#in favor of buddhism or shintoism or whatever

[betawooper]

anyways shinbyeong, at least thats the title im going with unless i come up with something more cool

the setting is korea in the early 1930s (so during the japanese occupation of the peninsula), where theres a single mother and her 18 year old child who refuses to get married are trying their best to get by

but then a fateful encounter with a mysterious shaman occurs causing both the mother and the child to be possessed/linked to a nature spirit, now they have to find that mysterious shaman and break their connections to the spirit with the help of other shamans in similar predicaments, all while avoiding being captured by the government, as you do

[demonslayedher]

The Afterlife According to Kimetsu no Yaiba

A light analysis of various glimpses of the afterlife throughout the entirety of the manga, comprised of the following sub-sections:

--Folksy Cultural Background --The Good Place/Bad Place Dichotomy --Tamayo? --So what about that one Fanbook 2 comic? The one that takes place in hell?? --What are the rules of who goes where?

Folksy Cultural Background

There’s no one single Japanese concept of the afterlife, and even different sects of the same overarching religions will have different interpretations of it. While most common folks throughout most of the eras spanning Kibutsuji Muzan’s lifespan would not likely had been theological experts, they’d have been familiar with general ideas about the afterlife. These ideas are reflected in KnY, but as KnY avoids diving into many existing religious specifics in favor of general themes, I’ll be staying more general with this as well.

As very light background, nowadays it’s pretty easy to picture a clear distinction between Shinto (Japan’s homegrown animistic religion) and Buddhism (brought in from the Asian continent and popularized by the nobles before trickling down to folk level faith). One has “kami” (gods) in shrines the other has Buddha and Bodhisattva in temples, right? That’s generally the case, thanks to the Meiji era reforms that forcibly separated the two traditions. For centuries before that, though, multiple religious movements had thought of theological reasoning to combine Buddhism and Shintoism, and ultimately common folk tended to blend the two practices, or they’d adhere to both for different occasions. Since Meiji meddling only had so much effect on the countryside, it makes sense that Taisho bumpkins might mix the two.

Kimetsu no Yaiba has that sort of folksy, combined, unconcerned with theology in favor of faith approach to religion. I think this was partly a move to simplify the worldbuilding and keep it focused on the KnY rules of demons, which draws inspiration from but doesn't directly reflect existing oni folklore. Likewise, while the KnY afterlife looks familiar against a Japanese religious background, the ambiguity of its rules keeps it flexible enough to serve the story.

While the various existing Japanese Buddhist sects have their own vastly different teachings on how to attain any given result after death, some of the major ideas that might feel familiar to people who grew up with different religious influences is a Good Place as well as a Bad Place (totally borrowing handy sitcom terminology here), and the Bad Place has multiple levels, so that each sinner meets a punishment fitting their sins. Kimetsu no Yaiba, especially in its later chapters, implies a strict dichotomy between which place the dead are allowed to go to, though they may take their time in reaching it. Shintoism presents us with the idea that all the dead, regardless of morality or goodness, go to the same dark, dirty underworld called Yomi, and Oyakata-sama says in Chapter 66 that he’ll join Kyojuro and the others there in Yomi soon.

In wider Japanese culture as well as in the Kimetsu universe, there is also the general concept of reincarnation, boiled down from its Indian origins. While “past life” and “reborn” are terms thrown around somewhat loosely nowadays, there is also the idea of “passing on” in a Buddhist sense of no longer having attachments. Tanjiro makes references to both major religious traditions at the Final Selection; after his first kills in Chapter 6 he prays for them to “pass on” (“Joubutsu,” more literally, “attain Buddhahood”), and after killing the Hand Demon in Chapter 8, he prays to “Kami-sama” (God/gods) that the Hand Demon doesn’t become a demon again in his next life/lives. This implies that Tanjiro believes demons, who are still the same as humans at heart, will undergo the same trials and path to reincarnation that a human will.

There is also a general concept of ghosts as people who for whatever reason are still hanging out and haven’t passed on. KnY makes a lot of use of this with the Kamado family sticking around to watch over Tanjiro and Nezuko, though their actual attachment to the world probably varies at any given time, especially since Tanjuro only shows up in the extra pages of Chapter 204's extended Volume 23 version. (Chapter 57 narration clarified that Tanjuro showing up in Tanjiro's Enmu-induced dream was Tanjiro's subconscious taking that form.) EDIT: I forgot the obvious ghost examples, Sabito and Makoto. Whoops. It’s also worth addressing the Sanzu River. Basically, you cross it to get to the afterlife, whether taking a bridge or paying a fare to ride a boat. Zenitsu is unable to cross it and reunite with Jiichan on the other side (Chapter 146), but in a gag(?) in Chapter 104, Tanjiro deliriously nearly wanders right across it and falls into the Sanzu River, implying he needed to be on the brink of death to get the flash of inspiration for how to fight the Yoriichi battle doll. (Hmm, funny, being on the brink of death seems to be a prerequisite for attaining a Red Blade too.)

The Good Place/Bad Place Dichotomy

If you’ve died in the KnY universe and have finished whatever you might had been sticking around to do or watch over, you seem to have two options, and the almost-separation of the Shabana siblings in Chapter 97 and the cover of Chapter 204 implies there are two exits that go in two opposite directions. The dark way takes you to the Bad Place where it seems you’ll suffer in traditional hellish ways, and the Good Place, as the anime version of Chapter 97 so starkly demonstrated, is off in the light.

Your deeds in life determine which way you go, though how this is weighed seems very arbitrary. For example, in Chapter 200, Genya wasn’t always a nice person, but he was righteous enough to go straight to the Good Place, while his mother Shizu, who was very bad for only a matter of hours at most, cannot follow him there and is doomed to go to the Bad Place. Bad People who were not demons, like Genya’s father Kyougo, also seem unable to go to the Good Place.

Things get interesting in that people with a Good Place ticket can freely choose to go to the Bad Place, if that is where their desired company must dwell (Sanemi accompanying his mother, Rui’s parents waiting to accompany him, etc.). If you’re as patient as Koyuki, you can even wait around over a hundred years.

It may also be possible for spirits in the Good Place to leave it and come back as necessary, as may be the case in Kanae and Shinobu’s long awaited reunion with their parents (Chapter 163) and Muichiro’s with Yuichiro (179), only for them to supposedly(?) be there when Tanjiro needs the extra moral support (Chapter 203). Looking back at Chapter 163, what’s unclear (and perhaps delicious fanfic material) is if Kotoha’s spirit stuck around to watch over Inosuke, or if she wasn’t able to be free of Douma until Douma was defeated.

While the people with Good Place tickets seem free to stick around or take off whenever they like, demons do not seem to have this option; they don’t get to dilly-dally on their way to the Bad Place. If it were the case that they could stick around as ghosts, none of the Corp members would ever have any peace with all the demons they slayed sticking around to curse them. That’s something to be grateful for in canon, otherwise poor Zenitsu would never get a happy ending with Kaigaku haunting him, but the concept of demons sticking around as ghosts is ripe with delicious fanfic potential.

Ume gives us an interesting conundrum, since she was free to take the Good Place exit despite her brazen murders and dining upon humans. If we read into it, I think this can be explained by Gyutaro being the one who decided for both of them to become demons (if there was indeed freedom in that decision), so he accepted all responsibility for all her sins in that action, like how he accepted all responsibility for her having turned out the way she did in life; a girl who would do something so ruthless as to gouge out someone’s eye. It might had been the cosmic justice of the universe granting him mercy by allowing him to take her sins upon himself. Depending on however it is that sins in this world are attributed and weighed, though, the Shabana siblings were essentially two bodies as one demon flesh, so Gyutaro can more technically take all the credit for her wrongdoings as a demon.

Tamayo?

Particularly in light of how she’s in the background heading in a different direction than everyone else in the cover of Chapter 204, I think she went to the Bad Place, like she knew she would. I’ve heard the phrase “our souls crave purgatory,” meaning that our shame makes us desire to be cleansed of our wrongdoing, and this could easily ring true for Tamayo. I’d like to think that if some Kimetsu form of karma is involved, she’s already been working toward that in all her years of trying to defeat Muzan. Going back to that idea of Kotoha possibly not being able to be separated from Douma, though, it’s interesting that there’s a sketch between Chapter 199 and 200 of Tamayo passing on, only once Big Baby Muzan’s flesh (which her cells had been absorbed back into) is finally burning. Knowing Tamayo, though, she probably chose not to pass on until she could see Muzan’s defeat.

So what’s next for her? In a world where Tanjiro believes that even the Hand Demon might have the opportunity to reincarnate, perhaps after some unknown length of time, Tamayo will earn the right to reincarnate too. Yushiro the Painter seems to be hanging around and banking on that possibility, and some Japanese fan theories even say that he chose the name “Yamamoto” because you can scramble the English letters and have the letters you need to write “Tamayo,” so it was a clue for her to find him. Maaaybe a touch of a stretch, but ok.

(Anyway, I like to headcanon that Tamayo and Shizu become afterlife friends.)

So what about that one Fanbook 2 comic? The one that takes place in hell??

I get asked about this comic a lot, and… well…

I think it was just meant to be a gag. While we could read into literal different levels of hell (Muzan was specially invited back from the very deepest one), I don’t read this as the demons being separated into different hells based on what Breath killed them (or at least injured them), just more convenient interview groups. Based on the silly character designs and commentary, that makes me take this whole comic even less seriously. Besides, they forgot Thunder and Beast Breath and seemed to be commenting more on the characters than on the Breath techniques themselves. And, ultimately, this is Gotou’s dream! That means we’re free to completely disregard the content of this comic as having any baring on canon. Sure, there are characters included whom Gotou would not had met, but ultimately we the readers are the ones left snickering about how the demons saw the people who cut (but not necessarily killed) them.

What are the rules of who goes where?

I only have more questions. Do demons just automatically get judged harsher for everything they do? Is hell only for people who have killed humans? Do poor little girls get a pass on gouging eyes out if whoever did it was a rich dude who talked bad about her brother? Did perhaps Shinazugawa Kyougo stick around or dip out of the Good Place he was entitled to purely by being a human, just so he could go be possessive over his wife Shizu, as the Bad Place is exclusively for demons? Can we bank on satisfaction of Muzan being at the deepest level of the Bad Place? If only human characters were implied to have been reincarnated in that fever dream of a final chapter, how long will Yushiro have to wait to see even a very hard-working, good-hearted demon like Tamayo make her return? Did Oyakata-sama meet up with Kyojuro as promised, look around, and say, “oh, this is brighter than I expected?”

Again, the ambiguity serves the story, but that it seems every soul must ultimately be weighed against God-touge’s judgement.