In short
Demon Slayer’s Corps has existed for about a thousand years, without any recognition from the Japanese state. It has several hundred members, receives no public funding, and lives entirely on the Ubuyashiki family’s fortune. Its fighters cannot carry their swords openly, and the organisation is disbanded the day the first demon dies.
Contents
All of Demon Slayer rests on a clandestine organisation nobody recognises. Hundreds of fighters, a private budget, no legal existence, and a thousand years of a war the rest of the country takes for a legend.
This article details this institution: its origin, its funding, its trades, its places, how it works and how it ends. Our page about the Hashira of the Demon Slayer Corps presents its nine commanders. Our page on the directory of the series’ characters presents all its faces, from the leader to the Kakushi.
What the Demon Slayer Corps is
| Profile | Detail |
|---|---|
| Japanese name | 鬼殺隊 (Kisatsutai) |
| Founded | about a thousand years ago, in the Heian era |
| Numbers | several hundred fighters |
| Leadership | the Ubuyashiki family, from father to son |
| Recognition | none, the state ignores its existence |
| Funding | the Ubuyashiki family’s private fortune |
| Ranks | ten levels, plus the rank of Hashira |
| Support trades | trainers, swordsmiths, Kakushi, messenger crows |
| Recruitment | the Final Selection on Mount Fujikasane |
| End | disbanded after Muzan Kibutsuji’s death |
In Demon Slayer, the Japanese name says exactly what it does. The first two characters mean killing demons, the third refers to an organised corps, and there is nothing more to the programme.
The organisation employs fighters, but not only fighters. Trainers, swordsmiths, a support brigade, nurses and messenger birds complete a whole that works like a small administration.
Its relationship with Japanese society is one of secrecy. Demon slayers move about in civilian clothes, hide their blades, avoid the police, and let residents believe whatever stories they like.
The organisation’s size remains modest given its mission. A few hundred fighters for an entire country, spread across regions, with missions assigned one by one according to the reports that come in.
An unambiguous name
The organisation’s Japanese name literally means the corps of those who kill demons. The programme fits in three characters.
With the character 滅 on the back, you can wear the Corps’ black uniform thanks to the series’ cosplay outfits.
Demon slayer uniform
Black high-collared jacket with gold buttons, large white ideogram on the back, pleated hakama and white belt.
View the product · from €49.90A thousand years of existence
The founding of Demon Slayer’s Corps goes back to the Heian era, in the years when the first demon appeared. A member of the Ubuyashiki family receives an experimental treatment, becomes Muzan Kibutsuji, and the line finds itself cursed.
A priest points out the way forward. The family must make this demon’s death its goal, for the curse will hold as long as the taint remains in the blood.
The Corps is born of this instruction. The Ubuyashiki gather fighters, fund them, and launch a hunt that will last a thousand years without ever reaching its main target.
The intermediate results are real. Generations of demon slayers eliminate demons created by Muzan, without anyone managing to trace back to him.
Our article on the Ubuyashiki family and its curse details this origin.
The hunt always fails for the same reason. The first demon hides among humans, changes face and identity, and no demon slayer knows what he looks like until the story’s last years.
A thousand years without reaching the target
The Corps kills demons for a thousand years without ever getting near the one who created them. A single man will manage it, in the sixteenth century.
An organisation the state ignores
The Corps’ status is a permanent constraint in Demon Slayer. No authority recognises it, its members are not allowed to carry a weapon in public, and the police arrest them if they get caught.
The reason comes down to credibility. Most people do not know demons exist, and swordsmen explaining that they hunt creatures at night would pass for cranks at best.
So the organisation chooses discretion. It operates at night, cleans up its battlefields, and lets disappearances be put down to accidents or wild animals.
The secrecy has its limits. Rumours circulate, some villagers know what is what, and those who come across a demon immediately understand what these young people in uniform are doing.
Our article on the Kakushi, the brigade in the shadows details the cover-up work that makes this secrecy possible.
The status has an advantage the organisation exploits. Existing for nobody, it is accountable to no authority, and decides its rules, its recruitment and its sanctions on its own.
Not allowed to carry their swords
Demon slayers have no legal existence and cannot draw their blades in public. They operate at night, in civilian clothes.
Who pays?
The budget of Demon Slayer’s Corps comes out of a single pocket. The Ubuyashiki fund the swords, the uniforms, the care, the trainers and the messenger birds, with no other resource.
Their fortune has a particular origin. The family has a gift of foresight that allows it to anticipate certain events, and it has amassed enough to last for centuries.
The dependence is total. If the family disappears, the organisation stops, which explains the care taken to hide its house and the place succession holds in how it works.
The model has a consequence for the fighters. Demon slayers are equipped and cared for, and their pay depends on their rank: about twenty thousand yen at the lowest level, as much as they like for the Hashira.
Our article on Kagaya Ubuyashiki, the demon slayers’ leader presents the man who holds the purse strings during the story.
A single family to pay for everything
Swords, uniforms, care, trainers and crows come out of the Ubuyashiki fortune. The Corps has no other resource.
The golden age of the Sengoku era
Demon Slayer’s most brilliant period goes back to the sixteenth century. A swordsman named Yoriichi Tsugikuni joins the Corps after his wife’s death, and completely changes the way of fighting.
First he brings Total Concentration Breathing. The technique lets a human body reach abilities beyond the norm, and it becomes the basis of all training.
Then he passes on his own style. Nobody manages to reproduce Sun Breathing, so he adapts it to each person’s abilities, which gives the first derived breathing styles.
The marks appear at the same time. The Hashira of this generation bear this symbol, and the human camp has never been so strong.
Our article on Yoriichi Tsugikuni, the first demon slayer tells of this period, and our page on every breathing style in the series details the styles that came out of it.
A generation that almost won
The Sengoku era Hashira bear the mark and give the demons a hard time. A single man was enough to bring the Corps to this level.
The decline after the golden age
The fall that follows is brutal in Demon Slayer. Bearers of the mark die before twenty-five, and that whole generation disappears within a few years.
The knowledge is lost with them. The texts on the marks, on Sun Breathing and on the conditions for awakening scatter, and the following generations work without knowing what their elders had found.
A betrayal makes matters worse. A demon slayer of that era goes over to the demons’ side, kills the head of the Corps and brings his head to the first demon.
The organisation then closes in on itself. The leader’s house becomes an absolute secret, and a specialised brigade is created to protect it.
Our article on Kokushibo, Upper Moon One tells of this betrayal.
Knowledge lost with its bearers
The marked generation dies before twenty-five, and its archives disappear. The following ones start again from almost nothing.
The Corps’ trades
The organisation is not just its swordsmen, and Demon Slayer takes the time to show the other functions.
Trainers recruit and train. They are often former Hashira retired from service, each specialising in one breathing style, who prepare candidates for the Final Selection.
Swordsmiths make the blades. They live in a hidden village whose location changes, and deliver the swords to their bearers themselves.
The Kakushi pick up the wounded, clean up battlefields, mend uniforms and lead convoys. The nurses run the hospital, and messenger birds carry the orders.
Our articles on the swordsmiths and their hidden village and on the Corps’ Kasugai crows detail two of these trades.
More trades than swordsmen
Trainers, swordsmiths, support brigade, nurses and bird handlers: the Corps employs as many people in support as in combat.
You will find the blades the village craftsmen forge among the series’ katana replicas, right up to the hero’s black blade.
Tanjiro katana, black blade
Black blade, wheel guard pierced with slots, black handle with red diamonds, with its black scabbard.
View the product · €99.90The places
Four places structure the organisation in Demon Slayer, and each has a precise function.
The leader’s house serves as headquarters. Its location is kept secret, and the Hashira go there only when summoned.
Mount Fujikasane hosts recruitment. The mountain, covered in wisteria, holds captured demons and serves as the ground for the entrance exam.
Swordsmith Village produces the weapons, and the Butterfly Mansion treats the wounded. Our articles on the Butterfly Mansion and its role and on the Final Selection on Mount Fujikasane detail two of these places.
A fifth network completes the whole. Wisteria houses put up passing demon slayers throughout the country, as our article on wisteria houses and their role tells.
Four places and a network
A hidden headquarters, an exam mountain, a swordsmiths’ village, a hospital, and lodging houses all over the country.
How do you get in?
Recruitment in Demon Slayer has two stages. A candidate first trains with a trainer, for several months or several years, depending on their worth.
They then present themselves at the Final Selection. Seven nights on a mountain covered in wisteria, among captured demons, without outside help and with no way to give up.
The survivors receive their status on the morning of the eighth day. A made-to-measure uniform, an engraved rank, ore to choose for the blade, and an assigned messenger bird.
The loss rate is enormous. Some twenty candidates turn up at each session, and a handful come back.
Our article on the demon slayer uniform explained details what the Corps hands over to new recruits.
Seven nights to get in
Recruitment means surviving seven nights on a mountain full of demons. A handful of candidates come back from each session.
How do you rise through the ranks?
Demon Slayer’s hierarchy has ten levels, named after the traditional Japanese calendar. Everyone enters at the lowest, and rises according to the missions completed.
The rank is engraved into the skin, by a technique called wisteria engraving. It appears on the back of the hand when the demon slayer says a password and clenches their fist, and progress is measured by missions completed.
At the top of the ladder are the Hashira. Nine posts at most, awarded to those who have cut down fifty demons or a member of the Twelve Kizuki.
Promotion is not automatic. Our article on how to become a Hashira in the series details this ladder and its conditions.
One last title exists below. The rank of Tsuguko refers to the pupil chosen by a Hashira to succeed them.
Progress comes at the cost of risk. Climbing a level means chaining missions together, and therefore increasing the chances of falling, which explains the very small number of demon slayers who reach the top of the ladder.
Ten levels and nine places
A demon slayer enters at the lowest rank and rises demon after demon. Nine Hashira posts exist, not one more.
The nine at the top of the ladder, and the whole army below them, have their Demon Slayer Corps collection, right down to the shop’s wall tapestries.
Hashira under the moon tapestry
The nine Hashira pose together under a pale moon, Tomioka in the foreground in his two-halved haori.
View the product · from €24.90The disbandment
The end of the Corps comes with Demon Slayer’s victory. Almost all the demons disappear on the death of the first of them, and a thousand-year-old organisation finds itself without a reason to exist in a single morning.
The disbandment is declared straight away. The survivors go home, the posts disappear, and the places change use or close.
The family curse dies out at the same time. The leader in office, still a child, then lives to a very advanced age, which no man of his line had ever known.
The epilogue shows the survivors’ descendants a century later. Our article on what becomes of Tanjiro at the end tells of this period.
The detail to remember is the duration. A thousand years of war end in one night, and the organisation that waged it disappears the next day.
Disbanded the next day
The Corps disappears as soon as its war is won. A thousand years of organisation stop in one morning.
