan store, and Forbidden Scrollery as it is written would not exist. Let’s take a closer look at what kind of a role the central character of Forbidden Scrollery plays in the story, as well as how she develops over the course of the large narrative.

Kosuzu - Youma Medium, Gensou Initiate

Motoori Kosuzu is the main character of Forbidden Scrollery, and her character arc and qualities she displays are all very relevant to the broader themes of the story. She is a part-time worker at the Suzunaan rental book shop, though we never see any of the other workers, who are presumably her parents. Her baseline personality is cheery, and at times she seems almost oblivious to the danger she is constantly skirting around with her fascination with youma books. Over the course of the story she however ends up displaying nearly the full spectrum of human emotions, and I find her to be perhaps the best written character in all of Touhou. She is complicated, messy, very funny and profoundly human, even as her drifting away from what is considered human in Gensokyo becomes a major part of her story.

Kosuzu shares family name with the kokugaku scholar Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801), and the name of the shop Suzunaan is likely a reference to Suzunoya, Motoori Norinaga’s personal study room. Kokugaku was a movement of Japanese nativist studies, which started as a scholarship of Japanese texts and later on took political and religious dimensions. Japan was heavily influenced by Chinese culture, and kokugaku rose as a response to perceived over-valuation of Chinese influence. Norinaga was a pioneer of this movement, and he is known for his commentaries and re-translation of Kojiki, the Japanese creation myth. Over the course of more than a thousand years, the early written Japanese language had become almost impossible to understand for people of Norinaga’s era. He undertook the effort to make Kojiki understandable to the Japanese people again. Kosuzu’s ability to understand any text is likely a reference to Norinaga’s ability to understand archaic written Japanese.

Kosuzu being friends with Hieda no Akyuu is also likely influenced by Norinaga’s fixation on the Kojiki. The person who compiled various oral tales that predated the introduction of writing into the Kojiki is known as Hieda no Are. While little definite is known of what kind of person Hieda no Are was, modern scholarship holds that the compiler of Kojiki was likely a woman, a kind of shamaness or priestess whose duty it was to remember and recite the various legends. Akyuu being someone who reincarnates every 120 to 180 years with her memories intact can be seen as a kind of personalization of deep cultural memory that resurfaces every now and then. Kosuzu however doesn’t show the kind of reverence towards Akyuu that Norinaga did towards Kojiki, and becomes at one point frustrated with Akyuu.

When the narrative of Forbidden Scrollery kicks off, Kosuzu has recently developed the ability to comprehend any book by simply touching them. This ability allows her to comprehend even youkai languages, which allows her to interact more deeply with the youma books she is fascinated with. She is in a sense a person who has a certain special sensitivity which has allowed youkai to “knock on her brains”, as Shigeru Mizuki would have put it. The desire of youkai in youma books to unseal themselves and once again act upon the world can be seen as parallelling the desire to “take shape” that Mizuki articulated. This “taking of shape” is just a lot less ephemeral in Gensokyo than in Outside World.

Kosuzu’s ability drives forth the narrative, not only as the means by which she constantly conjures forth trouble, but also as a decidedly non-human quality. It’s strongly implied that Kosuzu verges close to transforming into a fully fledged youkai over the course of the story, and humans are not supposed to transform into youkai in Gensokyo. Kosuzu’s life is at risk, not only at the hands of the youkai she is fascinated by, but also through the risk of turning into one herself, and thus risking true extermination by Gensokyo’s incident resolvers. Exposure to information beyond the human norm risks alienating Kosuzu from the human community of Gensokyo, with fatal consequences.

Fascination isn’t the only thing that Kosuzu feels towards youkai, and her feelings towards them are highly ambiguous. On one hand she is rather dismissive of the danger involved and doesn’t seem easily unnerved by strange happenings, finding that her books turning into tsukumogami has resulted in her getting “cute pets”. She’s at times highly reckless, doing things such as unsealing the dangerous smoke youkai enenra in order to smoke out bug youkai that eat letters from books. On the other hand, Kosuzu reacts very poorly when the danger gets too real. She’s shown fainting from fear multiple times when faced with youkai that aren’t “cute pets”, and she becomes distressed when she learns that one of her repeat customers has been a youkai in disguise.

Kosuzu’s complex and contradictory feelings and reactions towards youkai are very human, and I would argue that this kind of mix of fascination and fear towards the supernatural is extremely common among humans. The way youkai start paying attention to her as she becomes more involved in the topic is reminiscent of the adage “take interest in the supernatural and the supernatural takes interest in you”. One can also find real-life parallels with how her interest in youkai threatens to ostracize her. Beyond a certain point, many human communities won’t be very tolerant of occult and monstrous interests.

The way Kosuzu starts straying from the “path of humanity” through her interest in and exposure to youkai and how she is becoming “needlessly perceptive” from studying divination is used to explore the relationship between youkai and humans in Gensokyo. This relationship is complicated, and deserves its own chapter. However, looking more closely at Kosuzu’s own narrative arc will help to understand the bigger picture.

In the beginning, Kosuzu views youkai with an othering mix of curiosity, fascination and fear. She sees youkai and humans as something which are clearly separate from each other, and that youkai are ultimately enemies of humanity. Her believing that youkai are enemies of humanity makes her fascination with them and the way she finds some of them “cute” even more interesting. She has a kind of liminal attitude towards youkai that allows her to find a position between the extremes she feels. As the narrative progresses, this attitude allows her to develop more complex views regarding the youkai.

Over time, Kosuzu is on one hand pushed away from youkai by fear, but on the other hand also pulled towards them by “straying from the path of humanity”. She repeatedly experiences very frightening encounters with youkai, and as they become a bigger and closer part of her life, she wonders if it would be better not to engage with them at all. Interestingly enough, it’s not an apparition of a headless horse that causes her to want to take distance, but rather the tengu Shameimaru Aya wanting to do business with Kosuzu. A frightening but fascinating “other” can be managed no matter how terrible it is as long as it stays distant enough, but when a comparatively non-scary manifestation of this “other” starts to become part of your private life it becomes much more difficult to manage.

Kosuzu is however never entirely repulsed away from youkai, and her repeated exposure to more human-like youkai as well as her developing questions over the nature of youkai eventually pushes her over the edge, to the brink of turning into a youkai herself. Kosuzu feels like she is not taken seriously and that things have been held away from her. She feels resentment and paranoia. It’s implied that along her mix of fascination and fear is a third feeling, admiration. As Kosuzu starts to understand that in Gensokyo youkai occupy a higher social position than humans, it’s implied that this admiration threatens to drive her to desire to become one herself. She has certainly harbored a desire to be “different from other people”. The idea of people turning into monsters from strong negative emotions is a classic theme in Japanese literature and folk tales and draws from Buddhist ideas. Kosuzu threatening to turn into a youkai because of an emotional crisis is thus very much in line with Japanese literature tradition.

While Kosuzu’s emotional turmoil contributes to her becoming more youkai-like, what truly drives her to the edge is knowledge. Her turmoil started with her learning about the true nature and purpose of Gensokyo, and she is further perturbed by learning Futatsuiwa Mamizou’s true identity as a bake-danuki. Two further pieces of information drive her to the very brink of becoming a fully fledged youkai.

The first is Aya presenting Kosuzu with the youkai view of the social world. While humans prefer simple binary social categories like “friend” and “enemy”, the youkai are entirely individualistic in their perception and consider others to be friends or enemies on a case by case basis. This dissolves Kosuzu’s previous frame of reference, and allows her to see certain youkai as her friends.

The second piece of information is the arch-youkai Yakumo Yukari telling Kosuzu that her life is in danger because Hakurei Reimu has been keeping her eye on Kosuzu because she “hates” people who admire youkai like Kosuzu does. As Reimu has been shown straight up killing a human who turned into a youkai during the course of the manga, this warning carries heavy weight. Thus Kosuzu becomes aware that she is not necessarily considered fully human by the people who enforce the rules of her community, and it’s this her own othering by fellow humans that is the last thing she learns before she disappears.

There are actually a lot of parallels in our Outside World with people who learn they are not considered part of the community starting to identify with monstrous or otherwise non-human creatures instead. This can be seen in the modern world, but there is historical precedent in Japan, where youkai were sometimes used as folk heroes or as symbols of demonized groups by discontented people. Certain types of historical youkai were also based on groups of people who were either kind of liminal figures that were not fully part of the community, or then complete outsiders. So this process of humans becoming youkai in some sense is not just a fanciful invention by ZUN.

Kosuzu however doesn’t fully become a youkai, as the process is deliberately interrupted by other youkai through a convoluted plot. By doing this, her life is spared, as she avoids both being consumed by youkai or getting killed by Hakurei Reimu. She becomes someone who is “different from other people” and who gets to enjoy an “exciting daily life”, yet who is seen as a human. She gets to learn the full truth of Gensokyo, and to see just how many of the people who Hakurei Reimu spends time with are in reality youkai. In other words, she becomes initiated into an inner circle of Gensokyo, and joins a rank of strange, liminal in-betweener humans with curious abilities that make them stand out from the rest of the human inhabitants of Gensokyo.

Over the course of the narrative arc, Kosuzu has gone from someone who treated youkai as a fascinating but scary curiosity that stands apart from humanity to someone who is capable of seeing youkai as persons, even friends. She develops nuance, empathy and a more complex view of the world. In youkai studies, the role of empathy in the birth of youkai mythologies is sometimes highlighted. It’s thought that the animistic worldview of old Japan led people to empathise with non-human phenomena, in the sense of attributing them emotions, motivations and agency. This didn't necessarily mean liking these phenomena, youkai were after all feared. Nuance and complexity are something which are also highlighted in youkai studies, as youkai seem to occupy a strange space of half-belief, half-disbelief, and looking deeply into youkai mythology often reveals complex ways in which people have interacted with this mythology. Kosuzu’s character arc can be seen as mirroring these aspects of youkai culture. In her case, the empathy becomes something one might feel towards another person, as many of the youkai she deals with are quite human-like.

Another way of looking at Kosuzu’s character arc is as a kind of initiation process. Many of the protagonists of the Touhou game can be seen as a kind of shamanic spirit guide archetypes, and in a way Kosuzu can also be seen as a type of shamaness. Her ability to understand youkai language allows her to act as a kind of “medium” for the youkai sealed in youma books, and as the story progresses she begins to have a fuller picture of the youkai world. She undergoes a kind of crisis that can be seen as being analogous to a spiritual crisis or shamanic sickness, and this results in her undergoing an initiatory experience, which are often also in our Outside World precipitated by crises. She emerges from the crisis wiser, more perceptive and becomes not only an accepted member of the community, but has privileged access to secrets not everyone knows.

In parallel with Kosuzu, the reader too has perhaps become slightly less rigid and binary in their thinking, and gained a fuller and more nuanced picture of Gensokyo. This fuller picture also includes the fact that it is a “false paradise” and that it can be very unfair at times. Such bitter revelations of course tend to be the norm here in the Outside World too for those who start to become “needlessly perceptive” and bother to dig into boring histories. What Touhou fans might be denied from reading and understanding Forbidden Scrollery is an easy, simple exercise in escapism. One can then learn to enjoy the “taste of twilight” that is such a big part of the cultural sensibilities of Japan, especially related to youkai, or then spit it out and find something more suited for their palate.

Kosuzu’s narrative arc reveals a lot about youkai and humans in Gensokyo, and the kind of relationship that they have. This relationship also ties into the themes of information and narratives and things not being as they initially seem. While some of the elements of the relationship between humanity, youkai and information have been mentioned, a closer look is in order.

Youkai, Humans and the Blurry Line In-Between

Forbidden Scrollery has a lot to say about youkai in Touhou and the relationship between youkai and humanity. Youkai are revealed to be entities that are dependent on human cognition and emotions in order to exist. As a category, they turn out to be quite metamorphic as objects, animals and humans are shown turning into youkai. The manga also shines light on the conflict between various types of youkai, be it between various types of youkai, between the more human-like and less human-like ones, or between newcomers and older ones. Youkai and humans in Gensokyo are revealed to have a strange co-dependent relationship that is built on a fragile balance. Humanity defines itself in opposition against youkai, but this opposition turns out to be much less absolute than how it initially appears.

Towards the end of the narrative arc of Forbidden Scrollery, it is revealed to Kosuzu that youkai are something born from human belief and fear, and that they have disappeared from the outside world because humans there no longer believe in youkai as explanations for mysterious phenomena. While this idea has been presented and explored elsewhere in Touhou, what makes Forbidden Scrollery notable is that it explores the social ramifications of this in depth.

As Kosuzu keenly notes, humans ultimately have more power in this relationship. Yet Gensokyo exists for the sake of youkai, and the humans of Gensokyo are also revealed to be dependent on youkai. The youkai are shown protecting humans from threats both natural and supernatural. This can be seen as an one-sided dependent relationship, as humans could theoretically also protect themselves from certain natural hazards, but they have stagnated technologically in Gensokyo. However, as history of Japan shows, human ingenuity can protect only so much against natural disasters. Youkai magic might be much more powerful than human engineering, and Forbidden Scrollery doesn’t really explore the limits of the protective powers of youkai. So the humans of Gensokyo might benefit from the arrangement. Having been cut off from modernity, they obviously also don’t suffer from the type of modern malaises that we in the Outside World do either. It’s not explored whether people of Gensokyo are ultimately better or worse off than we in the Outside World. It’s also highly unclear if the humans of Gensokyo would continue to exist if the mechanisms that sustain Gensokyo collapsed.

Forbidden Scrollery doesn’t really explore the paradox that arises from the fact that in Gensokyo youkai appear as unambiguously real entities. While they might be sustained by fear and belief, it is rather hard to disbelieve in something you can experience with your own senses. It would take a complete paradigm shift for people of Gensokyo to start regarding youkai as creations of imagination, someone capable of convincing that things they experience to the fullest are not real. One can argue that such a thing did happen in Japan during Meiji reformation, but youkai in the Outside World have always been elusive, slippery and phantasmal. The efforts to exterminate youkai from Outside World were obviously incomplete too, as belief in what generally gets called “supernatural phenomena” persists up to this day in Japan and elsewhere.

Overcoming fear of youkai could theoretically be an easier task, yet this would be fragile, as being fully manifest, the youkai of Gensokyo could simply start hurting or killing people to make them more afraid again. Whether youkai harm the human inhabitants of Gensokyo is ambiguous in Touhou, and the situation seems to have changed over the course of history. The ideal situation for youkai seems to be one where the humans of Gensokyo are afraid of them, but not so afraid that they would start to organize against youkai.

Beyond youkai protecting the humans, there is also one more implicit benefit to the situation for the humans of Gensokyo. As humanity defines itself in opposition to youkai, they have a clear external enemy. This likely makes for a tightly knit, highly coherent society where internal strife is minimized. When lacking external enemies, humans tend to start coming up with internal ones instead. This kind of coherence through defining the inside and outside can be seen as something that reflects the social order of Japan in the Outside World. While the Japanese do not generally speaking consider non-Japanese people enemies, they do arguably have more defined inner and outer social circles than in the West. Japanese culture also has a large throughline where Japanese people consider Japan a country that is unique and very different from others, be it in good or bad ways. These cultural traits are reflected both in how humans and youkai of Gensokyo are supposed to stand apart, but also in how Gensokyo itself is supposed to stand apart from the Outside World. As is seen multiple times in Touhou, both of these clear lines are in reality blurry and leaky, and this in turn reflects the Japanese tendency to find all kinds of “gray zones”, of which doujin culture itself is a great example.

Gensokyo exists in a fragile balance between youkai and humanity, a supposed hostility that however reveals a deeply codependent relationship. These kinds of relationships have been explored in philosophy and social sciences, going all the way back to Hegel’s lord-bondsman dialectic. What makes Gensokyo a fascinating setting is that any kind of a more mutual relationship would lead to the annihilation of the whole, with it being entirely possible that in the worst case scenario both humans and youkai would just blink out of existence. This can be seen as something quite dystopian, and ZUN does call Gensokyo a “false paradise” himself. The question here though is false paradise compared to what? Some hypothetical true paradise? Japan? The Outside World at large? Some kind of vague pre-Forbidden Scrollery otaku consensus as Gensokyo as a wonderland full of celestial maidens? This question remains unanswered.

While Gensokyo might be a “false paradise”, it is not a tyranny. The Human Village is not shown as having any kind of a political system, and whatever they have going on is likely something that rural Japanese communities might have had in pre-Meiji era when political rule was not so centralized. There is no single dominant youkai or clique of youkai, and while they use the fear of violence as part of their rule, they mostly seem to avoid acting out their potential for violence towards the villagers, and instead seek to influence the kind of narratives the villagers believe in for their own gain. Various youkai “species” or groups are said to have different beliefs. The tanuki and the kitsune believe in the superiority of magic, the kappa believe in the superiority of technology, while the tengu believe in the superiority of information. The tengu and tanuki are more focused on in Forbidden Scrollery, with the kitsune and kappa barely making an appearance, implying that these two groups might have a better grasp on the battle of information and influence.

One way to look at youkai in Forbidden Scrollery is that they are kind of stand-ins for the type of ideologies, narratives and stories that hold humanity in their grip in Outside World too. The spiritual-technological division can be found among many different ideologies and narratives, and recognizing the power of information over humanity is a kind of a meta-layer tool of rulership. So perhaps to rid Gensokyo of youkai would be the same as ridding humanity of its stories and narratives, which is probably an impossible task. Humans are narrative animals, explaining the world and themselves as stories, attributing actors to where there might be unfathomably vast and abstract forces of nature and history and humanizing the non-human.

As long as humans cannot stop being moved by stories, they are susceptible to influence, be it from youkai or Outside World politics and media. Indeed, humans might simply start once again telling the stories that in Touhou Project - and perhaps in the Outside World too - created youkai in the first place. Forbidden Scrollery is certainly not the first piece of media to explore the power of belief and narratives over humans, but what makes Forbidden Scrollery really fascinating in this respect is the very cynical implication that the “path of humanity” is one of willing ignorance. After all, it is stated outright that becoming “needlessly perceptive”, becoming aware of how much belief and narratives shape perception of reality, causes one to stray from this “path of humanity”. It is interesting to note in this context that all of the human protagonists in Touhou are exceptional humans. Reimu is a shrine maiden that “floats over life”, and while Marisa might be an “ordinary magician”, she is still a magician. Even Kosuzu and Akyuu have unusual abilities. Touhou is not the story of ordinary humans, and neither is Forbidden Scrollery.

The picture of youkai as a kind of elite class that manipulates humanity through information is not the full picture though, especially in the context of other Touhou stories. Even in Forbidden Scrollery, it is very clear that not all youkai are equal or have a seat at the table of power. It is implied that youkai which are very powerful such as Yakumo Yukari, have particular talent for illusions or manipulation like Houjuu Nue or which belong to distinct types that have their own societies are capable of influencing humans of Gensokyo. So it takes either extraordinary individual power or an organized clique to exert power, something which once again mirrors the situation in the Outside World. On the other hand, especially the primordial, non-humanoid youkai born from the influence of youma books seem to have little influence on broader human affairs beyond causing occasional trouble.

This kind of division between influential and non-influential youkai can be seen as representing a real trend from Japanese history, where both exceptionally wealthy and successful as well as poor and unfortunate people were viewed with some suspicion. Certain youkai legends actually arose to explain things like wealth differences between people. One example of this are the mayohiga legends from Tono, where people would find treasures in magical “lost houses”. Another example are legends of kitsune-tsuki or kitsune users, who were in certain areas believed to have come into wealth through consorting with kitsune and using them to acquire magical or illicit wealth. Entire families were scorned for this. The misfortunes of the poor were explained as things like bad karma or curses, and if they lived outside of the community they could be seen as being youkai such as yamabito.

Youkai in Forbidden Scrollery are shown to be something that other things can turn into, fitting into the history of bakemono, changing things, which was once the term of choice for monsters during the Edo period. Items, animals and even humans are shown turning into youkai. At times more archaic appearances hiding behind the present appearances of Gensokyo’s humanoid youkai are also hinted at, suggesting that their appearance as cute anime girls might only be the present state of affairs. A meta level reading of this would be that if youkai are shaped by human cognition, particular instances of them are shaped by the cognition of particular people, and the ones shown in Touhou Project are shaped by the cognition of one particular ZUN. However, while it is possible to perceive them differently and to give them new manifestations, the older forms lurk behind the new ones, bound in old tomes and told in old stories.

Out of the categories of things that can turn into youkai, humans are shown to be the most consequential one. There’s a very infamous narrative arc involving a Fortune Teller who tries to game the system and becomes a youkai himself using a convoluted plot that exploits beliefs regarding the “spirit of the author” watching over readers and punishing those who plagiarize their work. Hakurei Reimu outright kills the Fortune Teller, the only shown instance anywhere in Touhou Project where she does so for a humanoid youkai. The situation is especially shocking as Fortune Teller was trying to appeal to Reimu’s friendship with youkai, and stated his plan was to live away from humans and to cause no further trouble.

Reimu believes that humans becoming youkai would destabilize youkai, and there is a logic to it. After all, if everyone understood that youkai supposedly have the upper hand, then a lot of people would want to become youkai. This in turn could lead to diminishing of the metaphorical food supply. It’s not known if there is some kind of ratio of humans to youkai that is needed to sustain Gensokyo, but there might be. Furthermore, people becoming youkai could also simply be seen as something that is socially destabilizing. Rather than being a “youkai exterminator” as she often advertises herself as, she is in Forbidden Scrollery described as being a “balancer” between humans and youkai who does her part in maintaining the social order of Gensokyo.

So, how does one even become a youkai? The process of a human in Gensokyo becoming one seems to involve a kind of element of information. Fortune Teller had become aware of the true situation of Gensokyo and didn’t want to be a human anymore. Kosuzu risks becoming a youkai not only because she is being constantly influenced by the youkai energy of the youma books and spending time with youkai, she is also described as becoming "needlessly perceptive” after she becomes interested in divination. It is thus implied that becoming too aware will either cause one to want to become a youkai, or then becoming too aware in itself somehow causes this transformation.

Whereas the fate of humans trying to become youkai is grim, and even fraternizing with them draws in scrutiny from the closest thing to Gensokyo has to some kind of authorities, many youkai are shown entering or even living in the Human Village with very little consequence. This is one of those instances in Forbidden Scrollery where things are not as they initially appear to be. Youkai are supposed to be the enemies of humanity and humanity and youkai stand apart, and youkai are not supposed to enter the human village or hurt the villagers. This situation is however revealed to be much more complicated. Not all humans consider all youkai enemies. Kosuzu isn’t the only human who has made friends with youkai, and Kirisame Marisa and Hakurei Reimu are among those who are shown fraternizing with youkai. In fact, Reimu spends so much time with youkai that the villagers are said to be afraid to come to her shrine because there are so many youkai there.

In fact, Forbidden Scrollery casts doubt on the idea that youkai are not supposed to enter the village and that they are the enemies of humanity almost as soon as this idea is introduced. During the chapter where Akyuu for the first time articulates that youkai are the enemies of humans and are not supposed to enter the village, we are in the same chapter shown the school run by Kamishirasawa Keine, who is a kind of were-youkai. It is entirely possible that people of the village do not know the truth about Keine, or that it is a kind of open secret. Keine also isn’t a threat to people, and in the game Imperishable Night is shown to be a protector of the Human Village. The type of youkai she transforms into during full moon is the Hakutaku, and seeing one was considered unfathomably auspicious. So one can argue that Keine is a good youkai who deserves to live in the Village, and maybe people don’t even know that she is one. Nevertheless, the mere fact that there is a youkai who lives in the village violates the supposedly absolute idea that youkai are enemies of humanity who are not supposed to enter the village.

Other youkai have to resort to disguises and trickery to interact with humans, but nowhere near all of such cases do things to harm humans. The Moon Rabbit Reisen sells medicine while disguised as a human, arguably a net positive for the human community of Gensokyo. The bake-danuki Futatsuiwa Mamizou and tengu Shameimaru Aya engage in questionable activities, yet during the course of Forbidden Scrollery both end up doing things which while born out of their self interest, also benefit the human community. The presence of all of these youkai is known to the incident resolvers of Gensokyo, and their presence is tolerated, albeit at times just barely.

Youkai who enter the human village are however supposed to act in ways that are not outright harmful to humans, and this rule is enforced, not only by people like Reimu and Marisa, but also by other youkai. There are multiple instances in Forbidden Scrollery where humanoid youkai intervene in or investigate the activities of youkai that have started causing trouble in the Human Village. Often these are the more primordial types conjured forth from the influence of youma books, but sometimes these are humanoid types. When one group of youkai conspires to gain more power, another group acts to prevent this, and the Human Village seems to find a strange balance, an ever so slightly mutating status quo. Forbidden Scrollery also depicts Mamizou punishing a newly transformed humanoid youkai that was stealing food from the Human Village, and thus breaking the rules of Gensokyo. Had Mamizou slightly more violent preferences, the youkai might have suffered the same fate as Fortune Teller.

While humans of Gensokyo are supposed to adhere to a strict division between humans and youkai and treat youkai as enemies, youkai in turn do not believe in such simple and strict binaries regarding friends and enemies. Towards the end of the narrative arc of Forbidden Scrollery, Aya very explicitly explains this and states that youkai treat different people in different contexts in a different manner. Furthermore, the youkai consider the individual more valuable than humans do. It’s this view that allows youkai to on one hand consider people from Outside World and outside the Human Village free game, while going to great lengths to avoid causing explicit harm to the villagers, and even befriend humans at times. This kind of attitude can be seen as reflecting the broader “gray zone” mentality in Japanese culture, where the dividing line between different groups or “wrong” and “right” can be much more contextual and all kinds of compromises can be found as long as they don’t disturb the broader status quo. A “gray zone” is also of course a place where entities as liminal as youkai would no doubt thrive in.

Many of the key components of Forbidden Scrollery have now been looked at, including some of the broader themes, the large narrative arc focused on Kosuzu, as well as the nature of Gensokyo and the relationship humans and youkai have. Forbidden Scrollery however consists of more than the large narrative arc, and taking a closer look at the types of smaller stories it contains reveals much about the various themes that the manga deals with.

Stories of Stories: The Narratives and Themes of Forbidden Scrollery

Forbidden Scrollery deals mainly with the power of stories and belief, but what kind of stories is the manga itself made up of, and what further themes emerge from these? As with other long-running serialized Touhou print works, the narrative has a kind of flow and ebb to it, where it travels from one theme to another in a way where a greater narrative throughline is at times difficult to see. ZUN has stated that Touhou is “like a diary” to him, and the changes of thematic focus from one volume to another probably reflect ZUN’s changing interests. The print works also have a habit of catching up with the events of various games and presenting various sidestories and afterstories to these events. Forbidden Scrollery is no exception to this. However, over time certain repeating themes emerge, and many if not all of these can also be found in other Touhou print works.Forbidden Scrollery stands out for how closely the themes mirror the central narrative devices of youma books and Kosuzu’s character arc.

When it comes to the structure of the story, Forbidden Scrollery was originally serialized in the Comp-Ace magazine, and later published in seven volumes. With the exception of the introductory stories, all of the stories in Forbidden Scrollery come in two parts. Many of the two-part stories are both self-contained and contribute to the narrative, and only towards the end we start getting two-part stories that seamlessly carry onto the next. The in-universe timespan of events is closer to years than months, as seasons are depicted changing. The themes that Forbidden Scrollery focused on evolved over time, and different volumes tend to focus on somewhat different themes. For example, volume four has two stories which deal with youkai or humans transgressing against the rules of Gensokyo and the consequences for doing so.

As one could perhaps expect from a manga focused on youkai books, a lot of the stories that make up Forbidden Scrollery feature reinterpretations of older youkai legends and references to youkai culture. A fairly straightforward reference to older youkai mythology is how Kosuzu reading the tsukumogami night parade scrolls causes a tsukumogami night parade manifest, resonating with the old idea that witnessing a youkai parade could have grave consequences through the mere act of seeing. An example of a creative recombination of elements of youkai legends is a story where kappa fake youkai phenomena based on the Seven Wonders of Honjo to cover up their own activities in the human village.

The story of kappa using the Seven Wonders of Honjo to cover up their own activities is an excellent example in one of the most recurring themes in Forbidden Scrollery, that being that things are not as they initially appear to be. Time and time again it turns out that there is some other culprit or cause behind the initial appearance of the incident or mystery. Stories that are aimed at getting at some hidden truth behind phenomena that appear to be caused by youkai are an established part of youkai culture. These arguably go back to at least Inoue Enryou, who tried to debunk youkai as tricks of the mind. A more modern example are the works of Natsuhiko Kyogoku, which ZUN are known to enjoy, which treat youkai as a kind of psychological sublimation.

At times Forbidden Scrollery kind of veers close to Inoue-like territory. For example, in one story it is speculated that the appearance of a headless horse youkai might have been an optical illusion. However, in Forbidden Scrollery the strange incidents are neither empty illusions nor pure psychological sublimations, rather more often than not one layer of youkai hijinks simply reveals another layer of youkai hijinks. Illusions hide something of substance, and while human psychology is crucial to the events in Forbidden Scrollery, the mysterious events and their impact do not entirely emerge from human psychology alone. The rumor of a lethally terrifying ox-head youkai is false, yet behind it is the truth of actual youkai spreading the rumor in order to stir up the villagers. The motive has been to “reinvigorate not only youkai, but also humanity”, implying that lack of fear of the unknown takes away something from humanity.

As has been mentioned, the power of narratives and belief and how they manifest in very concrete forms in Gensokyo are a large theme in Forbidden Scrollery. These themes are explored in many different ways, and one common way are stories which involve situations where a rumor emerges, and the power of belief threatens to actualize this into a manifest event. Rumors and legends are not just idle chatter, but something that can have severe consequences. The stakes for this get rather high at times, as there is an incident where apocalyptic fears captivate the villagers who have become shaken by an unusually intense previous string of incidents. Thus the characters are forced to come up with ways to defuse the situation through a kind of process of belief engineering. Various involved parties use religion, medicine and mass media as ways to control collective anxiety. It also turns out that Kosuzu has contributed to the incident by selling occult magazines from the Outside World as “science magazines”. Kosuzu stands in for a consumer and disseminator of information that can’t discern between different types of “important sounding gibberish”.

A more implied but noteworthy case of belief engineering involves the one hundred ghost stories storytelling tradition, a part of classic youkai culture. The story is quite humorous, as the participants end up telling stories of various levels of truthfulness and legibility. Participants struggle to understand Mamizou’s tale, which is from the outside world and involves modern technology, a kind of inversion of modern audiences struggling to understand the context of older stories. The ghost story marathon eventually reaches its peak, where a real apparition is expected to manifest, just as in the real-life storytelling tradition. Something does appear, but it is a fake created by Marisa. Faking a ghost as part of the one hundred stories tradition is something that is at least alleged to have happened from time to time, but once again the power of belief in Gensokyo changes the picture. I think a legitimate reading of this story is that the organizers of this event conspired to create a fake apparition in order to prevent a real one from happening, and thus preventing people from walking away with the idea that one could really summon youkai by reading a hundred scary stories.

The focus on humans milling out rumors in Forbidden Scrollery represent a tendency of humans to misunderstand things and to generate misinformation, even when they lack an ill intent. Some of the rumors which threaten to turn into incidents are born from people not understanding things, and various types of communication breakdowns and misunderstandings are indeed a recurring theme in Forbidden Scrollery. A humorous recurring example is Kosuzu not understanding the context for various Outside World events and ideas that she reads about in books from Outside World and treating things like “the fall of the Berlin Wall” in overly literal ways. Another example is how mysterious writing appearing on the paper walls of the school turns out to be simply the notes of a kitsune child who wanted to get educated, but lacked paper to make notes on.

Sometimes the large theme of things not being as they appear manifests in more deceptive ways, and some of the stories in Forbidden Scrollery features scams. An example of this is the story featuring Saint Yuuten, an Outside World legendary Buddhist monk who was specialized in banishing troublesome spirits. In Forbidden Scrollery, it turns out that Saint Yuuten had actually been eaten by a particular type of youkai known as the Priest-Eater, who then had pretended to be Saint Yuuten. The fake-Yuuten was unable to perform proper exorcism, and a spirit he supposedly sent to the afterlife manages to return. Another example of a story featuring scams is on referencing Hakusen, who was an artist who was said to be able to create rat-repelling pictures of cats. In Forbidden Scrollery, Hakusen actually had the power to control rats, and was causing and resolving the rat issues with this power. This is contrasted with Reisen’s rat repelling cat amulets, which initially seem like a scam, but are revealed to be effective and work by making an ultrasonic sound which repels rats.

One last type of story where things are not as they seem features changing perspectives. The whole main narrative arc of Forbidden Scrollery is about Kosuzu changing her perspective on youkai and Gensokyo, but this type of narrative is also found in individual stories. An example of this is the story featuring the headless horse youkai and the drunken horse bush plant. The drunken horse bush has become to be considered an inauspicious plant because it is poisonous to horses, but in the past it was considered an auspicious plant because the flowers resemble ripe ears of rice. In turn, the apparition of a headless horse is terrifying, but such are considered to be mounts of the kami. This particular one however turns out to be an umatsuki, a type of youkai that possesses people who mistreat horses. Once again, the truth of the matter is revealed to be more complex than initially seems, and a change of perception is required to get to the truth of the matter at hand.

These all themes come together in the fact that youkai in disguise mingle with humans, entering the village when they shouldn’t. A great deal of the little stories that make up Forbidden Scrollery feature such as a plot element, either as a cause of an incident, or then involving youkai taking part in resolving an incident. One can conceptualize taking up a disguise as a kind of scam, a deceptive maneuver. These youkai in disguise are of course not as they initially appear, and neither is the supposed status quo of Gensokyo. The changing perspective of both Kosuzu and the reader on youkai and Gensokyo is a big part of the large narrative of Forbidden Scrollery. Youkai masquerading as humans is of course based on older youkai legends, which frequently featured youkai mimicking the appearance of humans. As these stories bring together so many of the larger themes of Forbidden Scrollery, they act like a kind of miniature of the larger narrative.

The way the stories that make up Forbidden Scrollery are arranged is such that at times it is easy to lose track of the big picture. The volumes move through different themes and develop different potential lines for the larger plot to move through. While it at times teases quick developments, the narrative ends up taking its time, painting a landscape of Gensokyo and the entities that dwell in it. Ultimately all of the little stories end up being important in how the story contextualizes itself. Rarely if ever there is a story that exists in a vacuum, as borderline anthological as Forbidden Scrollery feels at times. The little stories are resonant with bigger themes. An example of this is when Kosuzu starts inviting suspicion through her constant interest in youma books, there is an incident with the kutsu-tsura youkai that steals her shoe. The shoe ends up in a melon field where melons have gone missing, and Kosuzu risks looking like a melon thief. This little suspicion is a kind of microcosm of the larger suspicion swirling around Kosuzu. Some of the stories have an almost holographic quality, where the little communication breakdowns, things being not as they seem and the power of belief shaping events and requiring action reflect the broader reality of Gensokyo.

There’s a sub-theme that I think deserves a whole chapter of its own, that being the interaction between Gensokyo and the Outside World. Exploring this sub-theme closer will reveal certain things about the relationship between fiction and reality in Touhou Project, as well as how it plays with the collision of modernity and tradition in Japan.

The Leaking Barrier and Modernity in Gensokyo

One frequent element in various stories in Forbidden Scrollery is things from the Outside World causing some kind of change in Gensokyo. In theory, Gensokyo is supposed to be largely separate from the Outside World, cleaved off by a “barrier of common sense”. In reality, things from the Outside World seem to constantly end up in Gensokyo, and sometimes things from Gensokyo even end up in the Outside World. The ability of the Great Hakurei Barrier to keep things out from Gensokyo thus turns out to be yet another thing that isn’t quite like it seems. The porousness of the Barrier makes the relationship between Gensokyo and Outside World, fantasy and reality, more ambiguous, and hints that the stories being told in Forbidden Scrollery might have some relevance to the Outside World too.

Outside World things appearing in Gensokyo is also a play on Japan and its historical process of modernization. It was during the course of modernization during the Meiji era that the concept of youkai as we know it was first comprehensively articulated, and thus these seemingly old beings owe a lot to modernity. The rapid modernization process also left a strong mark in Japanese culture. One could even conceptualize it as a kind of unresolved national trauma.

The one thing that is expected to enter Gensokyo are youkai, and there is a story that depicts just such a thing happening. It is explicitly said that “things that turn into youkai” end up in Gensokyo. For this particular youkai, eating a human is what turned it from an ordinary animal into a youkai, and thus the newborn youkai finds itself in Gensokyo. Another “youkai” that enters Gensokyo is a typhoon, which the inhabitants conceptualize as a kind of “foreign youkai”. Some youkai are also apparently capable of moving between Gensokyo and Outside World at will, and the recurring character Mamizou is one of those. Forbidden Scrollery also briefly mentions that Reimu went to the Outside World during an incident, but does not spend more time exploring this, as it is a reference to the game Urban Legend in Limbo.

While Forbidden Scrollery shows a single incident of a new youkai coming in from the Outside World, it has multiple instances of books, magazines and stories from the Outside World arriving into Gensokyo. It’s not explained how exactly the process of books and magazines ending up in Gensokyo works, but it presumably follows the idea of forgotten things ending up in Gensokyo that is explored elsewhere in Touhou Project. Many of these books eventually end up in Suzunaan. Kosuzu is able to read the books and magazines, but frequently doesn’t understand their contents and makes overly literal and amusing interpretations. People not quite understanding the Outside World is a kind of repeating gag in Forbidden Scrollery. It’s possible to see this as a kind of satire of Japanese not necessarily understanding foreign cultures. The idea of forgotten bits of modernity drifting into Gensokyo may be a play on the post-1990s stagnation of Japan, as well as how many social trends arrive into Japan 5-10 years after they arise in the West.

Some of the materials that end up in Gensokyo however end up having more impact than just acting as a source of confusion for the characters and amusement for the readers. One of the stories features kappa starting to farm their own cucumbers after acquiring a farming manual. Because of this, the kappa no longer need to steal cucumbers from humans. While the broader long term impact of this is not explored, one could assume that over time the relationship between humans and kappa would become less hostile, as there is no longer conflict over cucumbers. When the inhabitants of Gensokyo are able to act on the information they get from the Outside World, they do so. Gensokyo is said to accept everything, and this seems to include modernity. This can be seen as reflecting how Japan was able to adapt to modernity rapidly during the Meiji Restoration in the 19th century.

Sometimes the inhabitants of Gensokyo are able to adapt things from the Outside World which are not quite fit for Gensokyo. An example of this are mystery novels. Outside World mystery novels rely on scientific, legal and psychological principles which the people of Gensokyo don’t know about or which are different there. Furthermore, things like a murder in a closed room would easily be explained as the work of a youkai or magic. Hieda no Akyuu however finds the idea of a murder mystery novel fascinating, and ends up writing mystery novels adapted to the conditions of Gensokyo, where the plot revolves around exploring whether youkai truly committed youkai-like crimes, or if a human perpetrator managed to make it seem like the work of youkai. Forbidden Scrollery is in itself a collection of mystery stories in a world in which magic is real, and this story is perhaps a kind of self-aware play on this.

Contact with materials from the Outside World might have also started to change how the human inhabitants of Gensokyo view youkai. In one of the stories, it is commented that “who’s afraid of tanuki in this day and age”, which is a kind of unusual statement to make in a place where youkai unambiguously exist. This is reminiscent of the “tanuki demonology” by Yanagita Kunio, where he described how over time people have become less afraid of tanuki, and how stories about tanuki evolved to reflect this. So perhaps a similar process has been going on in Gensokyo. In the very same story Marisa however remarks that people have died of tanuki tricks, and it is not good to lose the fear of the unknown. The people of Gensokyo do not have the luxury of disbelief in the supernatural, and any attempts at seriously undermining belief in youkai and their power would likely be swiftly squashed.

I would argue that all the major and minor themes of Forbidden Scrollery coalesce into the final theme that I will go over. This is the idea of infinite truths, presented near the peak of the large narrative arc of Forbidden Scrollery. Looking at this idea will perhaps raise more questions than give answers, but it does raise rather interesting implications, represents a continuation of the Japanese trend of playing with truth and serves as the perfect capstone of the narrative arc of this analysis.

Infinite stories, infinite truths

The last theme in Forbidden Scrollery that I will write in this analysis is the idea of infinite truths, which is presented by Hieda no Akyuu towards the very end of the story. This occurs in the context of Kosuzu becoming confused over how youkai can simultaneously be the enemies of humanity, yet also be something that humans in Gensokyo depend on.

Akyuu tries to explain to Kosuzu that she is stuck in a limited perspective where only a single truth exists, and that is a “delusion of us humans”. In reality, the world is infinite, therefore infinite truths exist. This leads to a situation where one has to choose what is the best truth for themselves. The idea that youkai are the enemies of humans is according to Akyuu the best truth for the human village, as youkai are not only enemies of humans, but also something humans depend on.

Why is this the best truth for the humans then? Arguably it prevents humans from perceiving the codependent nature of the relationship, trying to upset the balance and therefore possibly risking their very existence in Gensokyo. More implicitly, the idea of a well-defined external enemy of course creates a clear in-group self-understanding, cultivates group solidarity and prevents the process of a group trying to find internal enemies to band against. Therefore, the idea that youkai are the unambiguous enemies of humanity can be a convenient truth on multiple levels.

Kosuzu is not too happy to hear this, and doesn’t buy into this idea. She quite correctly points out that the idea of “infinite truths” can be used to justify basically anything. While this is true, Akyuu doesn’t seem to be advocating that individuals or even societies simply nilly-willy choose whatever to believe in, or take up beliefs that are actively harmful to people. Rather, she seems to see that “youkai are the enemies of humanity” is the best truth for the human society of Gensokyo, not as a personal opinion or preference, but rather something socially determined that facilitates the continued existence of human society and Gensokyo itself.

When trying to analyze Akyuu’s views, one runs into conceptual-linguistic issues. The idea of “infinite truths” is of course one that is generally speaking difficult to both conceptualize and accept, and many would reject it outright. However, something like “infinite possible interpretations of events” is much more understandable. Because humans (and fictional human-like entities) all depend on imperfect information acquisition processes which are further tampered with by personal interests, preferences and various cognitive distortions, the idea that there are multiple, maybe even infinite, possible interpretations of events becomes much more acceptable. This is especially true for complex issues and events, like a deeply intertwined yet surface-level hostile co-dependent relationship between two different types of entities.

The linguistic challenges come from the fact that Forbidden Scrollery is of course originally written in Japanese, and of course uses the Japanese language, which has several words for what is translated as “truth”. The world of choice for “truth” that Akyuu uses in Japanese is 真実 shinjitsu. This word is used to refer to the objective truth of a situation. However, there exists an even more higher level concept of truth in Japanese, that is 真理 shrinri. This word refers to universal or fundamental truths, including things from the realms of mathematics, science, philosophy and religious doctrines. So there appears to be a kind of nuance in Japanese, where there can possibly be many different shinjitsu, but also things which transcend the individual facts and are a kind of eternal capital-T Truths. The speed of light is a shinri, the events of the world result in various shinjitsu, but as humans are prone to projection, have imperfect access to information and have self-interests, they present differently tinted takes on shinjitsu. Thus shinjitsu can be subject to debate and interpretation, while shinri do not change according to human activities.

There is perhaps an implication here that there is no shinri, a fundamental principle, in existence that could serve as the base truth of Gensokyo. One way to look at this is that even shinri are mutable in Gensokyo. Certainly there are entities in Gensokyo that can through magical and divine means violate things that in the Outside World would be shaped by fundamental principles like laws of physics. The limits of the power of belief haven’t really been explored in Touhou, and it might be that the only shrini in Gensokyo is that “belief shapes things”. One cannot build a castle on such shifting sands, and thus the idea of infinite truths might be simply an acknowledgement that if power of belief is the only fundamental principle, then everyone is free to believe as they see fit, leading to the emergence of infinite truths. A more pessimistic reading is that there are some other shinri besides the power of belief, but they are too cynical to make up for a viable guiding principle for a human society. Certainly the strong rule and the weak are ruled in Gensokyo, yet humanity would find it hard to accept such a deflating truth. Such might of course inspire open resistance, which the youkai do not want.

Akyuu’s idea of “infinite truths” is extremely similar to the ideas of the American writer and self-described “agnostic mystic” Robert Anton Wilson. In his book Prometheus Rising Wilson presents the idea that there are infinite possible truths that an individual can believe in, and the task then becomes choosing the one that is best for the individual. Wilson wrote of “reality tunnels” which sound like some kind of portals, but are actually a description of how humans construct “tunnels” of perceived reality by dividing things into true and untrue, relevant and irrelevant. Thus there exists not only an infinite number of truths, but at least as many ways to perceive and experience reality as there have been people in existence.

It is not known if Akyuu’s idea of infinite truths came from Wilson. While some of his works have been translated into Japanese, Prometheus Rising is not among them. More indirect ways of disseminating Wilson’s ideas into Japan are possible. First is that some summaries of his ideas might have cropped up among Japanese occult literature and magazines, as he was a very influential figure in the Western occult counterculture. The second possibility is related to Wilson’s influence, particularly on the Chaos Magic movement. One can find modern examples of Japanese occultists influenced by Chaos Magic, but whether these ideas were disseminated into Japan by the time ZUN was working on the core worldbuilding of Touhou is exceedingly unclear. As I am not at this moment able to conclusively say yes or no to this possible influence on ZUN, it remains an open question or one of those “infinite truths” to choose from.

What sets Akyuu and Wilson apart is what stereotypically sets Japan and West apart. Whereas Wilson is an individualist who presents an individual-centered program for self-empowerment through experimenting with perception of reality and “expanding of consciousness”. Akyuu is offering a socially shaped truth that facilitates survival in a hostile environment where humans have a deeply codependent relationship with supernatural entities. In fact, Kosuzu’s act of “consciousness expansion” through her exposure to youma books and fraternizing with youkai almost gets her killed.

There also are much more likely but more indirect sources for this idea that are closer to home. These include certain aspects of Buddhism. While Buddhism is very interested in absolute truth behind appearances, Buddhism also recognizes that this is a monumentally difficult task. The ability to perceive the true nature of things is seen to be something only awakened beings, buddhas, are capable of. The rest of us are stuck making our own interpretations of events, and Buddhism has a lot of parables about people confusing appearances for reality or debating over interpretations of events or things. Examples of these are a man confusing a rope for a snake, two monks debating whether the chime or the wind makes the sound of a windchime and Buddhist variants of the four blind men and an elephant story.

Another source of likely influence is a more broader East Asian type of attitude towards truth and interpretation that is perhaps best captured by the Chinese image and story of the Three Vinegar Tasters. Confucius, Buddha and Laozi taste vinegar from a pot. Confucius has a sour expression, reflecting how he believed that life is sour and needs rules and order lest it become even sourer. Buddha has a bitter expression, simply tasting the vinegar as it is, reflecting the Buddhist pursuit of understanding things as they are. Laozi has a sweet expression, as he just tasted vinegar in its perfect, effortless, most natural state. While the history of East Asia is full of people both believing in and wanting to enforce some kind of capital T-Truth, it’s obvious that ZUN is drawing from the aspects of these cultures which see reality as something up to interpretation.

Ultimately Akyuu’s idea can be seen as an expression of aspects of Japanese culture which value social harmony and making peace with the existing situation more than some kind of absolute truth as a value in itself. Divergent views and interpretations can be tolerated so far as they don’t rock the boat and stand out too much. Japanese culture also has a history of toying with different conflicting interpretations and perspectives, a prominent example of this being Akutagawa Ryonosuke’s story In A Grove, which was the basis for Akira Kurosawa’s film Rashomon. The topic of youkai itself is of course one where people have over time held many different, at times contradictory views, which seems to have led into a kind of “half belief, half doubt” attitude towards the topic. So even without influence from Wilson, Japanese culture has a mutable enough relationship with the idea of “truth” and precedent for playing with in fiction for ZUN to come up with an idea of “infinite truths”.

Whether the idea of infinite truths was influenced by ideas closer to home and its similarity to Western occult ideas is simply a strange convergence is at this moment an unanswerable question. It is also at this moment impossible to answer whether one could find some kind of a fundamental principle in Gensokyo that would serve as the basis for how the relations between humans and youkai should be organized. What can be however said is that it is a highly intriguing idea that has major implications for the worldbuilding of Touhou, and if taken seriously but not literally, for how things work in the Outside World. Certainly there are about as many interpretations of the shared reality as there are people, and very rarely the full implications of this gets sufficiently explored, be it in fiction or policy.

This analysis too has been one sort of an “infinite truth”, and different people would likely walk away with a different view of Forbidden Scrollery, as well as how good and relevant it is a work of fiction. Others might have highlighted more of the specific references, relationships between characters or how it fits into the mystery genre. The choice of focus here ultimately reflects my own interests.

When it comes to Forbidden Scrollery as an enjoyable work of fiction, I personally liked it a lot on the first read, and found it phenomenal on my second read after having become more familiar with Japanese culture and ideas related to youkai. I find it tackles some surprisingly weighty and relevant themes while remaining entertaining and rather lighthearted, thus avoiding becoming too pretentious or didactic. Others might find it a strange and meandering collection of references that ends with a slightly anticlimactic deus ex machina. I find Forbidden Scrollery, and Touhou Project generally speaking, to be something greatly improved by making oneself familiar with the kinds of things it references and builds on. Good fiction can expand one’s horizons, and I think Forbidden Scrollery has a lot of potential for that.

At the same time, Forbidden Scrollery does point at the darker sides of humanity’s fixation of stories. Not all stories contribute to the kind of little truths that facilitate human life worth living for, and perhaps there are directions to which horizons shouldn’t be expanded towards. Forbidden Scrollery does not preach about such things, Touhou never really does, or when someone preaches they turn out to be a hypocrite. However, it did present the idea of rumors and stories so dangerous they had to be stamped out by any means possible. While humans probably cannot actualize their own death or end of the world by simply believing hard enough in such things here in the Outside World, we are fully capable of embracing narratives that are self-destructive both on individual as well as collective level. I believe that recognizing and stamping out such things is becoming an increasingly urgent task as society becomes ever more shaped by information. Maybe we too lack an eternal fundamental principle to build on, but at the very least we could try not to destroy ourselves.

I hope you have enjoyed the analysis and that hopefully there were some viewpoints you had not considered before. I also hope that you would take the power of narratives and belief seriously but not literally here in the Outside World too.