Google doc versionI think that the latest official artbook - Whispered Oracle of Hakurei Shrine - represents the end of an era. It is an epilogue to the story that began in WBaWC, it catalogues (almost) every Touhou character from the Windows era, and it is a kind of culmination or summing up of Reimu's character development since the beginning of the series.
I would even posit that we as a community, for real this time, say that the third (or fourth depending on who you ask) Windows era has come to an end with it, just as PMiSS marked the end of the first era and SoPM marked the end of the second. Of course the Touhou 'eras' are largely arbitrary, but for those like me who enjoy classifying things I would argue that this is the end of one, and Fossilized Wonders is the beginning of a new era. Fight me in the comments.
As someone who just wrote an
analysis of UDoALG I found WOoHS very interesting and worthy of some discussion, so these are my unadulterated and scattered thoughts on this curious little book with a focus on Reimu's characterisation.
[Most subsequent translations are mine]
The StoryZanmu comes up and says to Reimu that because of Chimata's influence causing the ownership of the land to change hands (Touhou 19's plot) many youkai - in particular youkai that don't have much contact with humans - are at risk of disappearing or having their identity/nature changed. Zanmu's vague explanation for why this might happen is because youkai are "solely connected to the world by spirit [mind]." This of course is in reference to how the existence and identity of youkai is supported solely by human beliefs and fears.
This is a classic ZUN '
vague fantasy mechanics which are implied to have some kind of logic within his own head' situation, but considering that Touhou 19 also delves into similar themes I thought I'd try to make sense of what ZUN is actually trying to say here.
In his
UDoALG interview ZUN said:
"Various lands originally belonged to someone, and it was Chimata's ability that altered them to something else. The crucial point is that everyone in this world believes, regardless of actual presence or residence, that surely it belonged to someone. Even in today's world, people don't consider something just lying around as their belonging, right? In Gensokyo, the concept was that nature itself belonged to someone, but that sense has been lost or liberated. Hence, it led to a struggle for ownership...
It had become so old that people hadn't even thought about the spirits who were the original owners, and perhaps there weren't any owners' spirits from the beginning, but they had believed so. Chimata completely severed that sense."
TLDR, at least some of the land in Gensokyo likely never even had an owner, but people subconsciously held the idea that every patch of land or forest or river or hillock did in fact have an owner; someone with dominion. Chimata, by generally exerting her ability of, "Letting one relinquish ownership", eliminated this vague preconceived notion from people's minds.
If you take this idea further, it has some interesting ramifications which I think helps explain why youkai - in particular youkai who don't interact with humans much - are at risk of disappearing/having their identity changed. After all, a regular superstitious human from the village might look at the forest of magic and think, 'That's the dominion of beast youkai', or look at a river and think, 'That's the dominion of Kappa', or at a hill of poison flowers and think, 'A poison spirit/youkai must hold dominion there'. Having lost this sense, any youkai whose identity relies on human beings associating them with a place or perhaps even a concept (a human might for instance vaguely think that a youkai has dominion over envy as a concept ala Parsee) are at risk of disappearing. This is especially so if the humans in Gensokyo don't normally interact with or even know much about a given youkai on a personal level, like Chiyari or Rumia.
At the end of the book, it is explained that Reimu created character themed Fortune Slips of all the youkai she has met in order to spread more widely throughout Gensokyo an understanding of their personalities. It also says:
"By getting the humans, starting with Marisa, to write [the drafts for the fortunes], it would lead to fixing the memory [of the youkai of Gensokyo] in their minds."
Basically, since some vague superstitions and associations have vanished due to Chimata, Reimu made the Fortunes so that the youkai of Gensokyo wouldn't need those things to continue existing as they are. Instead, the people of Gensokyo will have new associations, understandings and memories of these youkai so that they don't silently disappear, a future Reimu thinks is "empty" (虚しい). Pretty cute if you ask me.
This also explains the Japanese name of the artbook,
幻存神籤, which you can roughly translate as either 'Fortune Slips of Illusory Knowledge' or 'Fortune Slips of Illusory Existence', depending on how you translate 存. In other words, the title is saying that Reimu's Fortune Slips are things made with the explicit purpose of making others more aware of fantastical existences; of youkai and gods and flying girls.
One rather crazy theory one can derive from all this is the idea that the spell card system itself was designed with something like this in mind. I mean think about it. Spell cards themselves are representations of the user's personality and background and help shape the impression they leave on others. Spell cards are as such another means by which a youkai leaves their mark on the memory of others; a means to ward against their disappearing and loss of identity. Just a thought.
How to Read the FortunesIn this next section I want to generally explore what the Fortunes can actually tell us about the characters they are themed after, how reliable they are as sources of information and characterisation, and tips for reading the Fortune Slips for yourself.
To start, I want to clarify that yes, they are indeed character
themed fortunes and not fortunes for the characters themselves. This instantly complicates efforts to extrapolate from them meaningful information about each character. In addition, the story makes it clear that the drafts for many of the Fortunes were written by Marisa, Sanae, Youmu, and Sakuya, with which Reimu edited into a final copy. Reimu also apparently made each Fortune Slip through divination, as said in her ZUN comment:
"Reimu made these Fortune Slips while receiving divine messages, but it also seems that her personal perspective and wishes are reflected in them."
This passage also makes it clear that Reimu's way of thinking and personality are reflected throughout the Fortune Slips. This is very interesting, and it is worth reading each Fortune Slip with this in mind, but it also further complicates any attempts to get new information about other characters from them.
The quotes at the start of each Fortune Slip are also very mysterious. At first I thought, 'there's no way that Reimu and co. came up with these on their own', but Letty's quote seems to indicate differently:
"People who of their own liking choose the cold seasons, have warm hearts. [Person's own words]"
This quote, uniquely, specifically points out that it is something she said, which working backwards implies that the quotes on the other Fortune Slips were not said by the character in question. There are, however, three major issues with immediately assuming that it was Reimu and co. who came up with the rest of the character quotes.
First, speaking as someone who has read a lot of Japanese, when Letty's quote says that she herself said it (本人談 is the term used) it could easily be interpreted that Reimu went out of her way to make it clear Letty said it because of how ridiculous it is for Letty to praise herself in the way she does, especially as seen from a Japanese cultural perspective (which sees modesty as a virtue) and the fact that Letty is a youkai - a dangerous creature.
Second, as it is made clear Reimu received divine oracles when making the Fortune Slips, you can't rule out that some of the quotes are literally divinely inspired. This is actually a more amusing and interesting angle than it at first appears, since meta-textually ZUN is the god who grants Reimu these inspirations. The
obi/belly-band which comes with the book says that the text is written by "ZUN as Reimu Hakurei", which is an interesting way to put it. It's almost as if it's saying that ZUN is speaking
through Reimu, which can be said to be identical with the idea that Reimu channeled divine messages when she wrote the Fortunes.
An example from the book itself which supports this perspective is Yuuka's page. Her quote says:
"The lovely form and scent are there to gather insects. So what about humans?"
ZUN's comment then expands upon this quote, saying:
"Flowers and insects show a brilliant case of coevolution. There shouldn't be a need for flowers to appear beautiful to humans, but in reality this is wrong. From the perspective of a flower youkai, it's because humans are an existence like insects, I guess?"
You could almost read this as ZUN inspiring Reimu in a meta way to make Yuuka's quote reflect his own musings. Of course, I'm not seriously saying that Reimu is literally within the story receiving oracles from ZUN, however I wanted to point out both that it is a valid interpretation and to indirectly argue for the case that at least some of the quotes are divinely inspired.
Last, I find it extremely difficult to believe that Reimu and co. have the requisite knowledge, and the imaginative and empathetic capacity to write some of the Fortune quotes. Maybe the quote which illustrates this point best is Sumireko's:
"School is just a shameless theater of morality. What can teaching the ability to act amount to?"
There is just no way in my mind that anyone other than Sumireko (or a 'divine message') could have said this. There are other Fortune's, like Medicine's, which make me think this way as well.
Though having said all this, it seems pretty clear that many of the quotes, maybe even the majority, were by and large written by Reimu and the rest. A good example of quotes that seem written by them are the one's which use niche scientific terminology (like Raiko's referencing Planck, or Keiki's referencing telomere) which must be written by either Sanae or Marisa, and one's where it seems their personalities are strongly reflected. For instance Mayumi's says, ridiculously enough, that her feelings of loyalty are 'second in the whole world', which sounds like Youmu wrote hers (since Youmu is the only 'loyal' human who presumably knows Mayumi).
So, when reading the Fortune Slips for yourself remember these following points and it will help you interpret them:
- The main fortune - like 'Great Fortune/Blessing' or 'Misfortune' - is almost certainly derived from Reimu's divination and is the fortune which best represents the character. Take Aya and Megumu's fortunes for instance, where their bad fortunes are crossed out and replaced with better ones, representing the Tengu newspaper writer tendency to lie and distort the truth. So, when it says that Orin's fortune is 'Very Great Misfortune' it's not that Orin herself has miserable luck, but as a black cat kasha she is a strong symbol of bad luck for whoever draws her Fortune Slip.
- The quote at the start of the Fortunes could be by the characters themselves, by Reimu and co., or derived from divine messages. Look at them all on a case-by-case basis.
- The more specific details of the Fortune slip, like the fortunes for one's studies or business or romance, are by and large written by the humans and edited/approved by Reimu, supplemented by Reimu's divination (see Koishi's fortune where this is most obvious). Thus, it's probably best to see these Fortune's as reflecting how these characters are perceived by Reimu and the rest. This is shown clearly when Kanako questions whether Sanae wrote her Fortune as it says in the part about her 'people' fortune, "You will be thought to be engaging in power harassment if you interfere with others too much".
- You can assume that the person who wrote the draft for any given character is the person who knows that character the best out of the humans. For instance, Momiji's draft was probably written by Sanae, as Reimu and the rest have no real point of contact with her. It is also probably safe to assume that the humans (Marisa, Sakuya, Youmu and Sanae) did not write their own Fortune Slips (except for perhaps their quotes), and so those at least were written mostly by Reimu (this also includes Reimu's own Fortune). So when Sakuya's Fortune Slip says, "If you walk around with an unsheathed knife, you will quickly be arrested", that is Reimu's desire for Sakuya to stop walking around with her knives unsheathed being reflected in the Fortune.
- ZUN (and Reimu) intends for these Fortune Slips to be used as actual Fortune Slips. So if you don't mind a bit of fortune telling, try randomly selecting a Fortune Slip yourself with some randomised method like the ones ZUN recommends at the start of the book. And if you would like to know, I just did this myself and got Sanae. Miracle☆
So don't take what the Fortunes themselves say too seriously, both as Fortune's for yourself and as ways of learning more about the characters they are about. They exist to remind Gensokyo's residents, us, and ZUN himself (as he says in his afterword) about these characters, their personalities and original inspirations, seen through this strange lens of Fortune Slips at multiple degrees of separation from said characters.
You can take ZUN's comments pretty seriously though, that's what they're there for.
Reimu's CharacterisationIn a lot of ways, WOoHS is the culmination of various strands of Reimu's characterisation that have been developing for a long time now, arguably since the days of PCB.
Reimu in those early days had aspects of her that were callous and cruel (treatment of Tokiko and Kogasa), cold and distant (IN character profile), inhuman (Keine's interview from BAiJR and her fight with Yorihime in SSiB), and mysterious and esoteric (never seeing anything from her perspective, having no defined past, characters like Suika in IaMP unsure of what she's truly thinking, the mysterious vibe her early themes like Maiden's Capriccio and Dichromatic Lotus Butterfly give off, etc.).
But by now she's a thoroughly explored and developed character, brought down to earth by manga like WaHH that show her flawed humanity and by Lotus Eaters and recent games which show a more compassionate Reimu. And we've finally gotten an entire book that is filled with her perspective - even if that perspective is sometimes difficult to ascertain in the Fortune Slip format.
Marisa's FortuneTo begin, I wanted to discuss various parts from
Marisa's Fortune Slip, which as I argued earlier I believe to be written by Reimu. Honestly, what I'm about to analyse is so sweet and adorable my dormant ReiMari side might just come out. Forgive me.
Marisa's Fortune Slip begins with her fortune, which is "Least Fortune" (or 'Least Luck'), also translated as "Future Blessing" (or 'Good Luck to Come'). For those wondering these are both valid translations and interpretations of the fortune 末吉, but the Japanese themselves tend to interpret it as "Future Blessing" in a 'glass half full' kind of way. This fortune is interesting because it has actually been mentioned before all the way back in Reimu's PCB manual character profile:
"She hates to do her very best at anything that falls upon her.
That's because she doesn't believe that effort will be rewarded.
Because of that, the Hakurei Shrine's Fortune Slips don't have "Least Fortune" (末吉)".
I argued in a
Reddit post that what this is actually implying is not that Reimu believes effort can't accomplish anything, but that luck, whether good or bad, will
always affect the outcome of one's efforts. Hard work on its own will not be rewarded, you must also be lucky for such effort to bear fruit. Indeed the Reimu from this time completely rejected the idea of 'Least Luck'; the idea that one's efforts alone matter and luck need not play a significant part in one's success.
Needless to say, my argument is a very generous interpretation of that passage, and some people reading this might not agree with it. However, what is clear from WOoHS is that this characterisation of Reimu is no longer valid. Several characters, including Marisa, receive a "Least Fortune" fortune.
What is important to note here is that Reimu's PCB manual profile was written partially to contrast with Marisa's PCB manual profile, which went out of its way to call her a "hard worker". Reimu was thus portrayed as ideologically opposed to Marisa on the value of hard work. And they are still opposites in the sense that Reimu is "Extreme Good Fortune" and Marisa is "Least Fortune", and in the sense that Reimu optimistically relies on intuition/luck to get by while Marisa's fortune quote cynically says:
"Even if the chance is small, a bad thing will certainly occur.
Relying on luck is the same as one's ruin."
However, Reimu's thoughts about hard work - and consequently about Marisa - have completely changed, as is most evident by Marisa's Fortune saying:
"Education: If you continue to work hard,
you will be rewarded in any subject."
Incidentally the Japanese terminology used here, 'will be rewarded' (報われる), is identical to the terminology used in Reimu's PCB profile. Must I remind you, Reimu wrote Marisa's Fortune slip. Reimu here is
acknowledging Marisa's efforts; acknowledging the power of hard work!
Reimu has grown up. I don't even know how else to put it.
And that would be huge on its own, but this Fortune Slip has even more juice to give. Marisa's character title on the Fortune is a curious variation of her usual titles:
"Magician for whom Normal is Best"
Reimu, wrote, this. Reimu's desire that Marisa stay the Marisa she knows and loves is practically oozing out of this character title. Don't believe me? Then what about this:
"Fortune: Boring but peaceful days will continue.
Eventually you will realise that is happiness."
Just... just step back a bit and appreciate this passage, please.
For Reimu, Marisa is the symbol of her boring but peaceful everyday life. Marisa is for her, the symbol of happiness.
WHY IS THIS SO CUTE!? M-My heart... it's too much.
Reimu's Secret to SuccessMoving away from ReiMari before it kills me, another point of Reimu's characterisation that I want to address is something WaHH explored a long time ago, but is made clearer in WOoHS.
Reimu almost certainly makes a lot of money from the festival she holds at her shrine where she hands out the Fortune Slips (it says the festival was a great success). This is in stark contrast to WaHH where Reimu's money schemes almost never go well. This is because, as is pointed out by Kasen in
WaHH Chapter 18, Reimu fails every time she gets cocky. I would add to this that Reimu tends to fail in her schemes when she's too greedy/acts from impure motives. SSiB makes a similar point in
Chapter 15 where Reimu points out that - from the perspective of the Lunarians - they (Reimu, Remilia and the rest) are the "bad guys", and so her intuition tells her they will lose against Yorihime.
Reimu is at her strongest, and things go her way the best, when she is acting according to her duty as the Hakurei Shrine maiden, without getting overconfident/cocky, and with pure motives. This is probably because Reimu, when acting in this way, is able to believe that the universe itself is her ally and 'surrender herself to the flow', and so is able to act without hesitation. This is shown briefly at the very end of WaHH when Reimu realises that her course of action is helping the Kasen she has known as a friend up until that point by beating up the oni Kasen who stands in front of her.
By acting with pure motives, and without any hesitation in her heart, she goes from losing to so completely mopping the floor with oni Kasen that the manga doesn't even bother showing the fight because it's so obvious she's going to win.
This is all to say that Reimu, acting out of the pure motive of wanting to help maintain the existence and identity of the youkai she's met in her life (even those she barely knows), ends up making a lot of money as a side effect even though she's usually so bad at business ventures.
And there's also her intuition which goes hand in hand with this notion, which says that whenever she acts according to her gut instinct/'with the flow' she tends to be successful. You can see this side of her character as something of an extension of her position as a shrine maiden.
Her intuition from this perspective is synonymous with a kind of divine revelation ('hearing the voice of god'), like a more passive version of when she divines for the Fortune Slips in WOoHS. By following these 'divine messages' she is essentially obeying the 'will' of the Touhou universe, which you could see as nature itself, the Tao, the Eight Million gods, or even ZUN himself if you want to get meta. When obeying her intuition she is in a sense acting as a conduit for these things, the very role of a shrine maiden who mediates between the mundane and the extraordinary.
Having said all this though, there is another approach to the topic of Reimu's intuition which needs to be carefully addressed.
The Mechanism of FortuneWOoHS opens with a mysterious passage:
"Fortune is as twisted rope.
The threads of good fortune are the domain of the quantum world.
Misfortune is not an object for grief,
nor good fortune for celebration."
The main point of interest here is the connection of fortune with quantum mechanics. ZUN has actually done this before all the way back in 2007, in the final chapter (Ch. 27) of the original run of CoLA titled, "
Mechanism of Fortune". This CoLA chapter is required reading for anyone who wants to understand the Touhou concept of Fortune and for anyone who wants to better follow the rest of this analysis. I even recently overhauled the translation of the chapter on the wiki as many lines had been inaccurately translated and were difficult to parse. If you want a tldr explanation of the chapter's metaphysics, see a Reddit comment I made
here.
What is immediately important for our purposes though, is the chapter's explanation of Reimu's intuition and great luck. In the chapter Marisa has this interaction with Reimu:
"M: "There's no way the future is predetermined. Some people's lives are supported just by luck, y'know." Marisa said, looking at Reimu.
R: "Well, rather than 'just by luck' it's 'intuition', and that intuition is an intuition with a proper foundation."
Marisa's expression said that she didn't believe her.
M: "Whenever we play Chinchirorin at parties, ya always call the face of the die to the point where there's no longer any competition. How can ya say there's a foundation for that?"" [Chinchirorin is a simple gambling game about rolling three dice aiming to get certain combinations]
Reimu interestingly conflates her intuition with her luck as if they were the same thing. Reimu produces a lengthy explanation of the metaphysics of the Touhou world - which says that everything in the world has a kind of memory which only adds and adds and is never lost, and so with the addition of ever new memories the world never loops and is not predetermined - in order to reject the notion that the world is predetermined and her intuition is just calculating probabilities, after which Marisa asks:
"M: "So how are ya able to predict how the dice will fall?"
...
R: "I'm not "predicting" the fall of the dice at all. The dice remembers the fact that 'I predicted how the dice would fall'."
According to this, by the lucky card called Reimu entering the memory of the die-face the result greatly skews in Reimu's favor. Apparently, 'the results side with Reimu'."
WhAt? Like... what? The dice, having heard Reimu's prediction, upon being thrown remembers that prediction, and so decides to try and
align the outcome with that prediction.
But wait Reimu, that doesn't explain your intuition or your luck at all! Why do you call this intuition? In the first place why are you a "lucky card"?
Reimu added to this, "In this world, both objects and souls are made up of probability, and are determined by the fortune which memories hold."
Rinnosuke astutely connects the phrase "objects and souls are made up of probability" to quantum mechanics. He also, brilliantly, connects the idea of "the fortune which memories hold" to the concept of karma:
"Memory determines probability... in other words, you could say it's karma."
This is basically all we get. From this it seems to me that Reimu's luck comes from the universe's memory of her past good deeds - her 'karmic history' - which act so that 'the results side with her'. You could also interpret karma here in its more direct sense, which says that the results favor her because her intentions are pure, which aligns with my argument from the previous section.
But you don't even need to invoke karma at all here, since Reimu as a character is noted to attract others to her and is generally liked by all. This power of attraction could extend to everything in the universe, and so to the memories which reside in all things to the point that even the outcome of events side with her. To me though, these explanations are insufficient - they don't explain why Reimu conflates her luck with her intuition. Indeed, how could you say that it's intuition to predict that a die will land on 1, and because of your karma the die obliges and lands on 1? CoLA provides no answers.
But WOoHS does.
Reimu's FortuneReimu's translated Fortune Slip on the Touhou wiki can be found
here, and I encourage you to read it for yourself. Her fortune is "Extreme Good Fortune", the best in the whole book (or at least equal with Miko's). Her quote suggestively says:
"Having drawn me,
I see you've noticed the
Mechanism behind Good Fortune."
And her specific fortune explanation says:
"The strongest fortune, which comes to you from Luck itself.
Whatever you do, it will go well"
Intriguing. What is this mechanism behind good fortune Reimu speaks of in her quote? ZUN's comment on the same page reveals the answer:
"Her saying, "It will go well", is like a prophecy, for by telling herself that, things (no matter what occurs) will have in fact gone well for her."
This is very enlightening. Reimu is self-aware of the secret to her own absurd luck - the secret to good fortune. This requires an in-depth breakdown.
The secret to good fortune is, as ZUN says, to tell yourself that things will go well. To me, what this is actually saying is that you need to believe that things will go well, since Reimu is explicitly telling herself (that is trying to convince herself) that things will go well. In fact, her belief and need to do this is so strong that it's "like a prophecy".
It's a prophecy because if you believe things will go well, even if something terrible happens you will be able to believe that things will turn out well in the end, and so see that terrible event as merely a stepping stone to good fortune. No matter what happens, things "will in fact have gone well" - a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is basically gaming the system (mechanism) of Fortune (life) through faith alone - appropriate for a Shrine Maiden. It's important to hammer home the point that, contrary to CoLA Ch. 27, Reimu isn't saying that things will go well to the world but to
herself; she isn't primarily acting on the probabilities of the world, but the probabilities of her own being.
It is interesting that Reimu tells herself everything will turn out well in order to game the "mechanism behind good fortune". This reminds me of how Reimu tells herself before her final fight with Sumireko in ULiL and during the fight with Shion in AoCF that SHE'S the Hakurei Shrine Maiden and can solve any incident and overcome any misfortune (as represented by Shion, who in WOoHS is juxtaposed against Reimu as having "Extreme Misfortune").
Reimu is fully aware she needs to have the confidence things will turn out well in the end. This is why historically Reimu is such a fearless-seeming character; it's part of her philosophy that she is unbeatable as long as she believes this and sees it as her identity. As long as she believes that the world is made in an adorable way, everything will turn out alright in the end.
This also helps explain why she was so useless for so long in FDS; she let Mizuchi and the fear of the unknown and her friends going down one after the other get to her own confidence that things will be alright. She even expresses
rage at her past self for losing her composure - her faith that things will turn out well in the end - and later tries to
psyche herself up to take down Mizuchi. From ZUN's comment and Reimu's Fortune quote, it would appear Reimu
knows that without the confidence she can do it - that things will go well in the end - she might literally be incapable of beating someone like Mizuchi.
This also explains her mindset when fighting and dodging danmaku. In CoLA chapter 3 Rinnosuke comments on Reimu's fighting style, where he thinks:
"Reimu...looks just like she was made of air; it's like trying to pound a nail into dust. I can't help but feel that what Reimu sees is like a different world to ours. To that extent she is difficult to grasp."
Reimu in the same chapter mockingly says of Marisa's danmaku:
"Your bullets swerve to avoid me on their own. How nice of them!"
I can't help but feel that Reimu's actually being half serious. Of course, her ability is the ability to 'float' - to sail past all obstacles - but a different way of putting this is that for Reimu the world itself almost seems like it's bending to suit her (like it says in CoLA Ch. 27). When dodging danmaku, she so believes in her own ability and in the more general notion that things will go well for her, that to her sometimes it's as if the danmaku are literally avoiding her of their own volition.
I have to add the caveat here that my saying she needs confidence in her ability does not mean she needs to be cocky (something which causes her to fail). By self-confidence I merely mean that Reimu believes that, in the end, her actions will lead to a good outcome, not necessarily that she believes she needs to or is capable of winning any specific fight. If she needs to win she'll win, if she doesn't need to win she may not win. It's ultimately a rather laidback attitude that doesn't fuss too much over individual victories and losses. If she keeps believing and moving forward in this way, things will work themselves out in the end; the world will grant her good fortune.
Reimu also attracts ‘luck to come to her of itself’ - reminiscent of how she attracts people and youkai. There are numerous examples of this throughout the series.
Fish form bridges under her when she inadvertently walks into a river; Marisa
gives her medicine just before she dies from food poisoning; Zanmu beating her is the same as victory at the end of UDoALG.
The answer as to what her intuition and luck are, is that it's a two-way street. By believing in her own good fortune and acting with pure motives and confidence according to her intuition (which is like the guidance of the universe/Tao), the Touhou world itself responds by granting her the best fortune possible. In CoLA Chapter 27 terms, Reimu gets a vague feeling that the die will turn up as a 1, and having full faith in that feeling predicts that the die will turn up as a 1. The die - storing the memory of somebody who is so connected to the universe/the Tao through faith and (in that moment) good karmic intentionality - responds to her by influencing the probabilities of the throw through the quantum realm to favour her intuition.
Reimu's intuition both acts on the universe and is acted upon by the universe. Reimu's faith acts upon the universe and is in turn reinforced by the universe responding. She floats down the stream of cause and effect - of probability - and simultaneously influences the direction of that flow.
I never believed that her ability to fly was something she has by virtue of being the Hakurei Shrine Maiden, and all of this confirms it for me. Her flying is the result of her personality and her philosophy; The World is Made in an Adorable Way.
Closing RemarksWell, that was way longer than I originally intended. Thanks for staying with my scattered ramblings to the end. If you have any questions or objections or things you want to discuss, please comment and I will do my best to respond. I do not pretend that everything I said in this analysis is definite, a lot of it doesn't escape the realm of evidence-based conjecture.
Before I leave off though, I just wanted to bring up some miscellaneous observations I had from reading through WOoHS which didn't fit neatly anywhere else.
First, in the opening manga of the book Reimu hands Marisa some kind of folder/booklet which says, "Sanae Moriya" on the cover. This might(?) imply that Marisa wrote the draft for Sanae's Fortune, which does somewhat muddy my argument around Reimu writing Marisa's Fortune Slip. However, Marisa's Fortune has other elements in it which indicate someone other than Marisa wrote it, and personally I find it hard to believe Reimu got someone like Sakuya or Sanae to write the draft when she herself knows Marisa best.
Second, it’s quite telling that Reimu creates Fortune Slips even for her ostensible enemies, like Seija and Mizuchi. Her love of her ‘boring but peaceful days’ extends even to those who cause her trouble - whose
entire existence is to cause her trouble. This really puts a new meaning to the idea that Reimu treats everybody ‘basically the same’, as her game character profiles say.
Third, ZUN's comment for Zanmu says:
"She [Zanmu] sees herself in Reimu, and seems to worry for her.
This time for sure, she won't fall into hell."
This confirms my suspicion (which I brought up in my
UDoALG analysis) that Zanmu in some way regrets her decisions in life and wishes things had been different. Seeing in Reimu her past self, Zanmu wants to make sure Reimu doesn't make the same mistakes she herself made, so that "this time for sure, she won't fall into hell".
In a more general sense, Zanmu's Fortune is very interesting and worth reading carefully if you liked my UDoALG analysis at all. It further connects Zanmu's ability and concept with depression and apathy, and even kind of reminded me of aspects of the protagonist from No Longer Human (though that's probably because I read that book a couple of weeks ago).
It's also interesting that WOoHS adds another dimension to the comparison ZUN makes between Reimu and Zanmu - they're both terminal bluffers. Reimu bluffs to herself by saying that everything "will go well for her", while Zanmu's immense self-confidence and 'aura of competency' is said by ZUN in his comment to mostly be a big bluff. Worth thinking about.
Last, Chimata's Fortune quote suggestively says:
"Since when did humans mistakenly believe
they could own fate?"
'Fate' in Japanese (運命) uses the kanji for 'fortune' (運), so in the context of this book the idea of 'fate' is being conflated here with the idea of 'fortune'. Which isn't strange I suppose, after all one's fortune/luck is surely determining of one's fate. CoLA Ch. 27 also conflates the two concepts towards the end, so in ZUN's mind there is certainly a connection between them.
What I really want to talk about though is somewhat harder to explain. Remember how I discussed near the start of this analysis how Chimata is able to banish subconscious notions of ownership, even where none exists? In my mind, what this more basically signifies is the ability to banish false notions of control. "Humans", as her Fortune says, "mistakenly believe they can own fate", which is to say they mistakenly believe they can control it. It's kind of incredible to think that Chimata is able to banish such mistaken thoughts with her ability, and if her Fortune Slip character title is to be believed, is able to "trade even fate itself".
Maybe this is the real reason some youkai were at risk of disappearing and losing their identity. Chimata's ability might have made the raison d'etre of some lesser youkai fuzzy and at risk of vanishing (which would be synonymous with the youkai vanishing). Take Kogasa for example. Her ability is to surprise people, but she is
terrible at it. In a sense, Kogasa's fate is to be a youkai who surprises people; it is her existence. But since she's so bad at it, Chimata's ability might be able to take this sense away from Kogasa herself, thus erasing her identity. Scary thought, but I think quite possible.
This line of thinking also adds another dimension to Reimu telling herself things 'will go well'. Reimu could be reasserting to herself what she considers her identity: The Hakurei Shrine Maiden who always resolves incidents and preserves peace, for whom everything will turn out well. By defining her identity (fate) in this way, she is presenting herself to the world as someone with immense luck, and the world accepts that that’s who she is and obliges her by leading the outcome to be in her favour. By impressing her being on the world's memories like this, she is essentially the prophet and maker of her own fate and future.
You can probably see by this that Chimata's ability to take away false notions of one's fate is like the ability to manipulate the memories which inhere in all things. Going back to that CoLA chapter, it's like the ability to manipulate the quantum realm - the Mechanism of Fortune. In order to stop those memories from fading from the world - memories of the personality and fate of the humans, gods and youkai of Gensokyo - Reimu made Fortune Slips themed after the people she has met over her life. So that the memory of their fortune and fate would remain in the minds of human beings, and in the memories of the universe which determines one's future...
In order to avoid the emptiness of a forgetful world.
