What does “Jujutsu Kaisen” mean?

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What is “Jujutsu”? 

First, we need to understand what “jujutsu” means. 呪術 (jujutsu) means "magic", can also be "magic", is the act of borrowing power from supernatural beings to fulfill human wishes such as curing illness, praying for rain, helping crops bountiful harvest, etc. This word has a heavy religious meaning, used to distinguish it from the magic acts of magicians. 

The word “kai” (return) in “Samsara”

Furthermore, the author of this series is probably very interested in religion and mysticism, so the weight of the title lies in the word 廻 (kai) - the word "return" in samsara. So what is reincarnation and how is it related to the above war?

The continuous succession of life and death through the many different lives of sentient beings (all that has life - birth, growth and death) is described by Buddhism as a wheel that spins endlessly. , which means reincarnation. According to Buddhist concept, this wheel has no beginning or end, it will rotate until sentient beings know how to practice to reach liberation from that cycle. As we know, the flow of cause and effect progresses continuously. As long as there is a desire to live and create karma, then we will still be reborn after death and receive the results from the cause we have created. create. In other words, after this body stops working, the life stream still continues, even though the form of life in the later stage is not the form of life in the previous stage. This life line is also always changing, not an immortal soul passing from one life to another.

In comparing Jujutsu Kaisen's story, we observe a war reflecting a cycle of reincarnation, endless and without origin. Negative emotions breed curses (noroi) manifesting in distinct forms, compelling magicians to eradicate them.

 

When will the world no longer have curses? Only when people stop hating, hatred, despair, suffering, etc. The future may not arrive while people are alive. Even if humans vanish, other sentient beings will remain, giving rise to negative emotions and curses.

The fight in Jujutsu Kaisen

This is not simply a war between two factions of magicians and voodoo magic, but also a war revolving around the use of magic by all characters in the story. Some people use magic to save people, some people use magic to achieve personal goals, and others take advantage of their ability to use magic to take personal revenge. The jujutsushi themselves are also human, and they sometimes unintentionally impose negative emotions on others, causing them to become more terrible curses than usual. In other words, for jujutsushi, this is also a battle between Good and Evil within the ego, between balancing personal feelings and common mission, a choice between attachment, confusion or liberation, Enlightenment from greed, hatred and ignorance in life.