Gold is a metal of value, that can improve one’s life. On the other hand, it can also destroy lives. Kamuy, according to Ainu mythology, means a spiritual or divine being, capable of influencing people’s lives. Its influence can be for better or worse, as it will be evident as we delve deeper into this sensational adventure in the first season of this Golden Kamuy.
Synopsis
The time setting of Golden Kamuy is after the Russo-Japan War (1904-5).
There are lots of soldiers, who died leaving their families.
There are also those soldiers, who survived until the bitter end of suffering in hell, called, regret.
Sugimoto Saichi is of later type.
He survived the Warfield with such tenacity to live, that he was named “Sugimoto the Immortal”.
He lost his friend Toraji who protected his back in the war.
His friend previously mentioned his child and wife with, sickness of eyes.
Her sickness can only be remedied by a famous doctor in America and that requires a lot of money.
But after his friend’s death, there remains no one to take her for treatment.
Sugimoto took it upon himself to find a way to treat her illness.
It was a time of desperation, every single person was trying anything possible to earn a living.
He started panning for gold in rivers in the hope of earning enough to provide for Toraji’s widowed wife and small child.
The Treasure of Golden Kamuy
Here comes the treasure talk of the Golden Kamuy.
During work, he heard an interesting story from a drunk.
It was a story about a man who committed the heinous crime of murdering a group of Ainu and stealing a significant amount of gold.
This man hid the gold in Hokkaido and tattooed a coded map of its location onto the bodies of his fellow inmates of Abashiri prison, in fragments.
The only way to find the treasure was to decipher the map.
At first, he didn’t believe in that tall tale and laughed it away.
The person who told the story, later attacked him when he was taking a rest. Sugimoto killed him and that story got his attention.
He became further sure about the story after finding a tattooed code fragment on the dead storyteller’s body.
Not wanting to let go of the lead to treasure, he carried the dead body with the tattooed code fragment.
Death Incarnate
Trouble is in every step in the story of Golden Kamuy.
The smell of death brought the monster of the mountain, a grizzly bear.
As Sugimoto’s experience in hunting was nonexistent, he became helpless in front of that ferocious beast.
An arrow from the bow of an ainu girl delivered him away from his impending death.
The girl has a unique name, Asirpa.
For then, the bear escaped, but as it could return at any time, Asirpa told him to leave the body.
Ultimately, he had to tell the unbelievable reason, why he was carrying a dead body.
Unbelievably enough, she believed the story, as his father was one of the victims in that story.
Later with the help of the girl, he kills the grizzly bear and survives.
Together, Sugimoto and Asirpa made a pact to collaborate and locate the concealed treasure.
Here starts the treasure hunt in Golden Kamuy.
They decided to share the gold among themselves.
Sugimoto will take a little share necessary for Toraji’s widowed wife’s eye treatment.
The remaining gold will return to its rightful owner, Ainus.
With Asirpa’s excellent tracking and hunting skills and Sugimoto’s indomitable will to survive, both of them delve into this sensational adventure to find the lost gold of Ainus.
Main Characters of Golden Kamuy
The story of the first season of Golden Kamuy revolves mainly around two important characters.
Sugimoto Saichi
Sugimoto Saichi, as described in the first season of Golden Kamuy, was an Ex-soldier of the Russo-Japan war. He was assigned to the 1st Division.
Sugimoto may be a tough person from the outside, but a sympathetic person from the inside, who cares for his friends and loved ones.
He has a habit of declaring himself immortal in the face of danger.
He was deeply attached to life, the example of which is in many incidents in the first season of Golden Kamuy.
At first, when that grizzly bear was about to kill him, he made a desperate attempt to lunge toward the grizzly bear with only a bayonet in his hand.
There was another instance when he was fighting with a tattooed Abashiri inmate Nihei Tetsuzou.
His opponent Nihei was a seasoned hunter and was fighting with him in his home ground, the forest.
Amidst those unfavorable conditions, he fought on with Nihei with the tenacity to live.
Asirpa
Asirpa, as described in the first season of Golden Kamuy, was an Ainu girl of 13/14 years old, with excellent talent in archery and profound knowledge of the wild.
She is more mature than other kids of 13/14 years old.
There was a white wolf, whose species was about to go extinct in Japan in the 1900s. Asirpa had protection from that wolf since her childhood when her father was around.
She named it Retar, white in the Ainu language.
After her father’s death, Retar was only emotional support to her.
Asirpa, the meaning of this name which her father gave to her, is “new year” but it can also be called “future”.
She declares herself as a new kind of Ainu woman, for a new age!
She always tries to think outside of the box, breaking cultural norms.
Asirpa openly denied the fortune teller of another Ainu tribe, Inkarmat, to whom every other tribe member shower devotion.
She also maintained the basic harmless cultures of Ainu.
Teams in Golden Kamuy
In the first season of Golden Kamuy, three teams were doing a treasure hunt individually.
Team Asirpa
The first team in Golden Kamuy had Asirpa and Sugimoto in it mainly.
Another member joined their team later, Shiraishi Yoshitake also known as escape king. He could escape from mostly all kinds of imprisonment.
Finally joining their team was Kiroranke, a friend of Asirpa’s father and a combat engineer in the 7th division at the Russo-Japan war.
Hokkaido 7th Division
This team in Golden Kamuy had another name, the team of First Lieutenant Tsurumi Tokushiro. Due to some misgivings with the previous 7th Division leader Koijirou
Hanazawa, Tsurumi took over a part of the team(nearly 100 soldiers) and formed an independent 7th Division.
Some of the important characters of his team are, Ogata Hyakunosuke an enigmatic sniper in Golden Kamuy, Tanigaki Genjiro a person who favors justice and Nikaido Kouhei was waiting to take revenge on Sugimoto for killing his twin brother Nikaido Yohei who tried to kill Sugimoto.
Hijikata’s group
The remaining super group in Golden Kamuy was led by a phantom of the Bakumatsu period, who couldn’t die, the previous leader of Shinshesngumi, Hijikata Toshizo.
He was inside Abashiri prison for a long time and had the code fragment of the Ainu treasure map tattooed on his body.
Two important characters were in his group.
Nagakura Shinpachi, previous vice-leader of Shinshesngumi.
Another one is Ushiyama Tatsuuma, a strong master of Judo.
Settings of the story of Golden Kamuy
The main point of interest in this story of Golden Kamuy is 20 thousand kan or 75 thousand kg of Ainu gold. Someone looted the gold from hardworking Ainus and hidden in a secret location.
According to the story’s setting, all three teams are searching for the hidden gold, while competing with each other.
This competition is by no means a healthy one.
Everyone is desperate to fulfill their goal, for which this large amount of gold is a tool only.
We already know the motive for team Asirpa.
Now, let’s start by knowing the motive of Tsurumi Tokushiro.
In which way he was going to use the gold?
During the Russo-Japan War, the 7th Division had to pay a huge price for the wrong and careless decision of the previous leader Koijirou Hanazawa.
They had to launch a suicide attack by which they may have achieved victory but lost a large number of soldiers.
Salt to the wound was when the Japanese government failed to extract remuneration from Russia for Japanese veterans of the Russo-Japanese War.
Tsurumi decided to use the gold when found, to build an arsenal and larger army base to start a coup d’etat to form an independent Hokkaido.
Hijikata dreamt of the most easy to understand but a next-to-impossible dream, which was forming a country.
The location where all those major events converged was a snow-covered Hokkaido.
Necessary Character
There are also many other interesting characters in the first season of Golden Kamuy.
First, let’s start with escaped Abashiri prison inmates.
Nihei Tetsuzou was one of the escapees. His crime was killing three poachers in the story of Golden Kamuy.
He is more vindictive than any wild animal, when someone attacks him he attacks back without any hesitation, even if there are any restrictions.
On one of his hunts, Poachers shot at him, in return he took three full days to beat them to death. Killing the first two went unnoticed but the third one was noticed by patrolling police.
That incident led to his imprisonment at Abashiri prison.
Henmi Kazuo was a criminal of 100 murders and was imprisoned at Abashiri prison.
In his childhood, he saw a wild boar killing his younger brother.
He either couldn’t or didn’t help his brother, he didn’t know.
He was enthralled by the scene of the futile struggle of life against death.
Kazuo had an obsession with the same scene for the rest of his life until a shark killed him.
The existence of reasons, means and the objective made the story full.
In the story of Golden Kamuy, Ainu gold is the “objective”, “means” are all the characters are in this treasure chase, and the “reasons” were all sort of philosophy behind the conviction of each of the characters who are in this.
Ainu Culture
Only a treasure hunt and fight to survive, these two factors were enough to make this series good, but the cherry on the top was the incorporation of a different culture in the story.
The culture of the Ainu is entirely different from the core Japanese culture, but still, this story portrays both cultures in parallel.
Ainu culture is deeply influenced by spiritualism.
According to him a higher power or spirit supports and influences their livelihood.
Those spiritual beings are called Kamuy in Ainu terms.
Ainu is mainly a hunting and collection-oriented tribe.
There are lots of Kamuy in Ainu beliefs.
Kamuy
There are three very important Kamuy.
The most important of them is Kim-un Kamuy (god of bears and mountains), as this Kamuy is responsible for giving deer to hunt.
The other two Kamuy are Rupen Kamuy (god of the sea) and Kamuy-huci(goddess of the hearth).
According to Ainus, there are some instances when Kamuy themselves come into human life in animal clothing.
Like in the form of Bears.
After the hunt, they leave the meat and skin as a gift for humans.
They hold a ceremony for such an occasion, where a bear cub is raised to adulthood.
After that, its body is used, from its meat to its fur.
After everything, the remaining is sent back with arrows, a bow, and clothes as gifts via a celebration.
This whole ritual is called “Iomante”.
Ainus are selective about their prey, they don’t eat man-eater animal meat.
According to their belief, man-eater turns into Wen Kamuy (evil God).
Delicacies
Ainu diet is also very exotic, as they mainly depend on hunting They eat a variety of food, from squirrel to bear meat.
Generally maximum of their foods are in stew or soup style named “Ohaw”, there are exceptions.
Sometimes they eat raw meats, eyeballs and raw brains.
There are instances where Asirpa forcesd Sugimoto to eat the raw brain of the prey.
Then there is “chitatap”, a unique way to prepare raw meat, by repeatedly mincing and mashing the raw meat with a knife with more than one person while taking turns.
Conclusion
This story of Golden Kamuy is a simple gold-rush story but shown in such a way that a different world’s existence could be felt. Be the attractive and involving background story of nearly all of the important characters, the thrilling chases, and different cultural values, everything is present in sweet harmony. In general, in this season, sensational adventure, action, and culture these three spices come together to make us say”Hinna!”
If you like adventure stories then you can check my Blog Post on Vinland Saga.
