Muzan Stole My Wallet — Let's Talk Kaburamaru (and other Iguro Obanai...

Everybody’s favorite friendly snake!

As well as everyone’s favorite not-so-friendly Snake Pillar. We’ll be diving into everything from his home town to his future(?) profession, so slither under the cut and get comfortable.

You may have heard that white snakes are considered lucky in Japanese culture, more specifically, they are good luck for attaining wealth.

Some of this comes from the white snake’s association with one of the Seven Lucky Gods, Benzaiten (we’ll only touch on Japanese mythology here, there are a lot of weeds to get into if we go into her origins, as well as other white snake legends from the Asian continent). Snakes (closely associated with dragons which are also tied with Benzaiten) were not only her messengers, but the goddess of fine arts might also take the form of a White Snake, which can shed and shed its skin but never be any poorer for it. Benzaiten is sometimes considered a water related deity, and like dragons, snakes are also associated with water-thereby making Snake Breathing a fitting offshoot of Water Breathing.

In more recent history though, only about the last four or five centuries, an albino mutation took place among a population of Japanese rat snakes in Yamaguchi, on the western end of the main island of Honshu. Instead of being isolated to an individual or two, it was passed on and flourished, leading to the Iwakuni Shirohebi, that is, the white snake of the Iwakuni region, a very positively received real life sign of a good fortune, and currently declared a National Treasure. These shimmery white-bodied, ruby-eyed, non-venomous snakes were found eating mice that terrorized rice storehouses, and since rice equals money, the association between white snakes and riches got even stronger. (Unsurprisingly, Shirohebi Shrine in Iwakuni City is a recent Kimetsu hotspot.)EDIT: I have now been to Iwakuni and seen the snakes in person, AND I LOVE THEM SO MUCH.

Kaburamaru pretty obviously looks the part of an Iwakuni Shirohebi. But Obanai is from the island of Hachijo, in very temperate waters a far distance from Tokyo (but technically governed as part of Tokyo). There are natural snakes there, but of brown, poisonous varieties. We know Kaburamaru slithered his own way into Iguro’s cell, but where did he come from?

Since Obanai’s opulent family cared about nothing but their riches, my theory is that they splurged in purchasing a real one of those popular good luck charms from far away, or even purchased a whole bunch of them. He’d have only been a throwaway luxury, though, it doesn’t seem anyone was possessive or worried enough about this expensive snake to take him from the dungeon.

While we’re at it, though, Hachijo Island does have some odd, as well as oddly recent (and hard to verify) mythology about a community of only women, or of a society where men’s and women’s roles are entirely reversed. However, in that case, it’s stressed that women are out working in the fields and building houses and such, not things that the Iguro clan would have interest in doing. Furthermore, some Japanese blogs I’ve perused suggest that it might have been difficult for the family to amass a fortune out there, as it wasn’t a place frequented by rich people to steal from when the Snake Demon Lady ate them. For a time, Hachijo was even where common criminals were sent (there were other islands more suitable for banishing emperors and such).

Speaking of this Snake Demon Lady, what the heck is she doing all the way out there? Most of the story takes place in and around Tokyo (if you go by basically the whole cast being from parts of Tokyo Prefecture), making me think that Muzan kept most of his demon creation activity always limited to that area, where he was looking for the blue spider lilies. One Japanese theory I found stated that because of the array of flora, including varieties of bright blue flowers found throughout the year in Hachijo’s temperate climate, perhaps Muzan was there looking for them. My guess would be that he created the Snake Demon Lady then. Obanai is said to be the first male born in his family in 370 years, so if Snake Demon Lady has been there all that time, it would make her one of the oldest known demons in the series (shy of Kokushibo, but way longer than Akaza and Douma and probably even Hantengu). That would have given her plenty of time to amass a fortune for her host family and slowly build her power, and she’s probably eaten more humans than many of the Upper Moons. Since she prefers baby flesh, though, perhaps that makes them only marginally nutritious. Still, I find it a stretch to think she might be that old; it’s possible the family of women was already callously focused on hoarding riches and that Muzan made a demon from a particularly cruel family member among them.

Let’s bring this back to Kaburamaru, though, as well as my biggest question: what is his natural life span? After all, learning that sparrows typically only live three years is what inspired me to write 53K+ word fanfic about Chuntaro. How much are you going to hurt me with your real world-inspired characters, Gotouge?

It seems Iwakuni Shirohebi may live up to 10 years in the wild, or 15 years in captivity. The oldest one I found records of lived to be 28, the equivalent of about 120 years old for a human.

We don’t know how old Kaburamaru was when Obanai made his escape, which we can guess was very soon after learning he’d be eaten, so still age 12. That would mean it’s been nine years since this scene. It may just be me reading into the art too deeply, but I hope Kaburamaru is purposefully a little on the tiny side here:

That would put Kaburamaru around age 9 or 10 by the time of Obanai’s final battle. Despite the stress of constant battle, I’m sure Obanai took good care of him, so we can assume he’s still got a good few years left to take care of Kanao, especially since having poor eyesight will be a completely new world for her. There’s also hope for Kaburamaru living well into her married years.

(My goodness, I love how Kaburamaru is friends with everyone.)

(And of course this has me thinking about the domestic TanKana oneshot I wrote in which Kaburamaru does last a very long time, and I feel relieved to know that timing is possible.)

Zooming way ahead into the future when Kaburamaru’s long time best friend is supposedly reincarnated and happily washed of his tainted bloodline and married to his sweetheart and frying big batches of food to support their family of seven, there’s no mention of a snake (or cats, I feel certain they have pet cats though), except for the good luck charm placed at their counter, an emblem of the shop.

This is subtle and not entirely unusual, many, many shrines sell little statues of animals associated with that shrine, or some sub-shrine on the premises. It’s very common to find little snake statues at auxiliary Benzaiten shrines tucked inside bigger Inari shrines and the like, but for a statue of this size, my guess is that they very faithfully purchased it at a place that might had been worth a pilgrimage (like Iwakuni’s Shirohebi Shrine? I can only guess, for I have not been there myself).

There are a couple of reasons why this is so interesting:

1. Reincarnated!?Obanai works all day frying food. He grew up in a dungeon with no ventilation and the smell of oil in all the rich food he was served made him ill. He maintains a very limited appetite throughout his life.

2. The snake statue is very clearly tied with wishes for prosperity. Obanai was sensitive to the sources of his family’s wealth, and the second fanbook goes on to say that he had very complicated feelings when he learned that his cousin (whom he had been concerned about the welfare of) had taken what was left of the Iguro family’s riches, and she was quite happy with a new family. While he didn’t feel she didn’t deserve happiness, he was shocked she could so be so entranced by riches as to be completely flippant about where they came from.

While you could dive all you want into how being reborn allowed him to be free of his past anxieties, you could also identify this as Mitsuri’s influence. The second fanbook says that although Obanai usually doesn’t have much appetite and doesn’t eat in front of other people, after watching Mitsuri cheerfully enjoy her food, it builds his appetite and he’s able to eat more than usual afterward. When it comes to riches, he’s got his wife and all his five children to support now-and with that being a pure goal, he probably doesn’t find anything evil in wishing for financial success. Furthermore, he’s working for it with his own labor, not taking it unrightfully.

As for Kaburamaru, whether he’s reincarnated as one of their cats or watches over them as a spirit that possesses the statue or had a weird run-in with Chachamaru and is now an immortal demon snake, you could interpret it anyway you want.