“Shippuden” Meaning in Japanese — The Whole Story

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Let’s put on our otaku hats and tackle a bit of Japanese language via pop culture and history.

We’re going to be talking about the meaning of the word shippuden.

For those of you up on your Japanese anime, that should set off a light of recognition immediately.

It’s the sub-title to the second part of the famous shounen action anime, Naruto.

The word is pretty interesting and its importance in the title of the show is the cause of some speculation.

And there’s even a bit of a fascinating linguistic past to one form of the word.

I’ll be dropping the skinny on all of that in just a sec.

But first, let’s take a broad look and just understand what shippuden means in simple, plain language.

 

What does Shippuden mean?

Shippuden means “legend of strong wind.” Shippuden is made up of two words—shippu and den. Shippu is a noun and means “a swift, strong wind.” Den is also a noun and in this case means something like “legend.” In most languages, it gets translated more naturally to “hurricane chronicle.”

 

Defining Shippuden in Detail, Part One: Shippu

So, as you noticed, we’re going to have to break this down into two parts. First, we’ll take a look at shippu, then den.

First up, we get a definition in two parts from a Japanese dictionary.

① はやく吹く風。はやて。

②  ビューフォート風力階級 5 の風。 → 風力階級

 

That first definition is super straight forward. “Fast blowing wind.” And then it offers another way to say the same word, hayate.

I’ll explain that last part in more detail in just a sec.

The second part of the definition refers to something called the “Beaufort Scale.”

The Beaufort Scale was invented in the early 19th century by an officer in the Royal Navy and describes wind speeds and their effects across thirteen steps, from 0 to 12.

The definition puts a shippu at a Beaufort Scale rating of 5.  We can directly translate that to its English equivalent.

On the Beaufort Scale it’s known as a “Fresh Breeze.”

A fresh breeze is clocked at 19-24 mph (29-38 km/h) and causes small trees to begin to sway and makes small waves form on inland waters. It’s the last rated wind state before warning flags begin to be flown.

The word shippu is written with the Chinese characters (kanji)  疾風.

That first character means “rapidly.” It’s made up of two components.

The outside one, covering the left and top, means “sickness” and inside is the component, aka radical, for “arrow.” A sick arrow.

Now, these combinations of radicals don’t always have a direct impact on the overall kanji’s meaning, but they are often illustrative of an internal logic (and at worst they provide nice anchors for your mind to latch onto if you want to memorize them).

This character can be found in the words for “illness” (including the names of several specific illnesses), “long time ago,” and “sudden and violent thunder.” Make of that what you will.

The second kanji, 風, just means “wind.” The component that drapes over the top and sides means “windy” all on its own and the component inside means … bug. Ew.

This character can be found in the words for “common cold,” “bath,” and “balloon.” Another strange one.

You’ll also find it used as the title of the 55th episode of Naruto: Shippuden. For that episode, the kanji sits alone and means “Wind” in English, and is pronounced kaze in Japanese.

You’ll also find this character at the head of the word for Naruto’s powerful “Wind Style: Rasengan” move.  

Naruto invents this one himself and uses it to great effect, eventually improving on it by turning it into a shuriken-style attack.

The significance of this will get discussed a little farther down!

You’ll find 疾風 in the words for “strong Spring storm,” “with lightning speed,” and “Sturm und Drang” (Storm and Stress), an 18th century German literary and musical movement dealing with the subjectivity of emotions in response to the rise of the Enlightenment.

Take that one to your next trivia event!

疾風 is read shi-ppu, though it can also carry the pronunciation of hayate.

In Japanese, very often, each individual kanji can be read several different ways.

And, in some cases, combinations of kanji, meaning the exact same thing, can be read different ways.

The reasons for this, and the uses of the idiosyncrasies, are manifold.

The origins are typically historic and the usages are usually either artistic in nature or used to pry apart nuances.

If you’re a military history fan, you might recognize hayate from the names of two famous instruments of war—a warship and a fighter plane.

First, there’s the Japanese destroyer the Hayate, which was written exactly as above: 疾風.

Launched in 1925, the Hayate was the first warship lost by the Japanese in World War II when it was sunk off the coast of Wake Island.

Just weeks later, development began on one of the most fearsome fighter planes in the Japanese arsenal, the Nakajima Ki-84 Hayate.

Again, the name was written with those exact same characters, 疾風. The Ki-84 Hayate, known to the Allies as “Frank,” would fly for the rest of the war.

 

Defining Shippuden in Detail, Part Two: Den

Den, despite being such a small word, offers a lot more versatility in its definition. Here we get four different meanings piled on each other.

 

①  古くから言い伝えられていること。また、その話。

②  人の一生を記したもの。伝記。

③  ある型にはまったやり方。方法。

④  律令制下の交通通信制度の一。七道沿いの郡家に伝馬を五頭ずつ配置し、地方官の赴任、囚人の輸送など、不急の往来に用いた。

 

That first one says, “Stories handed down orally from ancient times.”

The next says, “Things written down about a person’s development. A biography.” For example, you might see a book title “A Life of Napoleon” translated as “Napoleon 伝.”

Third, “A way of doing something suitably. Method.”

For the last one, we take a bit of a left turn.  “Ancient Japanese institution of communication.

Used for non-urgent correspondence regarding transport of prisoners, relocation of government officials, and deployment of post horses in the seven districts of ancient Japan.”

Actually, I’m particularly unsure of my translation of that last clause, so I’m turning to a Japanese-to-English dictionary for another opinion.

They simplify it, suggesting that den was an ancient Japanese means of distant communication and horseback transportation.

The kanji for den is 伝.

As a single character, it means, in its most fundamental sense, “transmission.”

It’s found in the words for “tradition,” “publicity,” “assistance,” “contagion,” and “heredity.” In shippuden, it means something like “legend.”

 

What does it mean in Naruto: Shippuden?

I know, I know, this is the real reason you’re here. So, let’s get down to it. What does shippuden have to do with the second part of Naruto?

Contrary to at least one joking suggestion, it has nothing to do with fan “ships” in the series.

In fact, it means… well, nothing explicitly.

Despite being translated in other countries as “Hurricane Chronicles,” as far as I can see, there’s no plot-important hurricane driving this chapter in the Naruto series.

There’s one suggestion that it comes from a specific power that the main character, Naruto discovers.

In episode 55 he learns that he has the wind chakra.

Over the course of the series, Naruto uses this information to hone a wind-based skill which he uses it to defeat his foes in battle.

He eventually develops the Wind Release: Rasen-shuriken, a twirling, focused blast of lethal wind.

Kinda like a super-charged shippu if you ask me.

If that’s the case, then this series is considered to be primarily a story of Naruto’s development of his wind powers.

That, of course, would result in great amounts of debate.

There’s also the potential nature of Naruto’s own name, Naruto Uzumaki.

Both his first and last name can mean “whirlpool,” and a strong wind can conjure up images of a whirlwind.

There’s a potential connected nature there that some fans have grasped on to.

Let’s not forget what I mentioned earlier.

The characters 疾風 carry a natural martial suggestion to them since at least World War II.

Perhaps the name of this fighting-genre anime was inspired by the connotations of the warship and warbird that carried these same characters.

After all, Naruto is, at heart, a show about a handful of soldiers.

 

That’s All Folks

There you have it. Everything you ever wanted to know about shippuden and much, much, much more I bet!

Now you’ll be more than set to wade out into the waters of otaku territory and discuss the inner nature of Naruto from a multitude of different angles!