Sun-Breathing is the most powerful of all the breathing styles in Demon Slayer, and Tanjiro looks suspiciously like Yoriichi, the man who created him.
WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Koyoharu Gotouge’s Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba manga, available in English via Viz Media.
Yoriichi Tsugikuni is one of the most important and mysterious characters in Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaibathe tradition. The creator of Sun-Breathing, the original and most powerful of all breathing styles, Yoriichi is the undisputed GOAT when it comes to Demon Slayers.
Although he died years before the present day of the series, his Sun-Breather lives on thanks to Tanjiro, who now wields the most powerful breathing style and bears a striking resemblance to the original Sun-Breather. Yoriichi, like many in a world filled with demons, lived a tragic life, but his relationship with the Kamado family offers a surprising twist in one of Murderer of demonsFrequently Asked Questions: Are Yoriichi and Tanjiro Related?
Yoriichi was born with the mark of a Sun-Breather in a time before breathing styles existed. He did not speak until he was seven years old, which led his family to believe that he was hard of hearing. His mother prayed to the Sun Gods that he might hear and gave him the Hanafuda Earrings as amulets.
He was a master swordsman even as a child thanks to his ability to see the Transparent World. Yoriichi could see inside people’s bodies and watch his opponent’s muscle contractions to predict how they were going to move. Much later in his life, after his wife and unborn child were killed by demons, Yoriichi met members of the Demon Slayer Corps and taught them breathing styles, though none of them could handle Sun-Breathing, not even his own twin brother.
When Yoriichi had a fateful encounter with Muzan Kibutsuji, he compared the Progenitor of Demons to magma gushing out of a volcano, boiling and boiling as if to consume everything. He knew at that moment that he had been born with the power of solar breath for the sole purpose of defeating Muzan. In fact, Yoriichi defeated Muzan in an instant in such a perfect display of swordsmanship that Kibutsuji’s cells still tremble hundreds of years later as they recall the encounter. Unfortunately, Yoriichi had a question for Kibutsuji before eliminating him, allowing the latter to escape.
Yoriichi was considered a failure for allowing Muzan to slip through his fingers at the same time it was learned that his own brother decided to become a demon known as Kokushibo, ranking higher than one of the twelve Kizuki. Yoriichi considered the Breath of the Sun to be a kind of divine power that he was blessed with, and it pained him that he couldn’t use his gift to rid the world of demons while his own brother succumbed. Sun-Breathing’s divine nature is why Tanjiro Kamado bears such a striking resemblance to Yoriichi, even though the two are not related. Muichiro Tokito is Yoriichi’s only living blood relative; Mist Hashira is a descendant of the child that Michikatsu Tsugikuni, Yoriichi’s twin brother, left behind when he became a Demon Slayer and later a demon.
When Yoriichi was still a Demon Slayer, he saved the Kamado family from demons and remained a close friend of the family. After he failed to defeat Muzan and saw his brother turn into a demon, he visited the Kamados one last time. While he was there, Suyako (the mother) asked to see the Solar Breathing forms and Sumiyoshi (the father) engraved them in her memory while Yoriichi performed them. When Yoriichi gave him Hanafuda earrings, the Kamado family knew they would never see him again, and vowed to pass down Sun-Breathing to his descendants in honor of his debt to him.
It seems that it is nothing more than a simple coincidence that the Kamado men have the same auburn hair as Yoriichi, and the Hanafuda earrings they have inherited and that Tanjiro now wears are the same pair once worn by Yoriichi himself. While the Kamados transmitted Sun-Breather forms with near-perfect accuracy, it wasn’t until Tanjiro that the Mark of a chosen Sun-Breather appeared on one of them.
Yoriichi and Tanjiro are connected by being chosen to run Sun-Breathing, but Yoriichi died long after his wife and son died, meaning he had no direct descendants. At Murderer of demons In the final chapter of the manga, Yoriichi and his family have been reincarnated and are seen in the deep background of a panel as Tanjiro’s own descendants make their way to school.
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