Kagome Higurashi

About Kagome Higurashi

Kagome Higurashi is the heroine of Inuyasha, a Tokyo schoolgirl dragged down her family's shrine well into feudal Japan on her fifteenth birthday. She is the reincarnation of the priestess Kikyo, carries the Shikon Jewel inside her body at the start, and can sense its shards and purify them with her arrows. Warm, brave and stubborn, she becomes the heart of the shard-hunting group and the person who finally reaches Inuyasha.

Appearance

Kagome is a Japanese schoolgirl with long dark brown hair worn loose, warm brown eyes and a friendly, open face. In the feudal era she usually still wears her school uniform, a white blouse with a green sailor collar and red scarf, a short green skirt, white socks and brown shoes, which makes her stand out in every village she visits. She carries a longbow and a quiver of arrows on her back, and often rides a bicycle she hauls through the well from modern Tokyo. Later she is sometimes seen in the red and white clothing of a priestess, reflecting her link to Kikyo.

Personality

Kagome is kind, brave and emotionally honest, the sort of person who apologises to enemies and cries for strangers. She has a quick temper, especially with Inuyasha, and a stubborn streak that lets her stand up to demons many times stronger than her. Unlike most people in the story, she judges others by what they do rather than what they are, which is why a group of misfits gathers around her. She can be jealous about Kikyo and frustrated by her double life of exams and shard hunting, but she keeps choosing to return to the feudal era. Her compassion is her real strength: she heals people emotionally as much as she purifies shards.

Background & Story

Kagome grew up at the Higurashi shrine in modern Tokyo with her mother, younger brother Sota and her grandfather, who loves inventing legends for the shrine's relics. On her fifteenth birthday a centipede demon pulled her down the shrine's dry well, and she climbed out five hundred years in the past, with the Shikon Jewel hidden inside her body. She freed Inuyasha from his seal, then accidentally shattered the jewel with an arrow while fighting a crow demon, scattering shards across Japan. As Kikyo's reincarnation she inherited spiritual powers: she can see and sense the shards, and her arrows carry a purifying light that can break demonic barriers. Throughout the journey she passes back and forth through the well, juggling school exams with demon battles, until the final battle forces her to choose which world, and which life, she truly wants.

Powers & Abilities

• Sacred arrows: Kagome's arrows carry her spiritual power, purifying demons and jewel shards on contact and breaking barriers that normal weapons cannot touch.
• Shard sensing: She can sense the presence and direction of Shikon Jewel shards, which makes her the group's only reliable tracker and the reason the hunt is possible at all.
• Purification: Her touch and arrows can purify a tainted shard, cleansing Naraku's darkness from it, a power tied to her pure heart and her link to Kikyo.
• The 'sit' command: Through the beads of subjugation around Inuyasha's neck, her command 'sit' slams him to the ground, a power she uses for discipline and comic relief in equal measure.

Key Relationships

• Inuyasha: Her partner in the shard hunt and the boy she slowly falls for. She accepts both his human and demon sides from the start, something nobody else in his life had ever done.
• Kikyo: The priestess whose reincarnation Kagome is. Kagome lives in her shadow for much of the story, but comes to respect her and to insist on being her own person.
• Sango: Her closest friend in the feudal era and the older sister she never had; the two talk through each other's heartbreaks on the road.
• Shippo: The young fox demon treats Kagome as a big sister, and she mothers him in return, defending him whenever Inuyasha picks on him.

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