The horrors of the Shibuya Incident loom large over the second season of Jujutsu Kaisen. This atmosphere of grief carries over to season 3 of the anime series, which premiered with an exciting one-hour special on Jan. 8. The latest season opens with Yuji Itadori being consumed by guilt in the aftermath of Shibuya, with Choso assisting him in the routine cleanup of curses around the city. This isn’t news for those who watched the compilation film Jujutsu Kaisen: Execution last year, which stitches the highlights of the Shibuya Incident with Itadori’s Extermination Arc.
[Ed. note: This article contains spoilers for upcoming arcs in Jujutsu Kaisen and its source material.]
The ending of Execution leads up to the Culling Game, a deadly battle royale orchestrated by Kenjaku, who had previously set the events at Shibuya in motion. When Megumi Fushiguro tells Yuji about the impending tournament, he refers to Kenjaku as Noritoshi Kamo, who is historically known for his evil deeds as a jujutsu sorcerer. The reference to Kamo might feel confusing, as his descendant — who is also named Noritoshi Kamo — is currently a third-year student at Jujutsu High.
While the connection between Kenjaku and the original Kamo is pretty clear in Gege Akutami’s manga, the season 3 premiere doesn’t explain it at all, adding to the lack of clarity regarding Kenjaku’s true motivations. With this in mind, here’s everything you need to know about Kenjaku ahead of the Culling Game arc in season 3.
Who is Kenjaku, and why does he inhabit different bodies over time?
In Jujutsu Kaisen 0, Satoru Gojo kills off dear-friend-turned-antagonist Suguru Geto after he gets fatally injured during a battle with Yuta Okkotsu. In season 1 of Jujutsu Kaisen, we see someone with Geto’s appearance gathering powerful cursed spirits in an attempt to disrupt order in Jujutsu society. As the real Geto died in Jujutsu Kaisen 0, this Pseudo-Geto figure emerged as a mysterious antagonist with cryptic intentions.
Over time, we learn that this ancient curse user is Kenjaku, a curse user born over a thousand years before the events of the series. He possesses an innate cursed technique called Brain Transplant, which allows him to swap bodies with others by transplanting his brain into the target’s body, even if it’s dead. After Gojo killed Geto, Kenjaku possessed the latter’s body because of his powerful cursed technique, Cursed Spirit Manipulation. He eventually also used this likeness to disarm Gojo in Shibuya for the moment needed to trap him inside the Prison Realm.
Kenjaku indulges in body possession and brain swapping because he inherits the abilities of the host after taking over. He hops bodies to fulfill his intellectual curiosity about the nature of cursed energy and its relationship to sorcerers and non-sorcerers alike. Kenjaku’s endgame is one of the most baffling aspects of Jujutsu Kaisen, as his motivations are more complex than world domination or the base instinct to kill. To that end, Kenjaku has been puppeteering major events in Jujutsu society for over a thousand years, with the aim of pushing human evolution to its next stage through unprecedented chaos.
What is Kenjaku’s connection to the first Noritoshi Kamo?
Noritoshi Kamo lived over a hundred and fifty years before the events of Jujutsu Kaisen, and his horrific deeds are considered a stain on the Kamo family name. Kamo’s infamous cruelty might not have been his true personality at all, as Kenjaku had taken over his body at some point. This happened during the Meiji Era in Japan, which is when Kenjaku used Kamo to conduct vile experiments, resulting in the Cursed Womb: Death Paintings.
Given Pseudo-Kamo’s curiosity in cursed energy, he created nine cursed objects by forcefully mixing the blood of a cursed spirit and a pregnant woman. The cursed spirit, Mahito, was able to steal the first three Death Painting Wombs during the Kyoto Goodwill arc, and they got incarnated into Eso, Kechizu, and Choso shortly after.
When Megumi namedrops Noritoshi Kamo as the orchestrator of the Culling Game, he is referring to Kenjaku, as he had puppeteered the original Kamo’s body back then. Kamo’s descendant, the younger Noritoshi Kamo, will be forced to participate in the upcoming Culling Game, where he will team up with Maki Zenin against season 3 antagonist Naoya Zenin. It’s also worth noting that Megumi and Yuji aren’t aware of the name “Kenjaku” at this point, which might explain the older Kamo reference.
What was Kenjaku’s goal in Shibuya, and why did he announce the Culling Game?
Kenjaku’s motivations are closely linked to his fixation with Master Tengen, the immortal jujutsu sorcerer who reinforces the protective barriers around all Jujutsu High locations. The entirety of Jujutsu society and culture owes a debt to Tengen, and his presence is crucial to the preservation of societal order. Apart from his immortality, Tengen’s strengths lie in maintaining powerful barriers, which help suppress cursed spirits and protect budding jujutsu sorcerers. Kenjaku had a close relationship with Tengen at one point, and he wants to merge humanity with Tengen to bring about the next stage of evolution. While Kenjaku attempted this merger twice in the past, his plans were thwarted by members of the Gojo Clan (who possess the rare extrasensory ability, Six Eyes) on both occasions.
As Satoru Gojo also has Six Eyes, Kenjaku planned the Shibuya massacre to lure Gojo and seal him inside the Prison Realm. With someone as powerful as Gojo out of the picture, he is able to orchestrate the Culling Game, which will act as a necessary step for his plans to merge Japanese non-sorcerers with Tengen. (While this sounds confusing, more details about the role of the Culling Game in this plan will be revealed during season 3.)
Kenjaku’s motives for this merger boil down to apathy towards non-sorcerers and a perverse curiosity to see what might happen if he shatters the balance between order and chaos. Jujutsu sorcerers and cursed spirits aren’t exempt from his schemes either, as Kenjaku views everyone as a pawn. We’re offered a glimpse into this mindset during his conversation with special grade sorcerer Yuki Tsukumo in the aftermath of the Shibuya Incident:
I do not wish for a world without cursed spirits. Or an idyllic and peaceful world. Non-sorcerers. Sorcerers. Cursed spirits. These are all possibilities of cursed energy in the form of human beings. And yet, there must be more to human potential. I tried to bring that forth myself. But that doesn’t work. What I can create does not exceed the bounds of my own potential. The answer is always flickering darkly in chaos. Do you understand? What I should have created was chaos that not even I could control.
Why is Kenjaku invested in Sukuna, and by extension, Yuji?
Sukuna, who is currently trapped inside Yuji’s body, is the pinnacle of unchecked chaos due to the unprecedented amount of cursed energy he inhabits. Sukuna and Kenjaku go way back, as the latter helped the former live on after his defeat in the Heian era, by splitting his soul into 20 cursed objects (in the form of Sukuna’s fingers). In keeping with Kenjaku’s tendency to play the long game, he engineered the birth of the perfect vessel for Sukuna, ensuring that the child would grow up to play a crucial role in his schemes.
To illustrate this, we are shown a brief flashback from baby Yuji’s perspective in the season 3 premiere. Although the implications of this flashback are spelled out in the manga, anime-only viewers will soon find out that Yuji playing unwitting host to Sukuna is not a coincidence.
To further his vision of chaos, Kenjaku needs Sukuna at the pinnacle of his power, which means reuniting him with the 20 cursed fingers that were scattered to preserve his soul. Currently, Yuji has been forced to ingest 15 out of 20 cursed fingers, which explains his anxieties about Sukuna’s escalating powers and his ability to overpower Yuji’s will. The upcoming Culling Game is only a stepping stone for Kenjaku’s horrific vision of the future, which won’t be confined to Japan and will inevitably spill over to the rest of the world.
The first two episodes of Jujutsu Kaisen season 3 are currently streaming on Crunchyroll.
