The Twelve Kingdoms Forum

K, this may be a silly topic, but is the 12k round (like earth) or is it flat?

The maps make it seem flat and they say that people just sail to the end of the kyokai and never make it back (die, or get to Hourai or Konron)
But, logically, planets are round.( I assume that 12k is another dimention of earth, or another planet or something.)

Could the tentei have some magical 'box' around the area?
(If any of you have seen scrapped princess, something like that world)

Mind you that Japan is about 1/3rd the size of each kingdom, so the 12k world is a good size. And, there's no recorded/mentioned occurance of someone sailing from the coast of Kei and reaching Han ( without going around other countries)

Sorry for the odd topic idea.. but who knows? maybe some of you will find it interesting to discuss.

http://www015.upp.so-net.ne.jp/juunikirin/index.htm has info on that. It says the world is flat and each country is the size of China.

This could conceivably be possible when considering Quantum Mechanics. There are multiple dimensions and "universes" may exist on something like a membrane. One theory of the beginning of our "universe" has two membranes touching momentarily and creating the "big bang". Anyway - membranes could exist only a few inches from other, or be far away. If some dude wanted to call himself Tentei and found a way onto another membrane he could use bio-engineering to construct it. The laws of nature that we are used to in our membrane would not necessarily have to be the same ones on another membrane. We are told that atoms are the smallest component, but in Quantum Mechanics strings are. These strings are incredibly small and are very chaotic in nature. The scientists are still trying to figure out how this chaos becomes the laws of nature that we see. Basically, the chaos, if seen in our level would mean that when you poured a liquid into three different glasses it could come out in three different colors.

Short story - the laws of nature of 12K do not have to follow our laws of nature.

Short, short story - it's just a book and the author can do whatever she wants.

Fantasy story - She has found a way to travel between membranes and is stuck in Tai so we have to find a way to rescue her so she can come home and write the next book

hmm. i dont think 1 country is as big as china. China is super huge and if there is 12 china out there, hmm cant imagine how people there travel. Oh yeah, let us rescue Ono-San from there. I'm sure she will give us souvenir of JK story.

In the first book it was told that the world in 12 is flat, and also (if I remember correctly) that it takes 8-12 months to walk by foot from one side to the other for each country. This gives a rough estimation about the sizes of the countries.

PS, interesting to see the brane-world theory to appear here.

Well, the Shoku and Meishoku were pretty similar to the two kinds of wormholes that could happen at string level, and the sky during the shoku when Taiki was blown to Horai looked like an aurora borealis which is caused by electromagnetic radiation, which by the way is the strongest force.

http://img119.imageshack.us/img119/926/ ... map2lx.jpg

I hope this links right (I haven't tried this before).

I superimposed a view of China over a map of the North & South American continent. I have all the continent kingdoms, but there wasn't room for the islands because I was using a globe view instead of a map (flat) view. Also, I had to cut off the top "tail" part of China so I compensated by adding a bit to the top (hence the square section). I want to try and get a "real" view of the actual map of the 12kingdoms on a map of our world for reference, but I though this would be an interesting start.

Wow! Thanks for the image. It gives you at least an idea of their world compares to ours.

Elysium wrote:In the first book it was told that the world in 12 is flat, and also (if I remember correctly) that it takes 8-12 months to walk by foot from one side to the other for each country. This gives a rough estimation about the sizes of the countries.

I found the following:

"You said it takes about four months to travel from one kingdom to another?"

"That's right."

"Is there any other way to travel than walking?"

That's considerably smaller and assuming an average speed of 15 miles a day, it means each kingdon is about 2000 miles across. That makes them about the same size as China / Continental US / Europe. That is huge - especially at a medieval tech level.

I don't think that each kingdom is that big, otherwise it would have taken months for Youko to get to En from when she was in Kou.

It did take her months. At least 3 or 4 (maybe more - I would have to look). I think it was fall or winter when she arrived in Kou and Spring when she arrived at the En Palace. Part of that trip was by a ship, which is much faster than walking. When she got to En, she only went part way to the capital before Rakashun figured out who she was and then En-ou came and took her the rest of the way to the palace. So there were a couple shortcuts involved.

I said 8 months in the last post because I roughly remembered that it should take four month or something for Youko to reach the north boundary of Kou, and she started from somewhere in the middle (in the north-south direction) of Kou, so I just multiplied that number with 2.

Regarding the Earth map, it was interesting, eventhough the scales won't be correct on a globe. China's total area is 9600000 sq km, while the total area of the Earth is 495000000 sq km, so if the each country in 12 has the same size as China, then the whole world in 12 might be a little smaller than Earth. This depends however also on the size of the oceans in 12.

PS, the electromagnetic force is only strongest among the long ranged forces .

Just one thing interesting when I read Kasyo no Yume. In the book, Taiki was planning to visit Renrin and to travel from Tai to Ren takes half a month even using fast-running kijyuus. They took half a month to reach Ren- taking the route starting from Ryu, travelling along the coastline to Kyou, Han and finally to Ren.

Why couldn't they travel northwest of Tai? They should appear at Ren which is on the extreme southwest side of the map. It's definitely a shorter route than what they took if their world is round. So that probably means the 12 kingdom world is flat.

Here's a pic of the route if you don't get what I mean. White for the route they took and black for the route they could have taken if the 12 kingdoms world is round?

Actually, (from what I'm remembering), you're forgetting "Wa" to the far East, and there's also the Youma kingdom that seems to be mentioned but its location is unknown. This world might very well be spherical, but so large that circumnavitaging from Tai to Ren would take much longer than half a month to do.

Zitch wrote:This world might very well be spherical, but so large that circumnavitaging from Tai to Ren would take much longer than half a month to do.

You have a point there =/ I haven't finish reading the novels so.. never heard of Youma kingdom ^^''

Ah.. just speculating ^^''

I've heard of a Youma Kingdom but I can't remember where, Or maybe it's just considered that the outer "seas" are the Youma's land?

I don't think there is a "Youma kingdom" as such, at least not one you could find on a map. However, I think there are stories and tales mentioned about such a "place". It strikes me as the first thing someone would invent if they were telling fairy stories.

Whether there really is a Youma kingdom - who knows?

I think it would make a good reason for the inhabitants of the twelve kingdoms to consider the number 13 unlucky, though.

I looked at Eugene Woodbury's translation of "Shadow of the Moon..." and in Chapter 38 Rakashun is telling Youko about the Kyokai. He tells her that it goes on forever, and explorers who sailed off into it never return. Youko decides at that point that the earth is flat, and Rakashun is shocked that anyone wouldn't know that.

I think it makes sense to consider the world an alternate dimension that exists parallel to our earth, and therefore does not have to follow our natural laws. Once a ship left the continent area some wierd space warp could take over and send the ship on a journey over an endless ocean devoid of life.

But the question remains - what happens to the explorers? Do they simply run out of food and starve? Are they eaten by Youma? Do they actually reach the Sea of Japan and can't find a way back? My bets are on starvation. Even the explorers of 300 years ago had to pull over and reprovision. No sailing ship can travel the earth on a full hold - the hold isn't big enough to carry everything.

Hmm well.
What if they sent some Sennin to explore?

They basically don't have to eat to stay alive ( example of... a.. that land lord that was trapped by his sun ( in the EN arc)).
It would suck to have to roam an empty sea forever XD

The feeling I always got when reading/watching 12k is that the twelve kingdoms are continents on are world that are merely unreachable except through Shoku. 12k isn't in a world of it's own...just sort of in its own dimensional pocket.

If you follow the book version, it is flat. It was proven when Nakajima reach the port town of Ko (before leaving for En) and scan the horizons and saw the world is indeed flat.

Thus she knows if the world is round she should be able to prove it by scaning the horizon and see the movement of ships as they move further away from the port.

Jinx999 wrote:

Elysium wrote:In the first book it was told that the world in 12 is flat, and also (if I remember correctly) that it takes 8-12 months to walk by foot from one side to the other for each country. This gives a rough estimation about the sizes of the countries.

I found the following:

"You said it takes about four months to travel from one kingdom to another?"

"That's right."

"Is there any other way to travel than walking?"

That's considerably smaller and assuming an average speed of 15 miles a day, it means each kingdon is about 2000 miles across. That makes them about the same size as China / Continental US / Europe. That is huge - especially at a medieval tech level.

Yeah, that's in Shadow of the Moon, when Youko is interrogating Takki about the world. Takki says it would take 3 months to walk from the eastern edge of Kou to the western. It's due to mountains or oceans that it allegedly takes four months to travel between kingdoms, although I have trouble understanding that latter figure. Suzu's sail from Sai to Kei should be more informative but I don't have notes on that yet. I'd note that Takki is not a high-authority source, so any contradiction within the text should take priority.

Even at a complete crawl of 10 miles a day, that's still 900x900 miles, a fifth the area of the US or modern China (which is somewhat bigger than China 2000 years ago, I think.) And 20 or 30 miles a day wouldn't be implausible for a determined walker, giving us sizes comparable to the US or twice as big. China is about 25x bigger than Japan.

Of course, this may depend on how straight the roads are, but still, I think these kingdoms are Big, as if Tentei wanted to run 12 independent experiments based off of old China in parallel.

Flying is a lot faster. From Youko2: chapter 48 had Youko and Keiki taking 2 days to cross half of Kei on shirei -- presumably slow ones, since earlier Shoukei used a kitsuryou (high class flying horse youju, though sugu (tiger) is even better, or at least more expensive) which was said to cross a whole kingdom in two days. I thought I saw one day, but maybe that's for a kirin. There's also whether or not you're *resting* the flyer.

tiaopiak wrote:If you follow the book version, it is flat. It was proven when Nakajima reach the port town of Ko (before leaving for En) and scan the horizons and saw the world is indeed flat.

Thus she knows if the world is round she should be able to prove it by scaning the horizon and see the movement of ships as they move further away from the port.

It's Chapter 47, trying to get into Agan. I don't think she's described as seeing anything conclusive, though. Sails nearby, an "unbroken horizon" beyond the peninsula. "How this world could be flat was a mystery to her." To measure curvature you'd want to see sails actually shrinking (flat) or disappearing over a horizon (curved). Those giant mountains the government lives on would do as well... without curvature seems like they'd be visible across the kingdom.

This conversation is also interesting, because Youko came from "our" (round) world. But the universe she ends up in isn't... And the knowledge (the world is round) that Youko has, doesn't really affect her in the story.

I Supose its flat.

When they talked about the Horizon there seemed to be no end.

By "Youma Kingdom" you might be thinking of the Yellow Sea. Youma live there moreso than in any kingdom (I think).