Epitaph: Speculations and Theories [Episode 1-4]

[ChibiBear]

How did you get that?? Also, what does it mean?? Thousand hills??

[Ithekro]

I don't know what it means. I just decide for some reason that if "senrioka 千里丘" is correct in any way, the line "In the village, look for the shore the two will tell you of" I figured that maybe the two "in the village" are the two characters surrounding the "village" (里). What I don't know is if it means anything. Does 千丘 mean anything? And if it does, does it relate to any "shore" (岸)?

Yes I'm stabbing blindly, looking at it as a word puzzle or a pun rather than a location. The thing is, whatever that leads to makes sense to Eva, is not six characters long, but somehow can be made to be read using six characters...which is the answer. The Key to the Golden Land. The key to Eva's childhood. Also the "keyhole" to where "offer the sacrifices"

Something is there...the question, is what? Also the question is, finding the key all that is needed, or is it simply the correct starting place before the rest of the riddle?

[ChibiBear]

Hmm... Also, literally in 里 if you take the word apart, the top part means field and the bottom part means ground/dirt. I don't know if it means anything

[xKeen]

I can't read japanese,but is the village of gold the same as Golden Land?
I don't have a good brain,so I can't think of anyway to solve it @_@

[Jan-Poo]

Uhm I'll try to explain this

the "golden land" throughout the whole game is written as "黄金郷" which is pronounced "ougonkyou". The first two kanji are read as "ougon" and they are found wherever in english you have "golden" so the golden witch is "ougon no majo". the last kanji "kyou" means village, but it's usually referred to a village or land where you come from. The word "故郷" is the "Hometown" you see in the first line of the epitaph and has the kanji "kyou" in it as well.
"Ougonkyou" is how usually the legendary city "El dorado" is translated in japan.

Now Rosa noticed that in the epitaph there is a line (the tenth twilight) where "ougonkyou" is written differently. it is written "黄金の郷" which sounds more like "the village of gold" rather than "the golden land". The pronunciation also is different in this case. to be completely correct this should be read as "ougon no sato". "sato" is the same as it is read "里" the famous "village" you need to find at the end of the river.
However this is a riddle so I don't know for sure how this should be read. There are four ways that this new version of "ougonkyou" could be read (without going on more strange possibilities):

ougon no kyou
ougon no sato
kogane no kyou
kogane no sato

All of them are valid. In the romanization I wrote some time ago I chose "ougon no sato" because that's what seems the most correct to me, but I might be wrong.

[hodil]

Alright. I realised that tokaido (東海道) has the character "海" in it. Which does implies the sea. Eva mentioned something about her husband's thoughts on the sweetfish, which occasionally goes out to the sea. (海)

Not to mention that the Tokaido line has a initial station called Atami (熱海). Its the starting station and even has the character 海 in it. Additionally, we all know that rivers often empty into the sea. If we flow backwards, it will tell of the flow of the river. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C5%8D...5%8D_Main_Line

If we cosider the Atami route as the sweet fish river, when we flow down it, we should arrive at this so called Beloved Hometown. Beloved can also be portrayed as "最愛". If we dont view this beloved hometown literally, but as a wordplay, this could mean that the atami route has two stations with "愛" in their names. Honestly, Im not sure if Aichi-Mito (愛知御津) station is relevant, since its just a name. Maybe Kinzo had once lived in mito prefecture before

More relevantly, there's this station called Aino (愛野). I dont know Japanese, but i do know mandarin and those two words imply a field of love. o.0

Regardless of which station, when we flow down the "river" we will reach a village. This is the tricky part as there are no stations that have the Kanji for "village". However, I saw Nagoya station. Nagoya's kanji was 名古屋. The 古屋 in mandarin implies some sort of old/ancient houses which coincides with my perception of a village.

However, i am unable to identify the Two. Or the Key. Have been wondering whether the Key can be read as "ki" too...

[Jan-Poo]

Well that's the reason why the toukaidou line was considered the right one, it's because it means "the way to the eastern sea" and "to the sea" is the last thought Eva had before realizing what the river is.

There is another thing that sounds similar and that's Hokkaido: the way to the northern sea. However hokkaido is a whole region not a railway ^^;

What I don't find right in your reasoning is thinking that the village and the hometown are the same thing. Imho it is more like this:

Hometown = starting place
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Village (of gold?)

That's because the epitaph starts with the hometown and then if you follow the river downstream "yagate" (finally) you'll find a village.

[hodil]

No. I dont think that the village and river is in the same place. I actually find it weird to have a river originating from the hometown. Doesn't this means that the hometown must be somewhere pretty high up?

im more so by thinking that the river flows through the hometown and the village. smth like

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hometown
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village

[Jan-Poo]

the river probably originates further above, but the starting place of the journey to the gold should be the hometown. Also it isn't necessary for the river to stop at the village either.

[Psychopathic Otaku]

Ah... Beatrice-Sama...

[Jan-Poo]

I just realized it now. I promised I would add some other informations after episode 15, but I completely forgot it! sorry -_-

As I expected they yet again omitted clue about the epitaph, well considering they cut so many parts there's really no point in adding details now

Anyway I think this time I can simply copy and paste what Rosa and Eva said during their encounter.

Spoiler for Episode3 omitted talks in anime episode 15:

*Note that in the novel Eva meets Rosa while she was returning back after finding the gold. So Rosa here has yet to see the gold.*

Eva: ".........Rosa.........?"

Rosa: "...Nee-san... .........What are you doing in a place like this...?"

Eva: "That's my line. What business do you have in a place such as this?"

Rosa: "......I shouldn't have given you that hint, Nee-san. If I hadn't, I definitely would have been the first to reach this place. .........Too bad."

It seemed that Rosa knew where this staircase went, and what was waiting ahead of her.

Eva: "So you say. .........Even though I reached this place before you."

Rosa: ".........I worried too much about the sweetfish river. The sweetfish part didn't really matter that much at all, did it?"

Eva: "That isn't true. It was an excellent hint, wasn't it? Well, of course, maybe there was no need for it to be sweetfish. ...But when I heard that sweetfish are fish that go out into the sea, I was able to figure it out."

Brief but very interesting. The first thing that should be noted is that the part that Rosa noticed is very important somehow. Without understanding it, it is probably impossible to solve the riddle.

The second thing that should be noted is that the sweetfish part is somehow deceiving or not important. Eva agrees to some extent "there is no need for it to be sweetfish".

The actual word used is "ayu" a very common kind of sweetfish in japan.

Eva says that this helped her because she heard that sweetfishes are fishes that go out into the sea. Then she was able to figure it out.

Rosa doesn't reply to this, but considering what she said earlier she probably didn't follow the same kind of reasoning.

At any rate if the sweetfish part helps, it doesn't help directly. That is why I doubt any actual reference to "sweetfish" or "ayu" can be right.

For example there are port towns named "ayukawa" which leterally means "ayu's river". But if that was the case Rosa would have never said that "ayu" was irrelevant and Eva would have never said that "there is no need for it to be sweetfish".


About this, there is an interesting thing I have found out recently. Currently all the major islands of Japan are connected through tunnels and bridges, however it hasn't been always like that.

Before 1988 the Japan railway company included a "train ferry" service to connect the Honshu to the other islands.
This means basically... the railways literally entered inside ports, and the trains literally went to the sea for a brief moment and then returned to the land.

With this element the "ayu" analogy works perfectly.

However after an incident in 1954 that caused the death of thousand people, the Japanese became very suspicious of train ferries and that caused a progressive elimination that concluded in 1988 with the construction of the Seikan tunnel and the Great Seto bridge.
As of today no train ferry operates in japan.

If this is the right path I must say Ryukishi was very witty to use an analogy that only worked before 1988.

[Christen]

Can anyone that has good Japanese reading skills check this page?
http://www.geocities.jp/yamavikou/hibun.htm

It deduces the key is ORANDA: a particular kind of goldfish.

Which makes me think that the epitaph is about preparing the fish. XD

[hodil]

The only thing i can make out of the paragraph below the Epitaph is that Nagasaki is involved. And the green route in the picture is related.

鮎の川とは線路のことであり、金蔵の故郷は長崎が一番可能性があると推測しました。

I think he meant that the green route is the sweet fish river.

And that Nagasaki was possibly the place of Kinzo's beloved hometown.

[Jan-Poo]

That's quite a creative interpretation.

The "ORANDA", this guy is talking about is actually "HOLLAND".

His reasoning start from the assumption that the river is a railway or a road. Looking at major prefectures and such this guy claims that the only case where by going down you end up to the sea, is a major road that connects to Nagasaki. Actually I think there are other possibilities, like for example... Tokyo... but nevermind.

At this point he says that the "village" is not actually a village. That is something I also believed in the past, but now I'm not so sure anymore. Anyway I don't quite get it what is his reasoning but he talks about the shape of the kanji itself. And I don't get it why but it seems that to him there is a connection between:
里 village
and
出島 dejima

Dejima station is one of the many stations that run through Nagasaki.

At this point he makes many reasonings about the shore "kishi" and all the possible readings and interpretation of the word. He ends up choosing 旗幟 Banner or Flag.

In the Edo period dejima was holland territory so the flag is the holland's flag.

According to this guy 二人が口にし岸（旗）を探れ refers to the two rectangles (lower and upper) of the holland's flag, since the kanji of kuchi 口 is a rectangle.
However aren't there actually 3 rectangles? And aren't there like a hundred of other similar flags?

Moreover you already got to ORANDA from dejima, so what's this reasoning about the flag?
And why you use the engrish reading instead of the actual name? At the very least you should have wrote OLANDA.

[matteas]

This interpretation is very creative, but it seems too far-fetched to me.

There are many points that are not well considered and more than a successive deduction it looks like that he went after Holland from the beginning. I just get that feeling.

This theory would also have to suppose that Eva didn't reach the Golden Village. Because there's no way she could get to Holland from Rokkenjima in the EP3. But I don't believe at all that Holland is the Golden Village. The Golden Village should be a specific place I think.

[Christen]

I think he meant ORANDO as the key to the Golden Land, not the village itself.

[Jan-Poo]

ORANDA And yes he meant it as a the key to the golden land.

[Ithekro]

Holland? Okay, okay. VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) otherwise known as the Dutch East India Company was the main group involved there.

[Maruko-Kun]

Sorry for my stupid question, but... shouldn't the gold be on Rokkenjima? Sorry, I don't know if the question is grammatically correct (for those who don't know it, I'm Italian ><), what I'm asking for is: the gold is on Rokkenjima, isn't it? So, why does the Epitaph refer to Nagasaki or other Cities?

Also, is it possible that the room where there was the gold was a undeground room? Or maybe a room of the Kuwadorian? What was that room? TT__TT

[Jan-Poo]

According to what has been shown to us so far, the gold indeed is somewhere in Rokkenjima inside an underground room.


The epitaph doesn't mention Nagasaki, that's merely a speculation.


However it is almost certain that you need to check an Atlas in order to find the solution to the epitaph. That's only the first part though. The Atlas is only meant to provide informations necessary to progress further on the solution of the epitah it doesn't mean you need to find the gold's location looking at a map. In fact the novel suggests otherwise

We know that Eva stopped looking at the atlas as soon as she found what the "key" was. After that she went "somewhere" and we don't know how she used that key to solve the rest of the epitaph and reach the gold.