Mystery solution 1: How does one solve the epitaph?
Mystery solution 1: How does one solve the epitaph?
The first mystery Umineko asks us to solve is the epitaph which, more than a mystery, is actually a riddle. There is an official solution for the epitaph and it was handed to us in the VN in Ep 7.
Let’s start with the test of the epitaph in English which is as following:
Behold the sweetfish river running through my beloved hometown.
You who seek the Golden Land, follow its path downstream in search of the key.
As you travel down the river, you will see a village.
In that village, look for the shore the two will tell you of.
There sleeps the key to the Golden Land.
The one who obtains the key must then travel to the Golden Land in accordance with these rules.
On the first twilight, offer the six chosen by the key as sacrifices
On the second twilight, those who remain shall tear apart the two who are close.
On the third twilight, those who remain shall praise my noble name.
On the fourth twilight, gouge the head and kill.
On the fifth twilight, gouge the chest and kill.
On the sixth twilight, gouge the stomach and kill.
On the seventh twilight, gouge the knee and kill.
On the eighth twilight, gouge the leg and kill.
On the ninth twilight, the witch shall revive, and none shall be left alive.
On the tenth twilight, the journey shall end, and you shall reach the capital where the gold dwells.
The witch shall praise the wise and bestow four treasures.
One shall be all the gold from the Golden Land.
One shall be, the resurrection of the souls of all the dead.
One shall be, even the resurrection of the lost love.
One shall be, to put the witch to sleep for all time.
Sleep peacefully, my most beloved witch, Beatrice.
Sadly the whole epitaph is a giant word play in Japanese so, just by reading the English test without Japanese knowledge, is impossible to solve it. Due to this I’ll report both the English and the Japanese test so as to allow everyone to see the word plays yet to understand also what they’re about.
Despite this the whole thing is quite complicate so I hope I’ll manage to explain it clearly.
Now let’s break the epitaph in parts:
Behold the sweetfish river running through my beloved hometown.
You who seek the Golden Land, follow its path downstream in search of the key.
or
懐かしき、故郷を貫く鮎の川。
黄金郷を目指す者よ、これを下りて鍵を探せ。
Kinzo’s beloved hometown was in Taiwan.
The sweetfish river refers to the Danshui (=‘freshwater’) Line, a railway called like a river (which is called after Danshui city) that goes from Taipei to Danshui Harbour.
As you travel down the river, you will see a village.
In that village, look for the shore the two will tell you of.
There sleeps the key to the Golden Land.
or
川を下れば、やがて里あり。
その里にて二人が口にし岸を探れ。
そこに黄金郷への鍵が眠る。
Following the railway starting from Taipei and going to Danshui you’ll met Sekihai station, which in Japanese is pronounced Kirigan station ( 唭里岸). The three characters of Kirigan can be split into the character for ‘mouth’ (口), the character for ‘that’ (其), the character for ‘village’ (里), and the character for ‘shore’ (岸) which are all words that appear in the epitaph.
In that village, look for the shore the two will tell you of.
or
その里にて二人が口にし岸を探れ。
However Kirigan doesn’t fit perfectly as we still have to find the ‘two’ who’ll tell us of the shore as in Kirigan there’s only one mouth. Kirigan Station though, is named after a place and the name of that place, which was also Kirigan (唭哩岸), is however written differently with, in it, 2 characters for ‘mouth’ (口). In short Kirigan (唭哩岸) is the word we were searching.
Kirigan though, is not the key we were searching.
The one who obtains the key must then travel to the Golden Land in accordance with these rules.
On the first twilight, offer the six chosen by the key as sacrifices…
If we keep on reading the epitaph we’ll learn that the key should chose six that should be offered as sacrifice. This is a wordplay to imply the key must point to six characters. Kirigan though is made by 3 kanji or by 5 characters and by 4 if with consider it in Katakana.
The true key isn’t Kirigan, which is the Japanese reading of that place’s name but the original reading, which is ‘Qilian’. When written in Pinyin, that’s six letters long.
Qilian is therefore the key and its letters are 'the six chosen by the key’. So now we can continue with the epitaph.
The one who obtains the key must then travel to the Golden Land in accordance with these rules.
or
鍵を手にせし者は、以下に従いて黄金郷へ旅立つべし。
No big deal here, it just tells us to follow the following instructions.
On the first twilight, offer the six chosen by the key as sacrifices
On the second twilight, those who remain shall tear apart the two who are close.
On the third twilight, those who remain shall praise my noble name.
On the fourth twilight, gouge the head and kill.
On the fifth twilight, gouge the chest and kill.
On the sixth twilight, gouge the stomach and kill.
On the seventh twilight, gouge the knee and kill.
On the eighth twilight, gouge the leg and kill.
On the ninth twilight, the witch shall revive, and none shall be left alive.
On the tenth twilight, the journey shall end, and you shall reach the capital where the gold dwells.
or
第一の晩に、鍵の選びし六人を生贄に捧げよ。
第二の晩に、残されし者は寄り添う二人を引き裂け。
第三の晩に、残されし者は誉れ高き我が名を讃えよ。
第四の晩に、頭をえぐりて殺せ。
第五の晩に、胸をえぐりて殺せ。
第六の晩に、腹をえぐりて殺せ。
第七の晩に、膝をえぐりて殺せ。
第八の晩に、足をえぐりて殺せ。
第九の晩に、魔女は蘇り、誰も生き残れはしない。
第十の晩に、旅は終わり、黄金の郷に至るだろう。
The epitaph mentions the Golden Land several times, usually writing it 黄金郷 however in this segment of the epitaph the Golden Land is written 黄金の郷 which can be also read as the ‘capital where the gold dwells’.
This change in wording helps us to focus our attention on 郷 (=Capital).
Since the epitaph says the journey to the Golden Land ends on the tenth twilight, the ‘capital where the gold dwells’ must be the Golden Land itself. In short Golden Land (黄金郷/Ougon Kyou) = Golden Capital (黄金?/Ougon Kyou).
Golden Land is written 黄金郷 and pronounced Ougon Kyou. Now there are several words that can mean ‘capital’ in Japanese and several words pronounced 'kyou’ but there’s only a kanji that fits in here as it means ‘capital’ and is read ‘kyou and it’s 京.
So we have:
Golden Land (黄金郷/Ougon Kyou)= Golden Capital (黄金京/Ougon Kyou).
The kanji 京 which is also used to mean Kyoto (京都), Japan’s old capital, has also another meaning, which is ‘ten quadrillion’. When meaning ‘ten quadrillion’ this kanji is read as ‘kei’.
Since one reaches ten quadrillion on the tenth twilight, the golden land is ‘one quadrillion far’ by the first twilight. In short, ‘one quadrillion’ is the starting point to our travel toward the Golden Land. As this is a word play, and since Qilian was written with Roman characters, the word quadrillion written in English, is the answer or better the word from which we remove the six letters chosen by the key.
The place where the world 'quadrillion’ can be found is the chapel, built at the same time as the mansion. Above the door of the chapel there was a relief displayed over an arch with English words written. ‘This door is opened only at a probability of a quadrillion to one. You will be blessed only at a probability of a quadrillion to one’.
On the first twilight, offer the six chosen by the key as sacrifices
The letters from the word ‘quadrillion’ can be pulled out. As one pulls them out he can see they have keys of some sort attached to their back.
As the epitaph says one has to sacrifice the six letters chosen by the key from quadrillion, which means pulling out the letters that form the word ‘quilian’. So from QUADRILLION we move to *U*DR**L*O*.
On the second twilight, those who remain shall tear apart the two who are close.
The ’d’ and 'r’ are close so the ‘r’ must be shifted to the right so that it looks like *U*D*R*L*O* .
On the third twilight, those who remain shall praise my noble name.
The letters’ order must be changed so as to form ‘LORD U’ where U is the short for Ushiromiya, of course.
On the fourth twilight, gouge the head and kill.
On the fifth twilight, gouge the chest and kill.
On the sixth twilight, gouge the stomach and kill.
On the seventh twilight, gouge the knee and kill.
On the eighth twilight, gouge the leg and kill.
On the ninth twilight, the witch shall revive, and none shall be left alive.
At this point all the keys have to be turned and removed, starting at the left and going right so that ‘none shall be left alive’ or that basically all have to be removed.
On the tenth twilight, the journey shall end, and you shall reach the capital where the gold dwells.
At this point the lion statue in front of the chapel will turn to face a different direction. Following its line of sight there’s another lion statue which has also changed its direction. Lion after lion one gets at the back of the chapel where a gaping open secret passageway has appeared, with stairs leading down to an underground VIP room which contains ten tons of gold.
This room (which in a wardrobe also has Beatrice’s dress) is part of the military bases that was built on Rokkenjima during WW2. In another room one can find 900 tons of explosives.
They’re connected to a mechanism in a clock in the room of the gold so that it you turn a switch by midnight they’ll explode blowing up most of the island (it’ll have a radius of around 1 km).
In another room one can find the poor remains of the Japanese and Italian soldiers that killed each other over the gold.
Last but not least there are two tunnels, one which brings at Kuwadorian (which is built in an area that won’t be involved by the explosion)…
…another which brings to an opening on the sea (which is also in an area that won’t be involved by the explosion) where, on the shore, it’s kept a modern motorboat.
The gold, the explosive, the hidden skeletons and the two tunnels are the treasures one can find in the Golden Land.
It’s never said to what exactly the last lines of the epitaph refer:
The witch shall praise the wise and bestow four treasures.
One shall be all the gold from the Golden Land.
One shall be, the resurrection of the souls of all the dead.
One shall be, even the resurrection of the lost love.
One shall be, to put the witch to sleep for all time.
Sleep peacefully, my most beloved witch, Beatrice.
or
魔女は賢者を讃え、四つの宝を授けるだろう。
一つは、黄金郷の全ての黄金。
一つは、全ての死者の魂を蘇らせ。
一つは、失った愛すらも蘇らせる。
一つは、魔女を永遠に眠りにつかせよう。
安らかに眠れ、我が最愛の魔女ベアトリーチェ。
It’s easy to guess that the first treasure implies that who solves the epitaph will inherit the gold…
It can be speculated that the other three treasures are connected to Kinzo’s hope that the one who were to solve the epitaph was Lion and therefore resurrection, lost love and peace refer to Beatrice. Kinzo hopes that Beatrice will be resurrected and so their love, that he’ll manage to apologize and finally let her go.
It’s hard to picture what they would represent should, someone who’s not Lion, solve the epitaph.
In Beatrice’s case, as she too proposes the epitaph, it’s possible to speculate that, as she hopes Battler will be the one to solve it, the resurrection of the lost love would mean the resurrection of her relationship with him (she meant to devote her life to him if he were to solve the epitaph) and to put to rest the 'witch’ that was planning on killing everyone.
Again it’s hard to picture what another would get (and, to be honest when the epitaph is solved in Ep 3, 5 e 7, beyond the gold and the secrets of the military bases, nothing else is handed).
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