Why does Tomioka say he is not a Hashira?

He is the first Hashira we meet in Demon Slayer, in the very first episode, and one of the strongest in the Corps. Yet Giyu Tomioka tells anyone who will listen that he is not the Water Hashira, and that he is not like the others.

The line annoys his colleagues, intrigues Tanjiro and gets fans talking a lot. It hides an old wound, which the series reveals little by little. Our page on the Demon Slayer Hashira presents Giyu among the nine.

The short answer: he does not feel worthy

Tomioka does not despise the other Hashira in Demon Slayer. He despises himself. In his mind, his colleagues earned their rank, and he received his through an accident someone else paid for.

This feeling has a simple name: survivor’s guilt. Tomioka survived where his best friend died, and he is convinced that it was the other who should have lived.

The problem comes from the way he speaks. Tomioka expresses himself in short sentences, without ever explaining what he means, and his words almost always take on the opposite meaning of what he thinks.

A line everyone gets wrong

The best-known scene comes at the start of the Hashira Training. The Hashira meet to organise the Corps’ preparation, and Giyu leaves them, letting drop that he is not like them.

Sanemi and Obanai hear arrogance in it. To them, Tomioka thinks he is above the group and refuses to stoop to working with the others. The meeting ends in a tension no one tries to ease.

It is not the first time. On Mount Natagumo, Shinobu tells him with a smile that this is why nobody likes him, and Giyu replies, offended, that he is not hated. The line gets a laugh, and it says everything about his inability to make himself understood.

Demon Slayer plays on this gap for seasons. The most taciturn character in the series is also the one whose rare sentences cause the most misunderstandings. Our article on Giyu and Shinobu, the Hashira duo looks back at these exchanges.

Tsutako, the sister who hid him

The wound begins before the Demon Slayer Corps. Tomioka has a big sister, Tsutako, whom he adores and who raises him after their parents’ death.

On the eve of her wedding, a demon attacks the house. Tsutako hides her little brother and dies in his place. Tomioka survives because she protected him, and it is the first time he finds himself alive in someone else’s place.

Nobody believes him when he talks about a demon. Alone and scarred, he ends up with Sakonji Urokodaki, the former Water Hashira, who trains orphans like him to become demon slayers. Our article on Sakonji Urokodaki, the master in the tengu mask presents this old man.

That is where he meets Sabito, a boy of the same age, with a past as heavy as his own. The two become inseparable.

Sabito, the friend who passes the Selection in his place

At thirteen, Tomioka and Sabito set off together for the Final Selection, seven days of survival on Mount Fujikasane, among demons trapped by the wisteria. Giyu is injured right at the start and can no longer fight.

Sabito saves him, then roams the mountain and kills almost all the demons on his own, protecting the other candidates. He ends up running into the Hand Demon, which kills him. His blade breaks on the monster’s neck.

Tomioka wakes up at the end of the seven days. He is among the survivors, but he has killed no demon. He passed the test because someone else fought for him, and that someone did not pass it.

In his mind, it is Sabito who should have become a demon slayer, and a Hashira. Giyu remembers his friend as the better of the two, stronger, more generous, more worthy of the sword he never got to carry for long. Every time he is called the Water Hashira, he hears his friend’s title. Our article on Sabito and Makomo, Urokodaki’s pupils tells the story of this boy.

Why does he believe he is unworthy of his rank?

For Tomioka, being a Hashira has to be earned. The others won their place through their feats, while he thinks he inherited Sabito’s without having proved anything at the start.

The facts say otherwise. Tomioka built an exceptional career on his own, to the point of creating an eleventh form of Water Breathing, Dead Calm, which no other practitioner knows. Our article on Water Breathing, form by form details this technique.

None of this counts in his eyes. Guilt cannot be argued away, and Tomioka keeps the feeling of occupying a dead man’s place. Our page on all the Demon Slayer breathing styles nonetheless shows just how far his mastery of water surpasses that of the others.

This restraint shows on the Tomioka pop figure, face closed, his two-tone haori over the uniform, in the collection dedicated to Giyu Tomioka.

The haori of two dead people

Tomioka’s most recognisable garment in Demon Slayer tells the same story. His haori is cut into two halves that have nothing to do with each other, and it is no whim.

The plain burgundy half comes from the kimono of Tsutako, his sister. The half with the green, yellow and orange geometric pattern comes from Sabito’s garment. Giyu carries on his back the two people who died so he could live.

Inosuke nicknames him “the guy with the half-and-half haori”, without knowing what this garment stands for. The nickname is amusing, but viewers who know the story never look at that haori the same way again.

The two-tone haori, the black uniform and the wig make up the Tomioka cosplay, among the cosplay outfits from the whole series.

The first episode, a Hashira who makes an exception

The Tomioka of the first episode of Demon Slayer does not look like a man who doubts. In the snow, he finds Tanjiro protecting his sister turned demon, and gets ready to kill her as the rule demands.

He changes his mind on seeing Nezuko protect her brother instead of devouring him. He spares the girl and sends Tanjiro to Urokodaki. Later, a letter read at the Hashira meeting reveals that he staked his own life: if Nezuko eats a human, he and his former master will cut open their bellies.

This act says a lot about Tomioka. He does not talk, explains nothing, but he takes on the heaviest responsibility there is. A man who thinks himself unworthy risks his life for two strangers, and never boasts about it: Tanjiro only learns of it much later, through the letter read before the Hashira.

Our article on Tanjiro and Giyu, from the first episode to the end follows this relationship born in the snow.

Tanjiro and the memory of the slap

When Giyu refuses to take part in the Hashira Training, it is Tanjiro who is sent to persuade him. The boy follows him for days, talks to him relentlessly, sits down next to him without being invited.

Tomioka ends up explaining to him, in a few sentences, what he has never told anyone: he is not the Water Hashira, he should not have survived. Tanjiro listens, then asks him a single question: is he going to refuse to pass on what Sabito entrusted to him.

The question awakens a memory. After Tsutako’s death, Giyu kept saying he should have died in her place. Sabito had slapped him, and told him never to talk like that again, to live for those who had protected him and to pass on in turn what he had received.

Giyu had forgotten that slap, or rather buried it. Tanjiro gives it back to him, and Tomioka joins the training. Our article on the Hashira Training tells of this preparation.

The Water Hashira, in spite of himself

Whether he likes it or not, Tomioka is one of the most formidable demon slayers in Demon Slayer. On Mount Natagumo, he cuts down Rui, Lower Moon Five, without the slightest apparent effort, with the Dead Calm he invented.

In the Infinity Castle, he faces Akaza alongside Tanjiro and sees the Demon Slayer Mark appear on his cheek. He stands up to Upper Moon Three, then to Muzan, and loses his right arm there.

He survives the war against Muzan, one of the few Hashira in Demon Slayer to do so. Nezuko mends his damaged haori, and Giyu, touched, showers her with gifts to the point of making Zenitsu jealous, according to the manga’s bonus pages. Our article on the first Infinity Castle film tells of the duel against Akaza.

His blue blade, built piece by piece, appears in a 1 metre LEGO katana, among the katanas from the whole series. Our page on all the Demon Slayer characters places Giyu among the others.

The Hashira fans most misunderstand

The misunderstanding does not stop at the other Hashira. A good part of the Demon Slayer audience first took Tomioka for a cold, haughty character, before the Hashira Training revealed what he was hiding.

Fans have turned it into a running gag. Giyu who cannot talk, Giyu who thinks he is liked, Giyu who answers with one sentence where ten are needed: memes about his inability to communicate have been circulating since the first season, in France as in Japan.

The character is nonetheless one of the most loved in Demon Slayer. Koyoharu Gotouge even devoted a separate story to him, published alongside the manga, which tells of a Tomioka mission before he met Tanjiro. Our article on the Giyu and Rengoku Gaiden presents these two stories.

Rereading his first scenes after understanding his guilt changes everything. Each of Giyu’s silences becomes the restraint of a man who thinks he has no right to speak on behalf of the Hashira. Our page on all the Demon Slayer arcs lets you find these scenes in order.

His figures, his cosplay and his katana sit alongside those of the other Hashira in the Demon Slayers collection.