Today I solved the mystery of Bojutsu 棒術.

I was thinking about how “Bojutsu” is listed as the official fighting style of Street Fighter’s character “Eagle”, and how that makes no sense at all since Eagle doesn’t fight with a bo staff (he uses what appear to be eskrima sticks).

Long story short, his official fighting style is listed as 棒術 which translates literally to something more like “stick fighting” or “art of the stick”. “Bojutsu” is also a correct interpretation, but only if the context is there (which it is not, as he doesn’t use a 6 foot staff).

• First I found the Wikipedia article for Bojutsu.
• Then I copied the kanji from that page 棒術.
• Then I did a google search of the kanji and looked for images that were similar to Eagle’s weapons.
• When I found one, I translated the page and found it translates to “stick fighting”.
• Then I confirmed the translation with a fluent Japanese speaker.
• Then I also checked it in Google Translate.
• Then I also checked each character (棒 and 術) separately [1] [2].

棒 – noun
rod, pole, stick, club

術 – noun
art, way, means

That’s how I figured out Eagle’s fighting style is “Stick Fighting”, and was incorrectly translated to “Bojutsu”. Case closed.

I suppose it could also be a bit of a pun or play on words as one translation of stick is “bar” which would make it “Bar Fighting” (Eagle is a bouncer in the story-line). That might be on purpose since Hakan’s translations also contain puns and jokes.

According to his Street Fighter Zero 3 Double Upper prologue:

Eagle, a bouncer from Great Britain who’s a bojutsu expert. His desire for the title of Dalyell Baronet has set his eyes on the world.

With this in mind I started reading up on what is the meaning of Dalyell Baronet. Turns out it’s a real thing.

Long story short, it was a title set up in 1685 for Thomas Dalyell, a Scottish general. The baronetcy was set up to always pass to his eldest male heir if present, but failing that, interestingly, could go to tailzie. Which means I
The title could pass to someone arbitrary, not a blood relative.

Now, according to Tiamat’s Plot Guide:

His bio in both the Street Fighter Fanbook and All About Capcom say he’s an inanimate, coldblooded and cruel bodyguard for a newly-rich noble family’s bodyguard.

These two sources taken together sound to me like the Dalyells are most likely the royal family he works for, and he may be made the next baron if he does a good enough job for them.

It could also mean, since they imply he is homosexual so much, that his partner is a Dalyell, and he hopes to inherit the title that way (wouldn’t be any heirs born).

Of course it could also mean he has Dalyell blood and is a legitimate heir (with the talzie stuff being irrelevant) but that seems unlikely to me because:

1: Seems like they would have mentioned he had royal blood.
2: The talzie is somewhat unique for a baronetcy, why pick that particular unique title if it was irrelevant.

The more I study about Sennin, the more I feel like the Street Fighter Plot Guide really wasn’t very thorough in Oro’s section. I guess that shouldn’t surprise me though considering I once argued with the author (Vasili10) that Gouki may very well be an Oni based on his description, and the author seemed loathe to accept the mythological implications. I consider that settled since Capcom created an “Oni” version of Gouki later, way after our argument (I wrote this 07/27/09).

So anyway, there is a thing called “Sennin” in Japanese mythology, which seems to perfectly describe Oro, and once again the author of the plot guide has completely ignored mythology and instead simply given the literal (read “lazy”) translation “aged person” and mentions he happens to be a hermit.

The Encyclopedia Mythica had this to say:

Sennin
by Micha F. Lindemans
The immortal spirit of a saint living in the mountains in Japanese mythology. This saint, a hermit, who has acquired so much merit by his asceticism that he can perform miracles, such as speaking after death, flying on the back of a tortoise or on a cloud, or causing a gourd to give birth to a horse. Sennings may speak to mortals in dreams or appear in the shape of ordinary men. They are accompanied by their familiars: a toad, a horse, or a tortoise.

So besides him being called a Sennin in Street Fighter III, they are both immortal, they both perform magic, they both are accompanied by tortoises,

and they both fly around on the back of something.

Seems like he’s obviously one of these mythological things to me, and I would think it would be obvious to anyone familiar with Japanese culture as it is a common Japanese character name.

Here is a better translation of “Sennin” than the one in the Street Fighter Plot Guide:

The Japanese term sennin is a loanword from Middle Chinese SenNyin 仙人 “immortal person”, known also as xian “immortal; transcendent; genie; mage; djinn; sage; hermit” in Daoism.

Here is a Sennin wikipedia article with more information if you are interested.

In googling I have found that their are also Sennin in Naruto, but I don’t know much about Naruto. Feel free to fill me in.

Disregard my article if you feel that it makes more sense that Oro is simply an “aged person”.

Update 04/30/14: I just found out that the author of the plot guide (Vasili10) was revealed to be a huge dumbass. Called it! [1], [2]