Real World Cultural and Linguistic Influences in Delicious in Dungeon

REAL WORLD CULTURES

Throughout this essay, I will be making comparisons between the cultures in Dungeon Meshi and cultures that exist in the real world. I do not believe that any culture in Dungeon Meshi is an exact copy of any single culture in the real world*.

Ryoko Kui has mixed elements from many different places and times in history in order to create fantasy cultures that feel familiar to readers, but are also unique and different from anything that exists in the real world. For me, reading Dungeon Meshi is often an exercise in going “Oh, that reminds me of…” and thinking “that’s such a clever way to combine those ideas…!”

The cultural influences Kui uses do not always match the metaphorical parallels her story is making, so there’s sometimes multiple levels of meaning in the manga, such as a group physically or culturally resembling one thing, but their role in the story being similar to a completely different culture. Multiple layers of meaning exist at the same time and are not necessarily contradictory.

WHEN DOES DUNGEON MESHI TAKE PLACE?

Dungeon Meshi takes place in the year 514, however we don’t know how that number relates to anything else in the Dungeon Meshi world, so it isn’t really useful for identifying what era Kui is trying to depict.

It can’t be that the Ancient Cataclysm happened 514 years ago (it was still referred to as ancient history by Thistle and Delgal a thousand years ago), and it can’t be when the current elf queen’s reign began (she’s only 372), so it’s either marking some other major event, like the beginning of the reign of a royal family or the end of a war, or they reset their calendar at regular intervals, such as every two-thousand years for record-keeping purposes.

In the real world, 514 CE would have been the early Medieval era, just after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, which left Europe fractured into many small Germanic kingdoms competing with each other. It was also the beginning of the Asuka period in Japan, and the end of the Northern Wei Dynasty in China.

This has some similarities to the world we’re shown in Dungeon Meshi: the Western elves have abandoned most of their land in the Eastern hemisphere, leaving the local dwarven, gnomish and tall-man people (whose cultures are primarily Germanic) to fight amongst themselves for the land. A massive upheaval caused by a major imperial power collapsing.

However, based on character behavior, culture, clothing and technology, Dungeon Meshi appears to be set in a vaguely Renaissance (1450 CE-1650 CE) time period, with some elements from classical antiquity (800 BCE-500 CE), the Medieval era (476 CE-1300 CE), as well as some hyper-advanced steampunk/magic technology and modern day anachronisms.

The technological and artistic development of the different cultures is very different, with the long-lived races appearing to live a more modern lifestyle than the short-lived races. In the extra materials, Toshiro implies that Falin might find the Island of Wa “primitive” because they lack the social and technological advancements that come from contact with the long-lived races, and the Western elf Fleki calls the Eastern Continent a “primitive land” while complaining about the quality of life.

Based on this and additional evidence, we can reasonably conclude that the elven lands in the West are probably the most “modern”, followed by the lands in the Eastern hemisphere, with the Eastern Archipelago lagging the furthest behind.

Because of this difference between the races, it makes sense that we see a mix of different eras and styles of technology and clothing. For example, we see characters wearing Neolithic fur garments, Greco-Roman tunics, and Medieval garments as everyday clothes at the same time that other characters wear Renaissance and even 19th century-influenced garments.

Meanwhile, many things in the Dungeon Meshi world have also remained unusually stagnant for far longer than they did in the real world. Realistic oil painting seems to have remained unchanged for more than a thousand years, and Medieval-looking clothing that was worn a thousand years ago is still being worn in the “present” day, virtually unchanged.

There are also some things that are much more advanced than the Renaissance period, like steampunk elevators, and magical communication that works through birds/fairies/crystal balls/telephones and allows for instant contact across the globe… A huge advancement that should impact every element of life and society, thanks to the ability to easily exchange information.

In the real world, instant communication is the foundational element that makes things like precise time-keeping, time-zones, advanced banking, stock markets and news reporting possible… So one can assume that some of these things might possibly exist in some form in the Dungeon Meshi setting.

WHERE DOES DUNGEON MESHI TAKE PLACE?

Dungeon Meshi takes place in a world similar to ours, but with a different map. The countries and continents are almost all unnamed, and most of them are combinations of multiple real-world cultures.

The Island of Wa is the one exception to this, as it appears to be very similar to real world Japan, which was called Wa between 100 CE and 700 CE. From this we could guess that the proper name of various countries might be ancient names for their real-world counterparts, but that would only be an educated guess.

The island where the story takes place appears to be a Mediterranean location inspired by Venice and various Greek islands.

WHAT LANGUAGE ARE THE CHARACTERS SPEAKING?

Dungeon Meshi is a manga written by a Japanese author for a Japanese audience, however, because of the story setting, the character names and the fact that they are written in katakana (something normally done only for non-Japanese names and words), we can assume the characters are not actually speaking in Japanese.

So what language are they speaking? Kui has mentioned a “common language” a few times in the manga and extra materials. What does that mean?

The idea of a “common language” is a standard trope in fantasy stories, and is usually a way to easily facilitate characters from different cultures talking to each other. The implication is often that the “common language” is somehow politically neutral and doesn’t belong to any one culture in a story. Everyone uses common but nobody controls it or benefits from it’s near-universal usage.

This is unrealistic, in the real world the language of the most culturally and physically dominant group usually becomes the “common language” or lingua franca, and this has various political, cultural and historic ramifications, and is also hugely beneficial to the group that the language belongs to. Sanskrit, Literary Chinese, Koine Greek, Latin, Classical Maori, and English are all examples of this phenomenon.

There is an implication in Dungeon Meshi that ancient people in the past wished for a universal, common language, so this would bypass the fact that “common languages” don’t naturally occur this way, since it was created with magic. You could consider it something like a reverse Tower of Babel, where a divine force combined all the languages of the world into one super-language that everyone was forced to speak.

However, although this common language appears to still exist and is probably what most characters are using to communicate with each other, it has been thousands if not millions of years since that wish was made, and many other languages have clearly evolved since then from that original source language, or from the proto-languages that existed before the magically-created Common came into existence.

I will go into what language families are connected to which race and region of the world in the following sections.

WHAT IS DUNGEON MESHI’S COMMON LANGUAGE?

In the manga, Kui uses glyphs that I have been unable to identify to show written language. It has some similarities to Greek, Indian, Polynesian, Austroasian, and Middle Eastern cuneiform writing systems, but not enough to be fully identifiable. It is probably a mix of many things, with original elements added to further obfuscate the sources. It could even be a fully invented language, but I’m not qualified to try and decipher it.

Though I think the common language the characters speak is left purposefully vague and undescribed, it has certain elements borrowed from real history that are worth making note of.

Latin was the dominant language in Italy and throughout the realms of the Roman Empire for a very long time. Even after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, Latin was the common language of communication, science, and academia in Europe until well into the 18th century, when other languages, including Latin’s own descendants the modern Romance languages, replaced it. Many words and names in Dungeon Meshi come from Latin.

Sabir (Sometimes called “Mediterranean Lingua Franca”) was a simplified version of Italian, Spanish or French (Latin-based languages) that incorporated many loans from Greek, the Slavic languages, Arabic, and Turkish. Sabir was used by people around the eastern part of the Mediterranean sea as the main language of commerce and diplomacy from the late Middle Ages to the 18th century, most notably during the Renaissance era.

Sabir was used particularly in the European commercial empires of Italian cities (Genoa, Venice, Florence, Milan, Pisa, Siena) and in trading ports located throughout the eastern Mediterranean rim.

The Island (also known as the Golden Kingdom or Merini) has many things in common with Venice (which I’ll go into chapter 5, Tall-men of the Golden Kingdom), so if Dungeon Meshi’s common language is something conceptually similar to Sabir, it would make a lot of sense.

THE CULTURE OF LONG-LIVED RACES AND HOW IT SPREADS

Like in the real world, people emulate and admire those who hold power. Kui tells us that the long-lived races dominate the world of Dungeon Meshi, and that their cultures and social standards have a huge influence on the short-lived races that live nearest to them. This includes things like language, names, clothing, gender roles, what they find beautiful, how they view magic, and even their philosophical and religious beliefs.

After studying the characters and world of Dungeon Meshi extensively, I can definitively say that this principle matches up with everything that Kui has told us. The world of Dungeon Meshi is very internally consistent and logical.

SUMMARY OF CULTURAL TRENDS

All of the cultures in Dungeon Meshi seem to have a long history of contact with each other. Based on the existence of names from multiple language groups in predictable patterns, implied ancient trans-oceanic wars and colonization, and the existence of both “New World” and “Old World” plants (tomatoes, potatoes, rice etc.) in the food the characters make, I assume something similar to the real-world Columbian Exchange has already occurred, most likely hundreds or even thousands of years ago.

This has given all of the races time to absorb and adapt foreign things into their own cultures. Because of this there is obviously some linguistic and cultural blending, like western and eastern names spreading beyond their region of origin, and the existence of Japanese words and food in places other than the island of Wa.

Here are the general trends I’ve found:

• The Western side of the world (Western, North Central and South Central Continents) which is controlled by the Western elves, seems to be influenced primarily by the Mediterranean, India, the Middle East, and the Americas.
• The Eastern side of the world (Northern, Eastern and Southern Continents) which is controlled by the Eastern and Southern dwarves and gnomes, appears to be influenced primarily by Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, Northern/Western/Central/Eastern European cultures, and a small amount of influence from East Asia. There may be other cultures we simply haven’t seen, especially in the Southern Continent, but there’s not enough information to say for sure.

Where west and east meet, the culture seems to have a Mediterranean and Middle Eastern influence on both sides of the large central ocean that separates them.

Based on naming patterns and clothing worn in the two regions, and the fact that we know the Western elves were historically a global power that fought wars and held territory in the East, I think the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern influences are an elven influence, and that Mediterranean and Middle Eastern culture originally comes from the West, and spread to the East.

This would make sense, since the elves at one point controlled the kingdom of Merini, and possibly the rest of the eastern coast of the Eastern Continent, since it’s the land closest to the elven home territory, so it is the land that the elves would most logically colonize first while trying to conquer the Eastern hemisphere. It’s also possible that the elves controlled the south-eastern coast of the Northern Continent as well, since that region also has a Mediterranean influence.

This would mean, for example, that Latin and Greek languages come from the elves, and their modern descendants, the Romance languages, may be spoken in some of the Mediterranean influenced regions of the Eastern Hemisphere.

The further east you go on the Eastern Continent, the more Northern/Western/Central/Eastern European the culture gets… Until you get close to the far eastern side, neighboring the Eastern Archipelago, where Japanese culture begins to influence the food and language of the dwarves (and possibly other races) that live there. Logically, the culture of the Eastern Archipelago should have also spread into the Southern and Northern Continents, but we don’t have any concrete information to back that up.

We unfortunately have very little information about the larger Eastern Archipelago, except that we know different islands speak different languages, that the island closest to the Southern Continent is similar to Japan, that there is possibly a Central or North Asian culture present somewhere in the archipelago, and the far eastern side may be influenced by Arabic (elven) culture from the Western Continent.

MY CONCLUSION

The Western hemisphere of Dungeon Meshi appears to be primarily Greco-Roman, Middle Eastern, North African, Indian, and American. The Eastern hemisphere appears to be primarily Germanic and Slavic. The transitional region between West and East appears to be Medieval Southern Europe. The Eastern Archipelago appears to be primarily North, Central, and East Asian. There may also be a transitional region between the East and the Far East, which is home to various European-Asian fusion cultures.

WHICH WAY IS EAST? WHICH WAY IS WEST? DOES IT MATTER?

Early on in Dungeon Meshi, Kabru says that Utaya is “in the east” relative to the island, but later Kui tells us that Utaya is on the Western Continent, and that the elves also come from “the west”.

Of course, if you go far enough east, it becomes the west, and vice versa, but when someone refers to a part of the world as “the east” they usually aren’t just referring to a location, but a cultural idea… And the traits that Kui has assigned to her “west” (The elven lands, Utaya) appear to be what we normally think of as “the east” in the real world.

The reason I mention this is because a lot of names and words ultimately mean things like “from the east” or “from the west”, with the east being the place the sun rises and the west being the place where it sets, and these names are based on what is east or west of every individual culture. To the Greeks, Turkey was the east, to the Turks, India was the east, to Indians, China was the east, and to China, Japan was the east… Etc.

(We know that the sun still rises in the east and sets in the west in Dungeon Meshi, thanks to a puzzle Chilchuck solves!)

So when words or names mean “from the East” or “from the West”, I think we must decide on a case-by-case basis if Kui means Dungeon Meshi’s East and West since they are the reverse of our world, or if she’s using their traditional real-world meaning.

For example, when a name references Anatolia (which means “sunrise”, “I rise” and “the east”):
Does the name mean “rise upwards” with no geographic connotation?
Does it mean Dungeon Meshi’s East (Germanic or Slavic Europe)?
Does it mean Dungeon Meshi’s Far East (East Asia)?
Or does it mean a fantasy version of Anatolia in Dungeon Meshi’s West, since that is where South-Western Asian cultures like Anatolia appear to be located?

I do my best to point out this discrepancy when it pops up so readers can form their own opinions about what a name or word might mean in Dungeon Meshi.

NAME AND WORD BREAKDOWN BY REGION

Some of the names have more than one linguistic source, or could come from multiple languages, so I count them under every language group that applies. For characters with unknown birth places, I am making my best good-faith guess on what region they come from.

I’m grouping words and names together into broad linguistic and/or cultural categories. These lists are not exhaustive, but:

Ancient Mediterranean includes Ancient Greek, Ancient Latin, and Turkish. Modern Latin includes French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and their dialects. Middle Eastern includes Egyptian, Arabic, Hebrew, Iranian, Persian and all ancient languages from the region. Indian includes all the languages of the Indian subcontinent. New World includes all indigenous languages of North and South America.

Germanic includes all English languages, all Celtic languages, all German languages, and all Scandinavian languages. Slavic includes Russian, Bosnian, Croatian, Polish, and all other Slavic languages. African includes all languages of sub-saharan Africa.

Austronesian/Oceanic includes Malay, Javanese, Sundanese, Tagalog, Malagasy, Cebuano, Maori, Polynesian, and all Aboriginal Australian languages.

ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN: 17 (39%)
INDIAN: 9 (20%)
GERMANIC: 7 (16%)
MIDDLE EASTERN: 6 (14%)
MODERN LATIN: 2 (5%)
NEW WORLD: 1 (2%)
SLAVIC: 1 (2%)
JAPANESE: 1 (2%)

GERMANIC: 22 (37%)
MIDDLE EASTERN: 10 (17%)
MODERN LATIN: 8 (13%)
ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN: 8 (13%)
JAPANESE: 5 (8%)
SLAVIC: 4 (7%)
INDIAN: 2 (3%)
AFRICAN: 1 (2%)

GERMANIC: 3 (25%)
AUSTRONESIAN/OCEANIC: 3 (25%)
CHINESE: 2 (17%)
MIDDLE EASTERN: 1 (8%)
MODERN LATIN: 1 (8%)
JAPANESE: 1 (8%)
NEW WORLD: 1 (8%)