Flower Breathing: from Kanae to Kanao

At the Butterfly Mansion, a girl smiles without saying anything and tosses a coin every time she is asked a question. Kanao Tsuyuri does not seem made for fighting. Yet when she draws, Flower Breathing makes petals bloom around her blade, and few demons can keep up with her.

Here is where this breathing style comes from, its known forms, the two women who carried it, and the terrible price of its last form. To place Flower among the other breathing styles, our page on all the Demon Slayer breathing styles presents the fourteen known styles.

What is Flower Breathing?

In Demon Slayer, Flower Breathing, Hana no Kokyū in Japanese, is a derived style. It was born from Water Breathing, one of the five basic styles that came from Sun Breathing. Like Water, it relies on flexibility and precision, but it adds a particular grace, almost a dance.

Each form bears the name of a flower or a flowering tree: plum, safflower, peony, peach. On screen, the cuts come with petals whirling around the blade. Behind this apparent gentleness, Flower remains a formidable fighting style, capable of cutting through an Upper Moon’s neck.

It is also one of the few derived styles to have passed through several generations. Most of Demon Slayer’s personal styles have only one known user. Flower, for its part, passed from Kanae to Kanao. Our article on Water Breathing presents the original style, and the one on the breathing tree shows the whole family.

The forms of Flower Breathing

Flower Breathing has seven forms, but Demon Slayer only names five. The first and third never appear. The table sets out the known ones, with their Japanese name and what they do.

The names have real poetry. Safflower is a flower that was once used to make the red of kimonos. The “futile” peonies evoke a fleeting beauty. The last form refers to the higanbana, the red spider lily, the flower of Japanese cemeteries that blooms at the autumn equinox, when the dead are honoured. A final form bearing the name of the flower of the dead, you soon understand it is not without danger.

The word “final” is not trivial. Most breathing styles number their forms up to the last. Flower, for its part, keeps an ultimate form apart, with no number, used only as a last resort.

What Flower demands of the fighter

Flower inherits its fluidity from Water, but it also demands extreme precision. Its forms multiply cuts in a small space, like the fifth and its nine linked strikes: each must land exactly, without losing balance or rhythm. It is a style for quick, light fighters, able to read the opponent before they move.

Above all, it demands extraordinary eyesight. Kanao sees what others do not: the tension of a muscle, the start of a blow, the path of a blade. Flower relies on this gift, and its final form pushes it to the limit of what the human eye can bear.

Like all breathing styles, it rests finally on Total Concentration Breathing, which Kanao masters permanently long before Tanjiro. At the Butterfly Mansion, she is the one who shows him what he still has to learn. Our article on Total Concentration Breathing explains this common foundation.

Kanae Kocho, the Flower Hashira

Flower Breathing is first of all the style of Kanae Kocho, Shinobu’s elder sister. As children, the two sisters see their parents killed by a demon. Gyomei Himejima, not yet a Hashira, saves them. They then decide to join the Demon Slayer Corps so that no other family will go through the same thing.

Kanae becomes Demon Slayer’s Flower Hashira. With Shinobu, she runs the Butterfly Mansion, where wounded demon slayers are treated. She holds a conviction rare in the Corps: she dreams of a world where humans and demons could live in peace, and she pities the demons she kills.

She dies at seventeen, killed by Doma, Upper Moon Two. Before dying, she asks Shinobu to leave the Corps and live happily. Shinobu refuses, takes her butterfly-wing haori and swears to avenge her. Our portrait of Kanae Kocho, the Flower Hashira tells her life, and the one on Shinobu Kocho, the Insect Hashira presents her sister.

The guard of Kanae’s sword, orange with four pale petals, comes as a katana replica, to display or carry in cosplay. It is filed in the katanas collection and among the Demon Slayer Corps products.

Kanao Tsuyuri, the heir

In Demon Slayer, Kanao Tsuyuri was sold as a child by her parents. The Kocho sisters come across her in the street, tied with a rope, and buy her back. But the little girl has suffered so much that she no longer decides anything for herself. Kanae gives her a coin: when a choice paralyses her, all she has to do is toss it.

Kanao learns Flower Breathing by watching, without really being taught. She has exceptional eyesight, able to catch an opponent’s slightest movement, and she passes the Final Selection at the same time as Tanjiro. She then becomes Shinobu’s disciple, her tsuguko, while keeping Kanae’s style.

At the Butterfly Mansion, she helps Tanjiro, Zenitsu and Inosuke resume training. She beats them all at the cup game, thanks to her reflexes. Our portrait of Kanao Tsuyuri, Shinobu’s pupil tells of her childhood, and our article on the Butterfly Mansion presents the place where she grew up.

Kanao comes as a pop figure, pink and green butterfly in her hair, a second butterfly resting in her hand. It is filed in the complete Kanao Tsuyuri collection and the pop figures collection.

Kanao and Tanjiro’s coin

At the end of the first season of Demon Slayer, Tanjiro leaves the Butterfly Mansion. He notices that Kanao tosses her coin before answering anything, and asks her to lend it to him. He tosses it in turn, saying that if it lands heads, Kanao will follow her own heart from now on.

The coin lands on the right side. Tanjiro takes Kanao’s hands and encourages her to listen to her inner voice. The girl, for the first time in a long time, blushes and truly smiles. The scene is short, but it changes everything for her. After Tanjiro leaves, Kanao keeps the coin, but uses it less and less.

It is the start of a bond fans follow closely, up to the last chapter of the manga. Our article on Tanjiro and Kanao tells their story. In Demon Slayer, sometimes all it takes is a coin for a heroine to start living.

Higan Shugan, the vermilion eye

This part reveals elements of the Infinity Castle arc that the anime has not yet adapted.

Flower’s final form, Higan Shugan, pushes the fighter’s eyesight beyond its limits. The world seems to slow down, every movement of the opponent becomes readable. But the effort damages the eyes, to the point of risking blindness. Kanao knows this when she uses it.

In Muzan’s castle, Kanao uses it anyway. Facing Doma, the demon who killed Kanae and then Shinobu, she has no other option left. She loses almost all the sight in one eye. The price is heavy, but it finally lets the two Kocho sisters be avenged.

Kanao and Inosuke against Doma

The fight against Doma, Upper Moon Two, is one of the strongest in the whole of Demon Slayer. Shinobu dies first, but her sacrifice hides a trap: she has poisoned her own body with wisteria, and Doma has absorbed her. The poison eats away at him from the inside.

Kanao arrives, joined by Inosuke, whose mother was also killed by Doma. With Flower Breathing at its highest level, then the final form, Kanao manages to hit the weakened demon. Together, they cut off his head. Our portrait of Doma, Upper Moon Two presents this opponent, and our article on Doma and Shinobu tells of the Insect Hashira’s trap.

Our shower curtain stages this face-off: Tanjiro with his sword raised in the foreground, Doma with his icy smile above, Kanao in a white cape on the right. It is filed in the curtains collection.

Flower on screen

On screen, Flower can be recognised by its pink petals and its arcing cuts. The studio ufotable gives it a soft, almost springlike light, which contrasts with the violence of the fights. Kanao first appears in the background, at the Butterfly Mansion, before taking her full place in the Infinity Castle.

For anime viewers, Flower still remains discreet: Kanao fights little in the first four seasons. Her big moment, facing Doma, has not yet been adapted. It is one of the most awaited fights in the rest of the Infinity Castle. Our article on the Infinity Castle sequel takes stock of what we know.

Flower and Insect, two sisters

Kanae and Shinobu are two sisters, two Hashira, and two breathing styles born from Water. Kanae practised Flower, graceful and precise like a dance. Shinobu, too slight to behead a demon, invented Insect, made of fast thrusts and poison. The two styles say a lot about their characters: one’s gentleness, the other’s contained anger.

Kanao, raised by both, brings the two legacies together. At the Mansion, she lives surrounded by Aoi Kanzaki and the three little carers, Sumi, Kiyo and Naho, a substitute family the Kocho sisters built around the wounded. It is this house, full of bandages and remedies, that she defends when she faces Doma. She carries Kanae’s style and serves as Shinobu’s disciple. When she avenges her sisters facing Doma, the whole Kocho household strikes through her. Our article on Insect Breathing presents Shinobu’s style.

To find Kanao, Shinobu and the other heroines, our page on the Demon Slayer Hashira presents the two Kocho sisters, and the one on the demons and the Twelve Kizuki presents Doma.