Epitaph: Speculations and Theories [Episode 1-4]

[Puranetesu]

Are we sure it's not odawara though?

I did some searching. First I googled "Sweetfish river" and found this.

(it also mentions a dam and I got reminded of higurashi, so... )

So it seems "since ancient times when the Sagamigawa was called the Sweetfish River".

So I searched Sagamigawa river and found that it's in Kanagawa and....

"The Sagami-gawa River, known as "Kanagawa's mother river," runs through the middle of the prefecture. There are many tourist spots of long standing, such as Kamakura, Hakone, a mecca for hot spring lovers, and Odawara, a castle town of a feudal lord. In the south of the prefecture sits the Shonan and Miura-hanto Peninsula area, boasting a beautiful coastline, with the northern part of the Tanzawa Mountains spreading out to the west."

Source

The adults though seem fairly certain it's not Odawara, so it could be some other of the places mentioned there. Or it could be odawara and "beloved hometown" could be sarcastic, somewhat fitting (ok, not really) to kinzo being childish about it. Also "The 'beloved hometown' definitely won't betray our expectations." maybe it is Odawara...

I don't know about you, but I'll look into Sagami-gawa river a lot more, since from the atlas book we know that a place is at least part of the solution. I'll post further findings later, but I was excited by this and couldn't wait to post everything after my research (and if I'm done with the research someone will hopefully take the results and run with it, since my japanese and kanji knowledge is close to non-existant)

Edit: Also the wikipedia entry for sagami-gawa should be interesting.

[Ithekro]

We assume the gold is on the island. The question is how does this lead to a key to the location?

[ChibiBear]

Hm... what does the kanjo for Odawara mean?? Sweetfish river, coastline, too much to be a coincidence...

[Puranetesu]

The key is a word. The word is possibly a place (maybe?).

So far I think it's

Find Sagami River. Follow it downstream (it reaches the ocean). Then find a village near the ocean (I'm not sure if that is literal or not though) and then find the shore. The name of the shore could possible be the key(word) we're looking for. Then hopefully with some help from people with kanji knowledge we can figure out the rest.

[ChibiBear]

Hmm... I'm gonna go on google earth and see if I can find anything

[Ithekro]

It seems like it is a word play using a map. Following characters that lead to something that, when you get to it, makes perfect sense...the problem...we don't have this atlas in Japanese to track these characters. It is single characters it seems, thus they could be inside another word, but lead on a path, either to a location, or another word. It would suck if not all maps have the words in the same place though...so there must be something else.

[ChibiBear]

And the answer is a word with six letters right??

[Puranetesu]

When Eva is sure she found the answer she says :

E: "...But this isn't six characters at all. ...I can state that this is the answer without a doubt, but this doesn't reach six characters at all...!"

So the place on the atlas is probably less than six letters. (then she somehow transforms it to something with 6 letters)...

[Ithekro]

Or is isn't six characters in Japanese...or in a childish way, its a pun.

[ChibiBear]

So maybe... The japanese word is less than 6 characters, but the hiragana/katakana/english pronounciation is?

[Ithekro]

Something like that. Or the meaning of the word is "six characters"...a pun.

[chounokoe]

As it is implied to be a childish pun, we should also take into account that it may be unsolvable to us, who have no idea of how childhood jokes in the 1910's and 20's were like, maybe Eva and her siblings still remember their father's occasional strange humor.
Young Eva said she had to 'throw away her awe of father', this means it could be a poem he (maybe along with a childhood friend) made up a long time ago.

The only Kanji with a strong double meaning is 里 which does not only mean village or one's upbringing (さと) but also an old japanese measurement (り) which is ca. 4km...which could imply a position IF the epitaph was placed at only ONE location...but because it isn't the point becomes useless.

The other things we have is for one 岸 (きし) which is shore or coast, but does not really hold any double meaning. The other is 川 (かわ or がわ) which is a river or stream.
But as already implied we have to take everything rather metaphorical.
Young　Eva urged Eva (and us) to search for a way to think of a 川 that is similarly abstract as a family tree but much more childish...and that's where the possibilities become to much...maybe we need a Japanese children song or something like that...but in the end it has to be easy.

It could be we have to follow a map, but if it is like that it has to be a map of the time when the Epitaph was written, which could be in Kinzo's youth, as it is not stated that the Epitaph leads to the gold and he could have known 'Beatrice' long before he got the gold.
Now it's the question where to get a map of Japan at that time.

The fact that it does not seem to be 6 characters at all could be either that it is not 6 Kanji characters and that we have to read it in Kana to get where on the island it is or maybe even in Rômaji...or it could even be that there is a place that is easy to miss.

[KoiYuki]

Originally Posted by Puranetesu

When Eva is sure she found the answer she says :

E: "...But this isn't six characters at all. ...I can state that this is the answer without a doubt, but this doesn't reach six characters at all...!"

So the place on the atlas is probably less than six letters. (then she somehow transforms it to something with 6 letters)...

But right after, it says
Y: "Did you stop thinking again? Then, think of a way you could read it with six characters. If you can't think of one, then research it. .....There has to be an answer. You must not doubt that."

So it could split up characters, I guess..

[Jan-Poo]

Or an english translation of a japanese word. Seriously the possibilities are almost endless XD

@Puranetsu: well if you ask me I'm pretty sure the hometown isn't Odawara, the river is not a river, and the "sweetfish" part is totally irrelevant.

Also I think there is a very high probability that the "key" is in romaji.

[Li Jianliang]

Originally Posted by ChibiBear

Hmm... I'm gonna go on google earth and see if I can find anything

Originally Posted by chounokoe

It could be we have to follow a map, but if it is like that it has to be a map of the time when the Epitaph was written, which could be in Kinzo's youth, as it is not stated that the Epitaph leads to the gold and he could have known 'Beatrice' long before he got the gold.
Now it's the question where to get a map of Japan at that time.

Remember to disregard things built after 1980's at least on the Google map, and to look for things that have fallen into disuse or otherwise removed from general maps since. A lot of things have come and gone in the past 3+ decades.

[Jan-Poo]

I think, just to be sure, we should try thinking about anything that can be seen in an atlas.

the obvious thing is maps. However there might be more about that. So I propose a little brainstorming to think anything that can be found in an atlas and anything that cannot be found.

For examples Li Jianliang made a good point, we need to think that it is 1986 in the game, so anything that changed after that can't be pat of the solution. For example there are still two Germanies and there's no Ukraina (as an indipendent country).

However you can't see buildings in an atlas. google maps didn't exist either back then.

There's been a theory that the river might be a sea current. However can they really be seen in an atlas?

What else can you find? A starmap? A geological stratus map? Political maps and geographical maps?

Also this is a japanese atlas, so it has probably a more detailed map about the various japanese regions and more general maps for the rest of the world.

Herculysses' theory proposed the idea that "kawa" is actually a table, like in multiplication table, or a diagram. That isn't a bad reasoning, we need to think out of the box. In fact didn't young Eva said that the family tree isn't a bad anology and you need to think something around those lines?

Then what kind of diagram can be found in an atlas?

If you have any idea, any idea, even stupid, say it. Anything can help.

[ChibiBear]

Yeah, the table/diagram thing could make sense... Maybe even a grid?? Well... A table and a grid are basically the same thing...

[Dlanor .A. Nox]

I was thinking of the human anatomy for a bit toying around with this idea as it can be a river (blood stream) but I nixed that, I also thought of a paved road nixed that, vines again nixed, and the flow of time.....yeah I had alot of success with the river part....-_-;;; Damn I want to solve this riddle so bad....but Ryuukishi himself it would be next to impossible for English speaking users to solve it.....of course you could count on Kanon's 0 and still try....so I'll try again. I was thinking about the river and the sweetfish part...the entire first part of the epitaph...if that is solved entire riddle falls into place, in Eva's mind anyways. There are alot of ways to think of something as a river. If that falls into place, the village and shore parts will follow as well. I wiki'd the village kanji and found out the kanji for village was also a country house, not sure if that meant anything.

The sweetfish, this part brought Eva's epiphany, the thing about the sweetfish going in and out of a river, I thought this was oxygen for one line of thought with the human anatomy, but yeah it didn't work out.

Beloved Hometown, I thought this was kuwadorian since it was tied to memories that Kinzo holds dear (I think) But hell if I know....

Argh I wish I would stop trying to solve this at the middle of the night -_-;;. Oh well these were my thoughts last night.

[ChibiBear]

It's impossible for english speakers to solve it?? Unfair.... I really wanna help... =.= The bloodstream = River theory is really interesting...

[Jan-Poo]

I had thought about the bloodstream theory as well, the problem is that if you follow it "down"... and you look for "shore" the "two" will tell you of, make me think about Johnny!!!! 6 letters!!! XD

No no there's no way that's the key!!! °_°