Character · Inuyasha
Miroku
A monk with a hole in his right hand that swallows anything, and a proposal ready for every woman he meets.
In Otakana the clue reads: Monk with a cursed hole in his hand
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Inuyasha
- Letters
- 6 · Hard
The Wind Tunnel is a curse rather than a technique. Naraku put it on Miroku's grandfather, it passes down the male line, and it widens a little every year until it swallows the man carrying it. Miroku keeps it wrapped in prayer beads and a cloth glove, unwraps it to inhale demons whole, and knows precisely how much time each use is costing him.
That is the reason for the other habit. He asks women he has just met to bear his child, partly because he expects to die young without an heir, mostly because he enjoys it, and Sango hits him for it with a boomerang the size of a door. He is also genuinely devout, a competent exorcist, and a shameless liar about haunted houses whenever he wants a free dinner.
Rumiko Takahashi gives him the group's tactical brain. He is the one who reads a situation, negotiates, and works out what Naraku is actually doing while everybody else is shouting about it. The staff he carries is a shakujo, the ringed staff a travelling Buddhist monk uses to warn small animals off the path ahead of him.
Spelling MIROKU
MIROKU alternates consonant and vowel the whole way, m-i-r-o-k-u, so a single confirmed letter tells you a great deal about the pattern. The name is the Japanese form of Maitreya, the buddha said to arrive in the distant future, which is a heavy thing to hang on this particular monk. Watch the R, since the Japanese sound sits between R and L and MILOKU is a common slip.