Across the Kii Channel from the previously discussed Kii Peninsula sits the city of Naruto (鳴門市). Certainly, I’ve seen this a number of times before; yet, whilst trawling a map solely for the sake of contextualizing toponyms, it piqued my etymological curiosity. As that is also the name of a popular manga and its titular protagonist, questions of whatever connection there may or may not be between the city and the series will inevitably arise. Such questions are what I had set upon answering for myself and my beloved readers, a process that by all rights ought to have been so straightforward as to barely even justify the word count that now lay before you. Yet! An immediate and unannounced hiatus descended upon this article series as my attempts to articulate the necessary information spiraled into absolute disaster.
From the outset, I did have some idea of the origin of Naruto’s title courtesy of my wife. She said it comes from the fish cakes, narutomaki (鳴門巻き), and I’m inclined to believe her. Mind you, I wouldn’t simply say so by virtue of her being my wife. I was skeptical at first. My nigh hubristic academic pride oozes incredulity in the face of trivia regarding the myriad cartoons of the aughts. In common parlance, I’m a slut for a citation and, despite manga’s common perception as ‘nerd shit,’ everyone who talks about this is so withholding. Thus our journey to track down a source begins. Having been cockblocked1 by Enkidu,2 I must befriend and travel with him to the Cedar Forest whereupon I shall slay the demigod Humbaba and achieve glory!
Y’know, it does seem a bit pretentious to regard Wikipedia as the Cedar Forest, actually; especially when the metaphorical battle with Humbaba is then discovering that neither the page for Naruto nor that for Uzumaki Naruto contained any discussion on the etymology. After that, uh, Pyrrhic victory, I shall fell but a single cedar: Naruto was originally slated to be a cooking manga.3 I’ll hew this timber later,4 to keep the original chronology of my research.5
For now, I shall return to Uruk, by which I mean I decided to see if Pixiv Dictionary would be more helpful. The article for Naruto (NARUTO) certainly was not, but the one for Uzumaki Naruto (うずまきナルト) did at least include the etymology within the series canon. In the text, Naruto’s father, Namikaze Minato (波風ミナト), named him after the main character of one of Jiraiya (自来也)’s novels; a name which Jiraiya claims to have “randomly [come] up with while eating ramen.”6 This would imply that, in the canon at least, the name does come from fish cake, a common ramen topping. Still, I’m not satisfied with mere induction.
A different approach then. I’ll check the article for the name ‘鳴門’ and… oh? Do mine eyes deceive me or is that truly the goddess Ishtar, Queen of Heaven, herself? ‘Naruto’ is a sex position you say? You know what’s cooler than comic books? Sex. We obviously have to talk about this before we move on to anything else. See, the difference between Gilgamesh and me is that I would 100% fuck Ishtar.7
The article does not outright state that naruto is a sex position at first, instead it says that naruto is one of the 48 Techniques (四十八手, sizyûhatte)8 and that this is discussed more later on. Indeed, further along there is more information, which is how I know that they are referring to a sex position, but that does leave the very curious question of why ‘one of the 48 Techniques’ would imply such a thing. I’ll spare recounting the process of uncovering this at length as it is not only a key component of this entire article’s calamitous history but also lacking in enough English-language sources for me to describe any information with due detail or confidence. Originally, in the Muromachi period (室町時代, muromati zidai), a list of decisive moves in sumo (相撲, sumô) was dubbed the 48 Techniques, likely because the number is auspicious rather than a literal enumeration of the techniques therein.9 Later, in the Edo period (江戸時代, edo zidai), the early ukiyoe (浮世絵) artist Hishikawa Moronobu (菱川師宣) drew Koi no Mutugoto Sizyûhatte (恋のむつごと四十八手) representing couples engaged in the expected number of positions with annotations for each. The prevailing theory is that this work is the origin of the 48 techniques of sex rather than of sumo;10 my personal extension to the theory is that the work was a very funny parody of the sumo concept, though setting any number of things to 48 was in vogue at the time.11 Thereafter, the list would have any number of additions, frequently being split front (表, omote) and back (裏, ura) for a combined length of 96 Techniques (九十六手, kyûzyûrokute) such as the list given by Pixiv Dictionary.
Anyway, naruto. The position is described as being an act of femdom (女攻め, onna seme),12 though Pixiv Dictionary does also use more generalized terminology:
“From a position of sitting back [onto their partner], the ‘receiver’ is said to swing their hips, gyrating ‘like the Naruto whirlpools.’”
You may note the imagery of the Naruto whirlpools (鳴門の渦潮, Naruto no uzusio) used here, bringing us all the way back around on this tangent.
The Naruto Strait (鳴門海峡, Naruto Kaikyô), on which the city Naruto sits, connects the Pacific Ocean to the Seto Inland Sea (瀬戸内海, Seto Naikai) via the Kii Channel. With its 1.5km span, the current effected by a 1.5m difference in sea level during tides reaches up to 15km/h (about 9mph for the cool kids), inevitably spawning a number of whirlpools throughout. These vortices then generate more than their share of noise, giving the strait its name: roaring (鳴る, naru) gate (門, to).
The origin of the strait’s name is interesting, but it’s the things named after the strait that are important here. For instance, the city is obviously named after the waterway it’s on. The bridge spanning the strait’s width is the 876m13 long suspended Ōnaruto Bridge (大鳴門橋, Oonaruto Kyô), which likely inspired the Great Naruto Bridge (鳴門大橋, Naruto Oohasi) in the Naruto series.14 The minor planet 94356 Naruto, discovered Aug. 28, 2001, by Akimasa Nakamura (中村彰正, Nakamura Akimasa) at Kuma Kogen Astronomical Observatory (久万高原天体観測館, Kumakôgen Tentaikan Sokukan) was named after the strait. That one isn’t relevant, I just thought it’s neat.
The fishcake (蒲鉾, kamaboko) with the swirl of pink, narutomaki, took on the name of the strait with the addition of an emphatic maki (巻き, usu. まき), meaning ‘winding.’ Fans of Junji Ito (伊藤潤二, Itô Zyunzi) may be excitedly realizing that this maki is the same maki that forms part of uzumaki (渦巻き, usu. うずまき), meaning ‘spiral,’ which is the title of one of his works. Uzumaki is, of course, also Uzumaki Naruto’s family name in Naruto. This all gives us the connection from the city of Naruto, to the strait, then to narutomaki, so there’s just one more gap to bridge.
Remember that timber I left laying around? The idea that Naruto was originally meant to be a cooking manga? It’s finally time to hew that into lumber. The Wikipedia article backs this up with a reference to an interview with Kishimoto Masashi (岸本斉史) conducted by Wada Atsushi (和田篤志). To verify this citation, I needed to track down a copy of Naruto: Kizuna: The Words That Bind—Heaven Scroll (NARUTO –ナルト– 名言集 絆 –KIZUNA– 天ノ巻) where the interview was published. This did prove rather difficult for a time, but after giving up on finding scans and/or translations of the full book, I stumbled upon some forum threads that included translations of just the interview. So, here’s what Kishimoto had to say regarding the origins of the manga:15
“At first, I was going to draw a cooking manga. It was also a ramen manga. It was about a boy who makes ramen and the main character’s name was Naruto. […] The only thing I inherited from the beginning was the name.”
When I first started looking for this excerpt, I was hoping that, in combination with the text, I could at least construct a convincing argument for the implication that Naruto is named after fishcakes. But it turns out that Wada followed up with the exact question I’ve wanted to ask:16
Wada: “Did the name Naruto literally come from the ramen topping?”
Kishimoto: “Yes. I really liked ramen at the time, there was a ramen shop I used to go to in front of my university, and the name of that shop was ‘Ichiraku.’”
It was right there the whole time! Good job, Wada! My wife was right! Plus there’s a little thing about the name of the ramen shop in the series, that’ll certainly make someone in the audience happy!
The end… please? I’m never writing another one of these about manga. This one was way too long, I had to cut out so many fun geography facts. The next word on my list will also probably ruin me.
The first word to come to mind here was actually ‘blue-balled,’ but I do think that’s both cringe and slightly incorrect. In a moment of writer’s block, I had to use the one dictionary that would actually assist in finding a more fitting word: Wiktionary. My point is that I then discovered that ‘cockblock’ was originally AAVE in the ‘70s, which is mildly interesting. ↩︎
For narrative’s sake, I’m referring to all discussion about Naruto being named after fish cakes as ‘Enkidu,’ I guess. ↩︎
I am not sorry for the amount of metaphors in this article. ↩︎
Keep in mind here that I am reconstructing a timeline of research nearly a year later. I should take better notes. ↩︎
Kishimoto Masashi, Naruto 42, 382 (Shueisha, 2008), isbn:978-1-4215-2843-4. ↩︎
“The actors and singers (of) Eanna, whose manhood Ishtar changed to womanhood…” Absolute queen, am I right fellow queers?
Benjamin R. Foster, “IV.17 Erra and Ishum,” Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature 3rd ed. (Bethesda, Maryland: CDL Press, 2005), 904. ↩︎
You’ll notice that I’m using nihonsiki romanization today, because I’m feeling spicy.
Hepburn romanization would write じゅ as ju since the voiced alveolar fricative /z/ is palatalized when preceding the close front unrounded vowel /i/, or its semivocalic equivalent voiced palatal approximant (yod) /j/, such that /zj/ is realized as the voiced alveolo-palatal affricate [d͡ʑ] which is most easily approximated by English speakers as the voiced postaveolar affricate [d͡ʒ] and thus written as ⟨j⟩. In contrast, Nihonsiki does not alter its spelling for allophones, such that /z/ is always written as ⟨z⟩, regardless of palatalization (/zi/ > [ʑi]), affrication (/zi/ > [d͡ʑi]), and/or yod-coalescence (/zjuː/ > [d͡ʑɯː]). This system then does not enforce the aforementioned processes as they have been realized in “Standard” Japanese upon the various regional dialects of the language which may not have realized them as such. ↩︎
Wikipedia is the best citation you`re getting for this sort of thing until I finally manage to put any amount of effort into learning Japanese.
“四十八手(アダルト用語）,” Wikipedia, Retrieved Jul. 22, 2024. ↩︎
”四十八手,” Wikipedia, Retrieved Jul. 22, 2024.
Honestly, just looking at the article for the number 48 on Japanese Wikipedia leads me to believe this is still the case. ↩︎
Full disclosure, this statement may be a minor misapprehension on my part; onna seme can, in some cases, seemingly be applied to MLM couples, and may not necessarily be best to literally translate as ‘femdom.’ However, this does appear to be for the sake of BL works and may not apply to real couples. The confusion there brought about by the dichotomy of 攻め (seme) and 受け (uke). Like the English term ‘top,’ seme could mean either ‘dom’ or ‘pitcher,’ thus a term where the receiving partner takes a dominant role would be termed uke seme, which is seemingly contradictory and likely to be avoided. ↩︎
Wikipedia calls this “one of the largest bridges in the world” despite it not even ranking in the top 50 for suspension bridges alone. ↩︎
This bridge is named in manga vol. 4 ch. 33 “The Hero’s Bridge!!” (英雄の橋 !!, Eiyû no Hasi!!) and anime ep. 19 “The Demon in the Snow” (ザブザ雪に散る…, Zabuza Yuki ni Tiru…). I would go insane if I tried to find a citation for the author saying that the bridge is actually named after the real one, but it tracks, right? ↩︎
Kishimoto Masashi, Naruto: Kizuna: The Words That Bind—Heaven Scroll (Shueisha, 2015): 189, trans. shinobiguide. Archived Mar. 10, 2024. ↩︎
Kishimoto Masashi, Naruto: Kizuna: The Words That Bind—Heaven Scroll (Shueisha, 2015): 189.
I translated this excerpt myself, since I didn’t really like shinobiguide (archived) or Yagami1211’s (archived) translations of it. ↩︎
