Ruka Minazuki

Ruka Minazuki
"If no one remembers it, does that mean it never happened?"
Japanese	水無月 流歌 みなづき るか
Alias	Ruka Yomotsuki (四方月流歌)
Age	17
Family	Sayaka Minazuki (mother) Soya Yomotsuki (father)
Residence	Rogetsu Isle (former)
Occupation	Student
Room	308
Status	Alive
Games	Fatal Frame IV
Notes	Ruka's Diary
Japanese Voice Actor	Mamiko Noto

Ruka Minazuki is the main character of Fatal Frame IV. Ten years before the events of the game, Ruka and four other girls were kidnapped during a festival, and rescued two weeks later by a detective. After that incident, Ruka lost all her memories of her childhood.

Ruka's Past

"Daddy and Mommy are always fighting. But Daddy says the masks are good for me. He says they can take me to places no one has ever seen before."

―Ruka Minazuki

Ruka was born and raised on Rogetsu Isle. Her childhood seems to have been a happy one, and she was close to both her parents. Her mother, Sayaka, was a Guardian, and although the tradition had died out, she began to teach Ruka to play the Moonsong on the piano.

However, Ruka's father Soya Yomotsuki, a mask-maker, became more and more obsessed with the craft of one of his ancestors, and started to neglect his family to work on masks. Soya and Sayaka began to argue a lot as she tried to convince him to stop what he was doing, and Ruka wrote in her diary that she was lonely and bored when he wasn't there to play with her. One day she went looking for her father in his workshop, where he was hammering a mask. When he turned around, he was wearing a mask too, and Ruka was frightened when she didn't recognise his face. As part of his work, Soya forced Ruka to try on different masks in the Shugen Temple, and as a result, Ruka developed Moonlight Syndrome. Sayaka found her in the garden one night, gazing at the moon, and took her to Rogetsu Hall for treatment.

It was at here that she met Misaki Asou and Madoka Tsukimori, and became friends with them. One of the experimental treatments Ruka underwent was music therapy, and she reacted very strongly to it, saying it made her remember horrible things. She was eager to see her father again, unaware that Sayaka, convinced that Soya's work on the masks was endangering Ruka, had decided to keep her away from him at all costs.

On the night of the lunar eclipse, all the patients at Haibara Infirmary and Rogetsu Hall gathered in the Temple of the Lunar Eclipse to watch the traditional Rogetsu Kagura. During the performance, Ruka, Misaki and Madoka were taken away by Yo Haibara and brought to a vast cavern underground. She was dressed in the ritual garb and mask of an Organ and made to participate in the even older Rite of Descent ritual, providing musical accompaniment for a dancer, the Vessel, who wore the Mask of the Lunar Eclipse that Soya had been working on so diligently.

However, the ritual failed. The mask shattered and the Vessel, Sakuya Haibara, fell into a coma. Ruka and the other kidnapped girls collapsed too, and lost all their memories. For more than a week, they remained underground in the Moonglow Cavern, as island legends stated that bathing in the moonlight could help a person's soul return to their body.

It was here that Choshiro Kirishima, investigating at Sayaka's request, discovered the girls and rescued them. Soon afterwards, Sayaka took Ruka away from the island, and refused to tell her daughter anything about her childhood, preferring to focus on building happy memories.

Worn down by the stress of these events, Sayaka fell ill and eventually died. The islanders were all wiped out in an unexplained event two years after Ruka and her mother left the island. Ruka's only connections to her past were now the other four girls who had been kidnapped, and a faint recollection of a melody, which she tried to reconstruct on the piano. She had no memory of her childhood, and had even forgotten her father's face.

Fatal Frame IV

"There are some things I can't just leave unknown. I want to find the truth about what happened to us that day."

―Ruka Minazuki

Ten years after their kidnapping, one of the five girls, Marie, contacts Ruka and asks for help reconstructing the music from the kagura. Though reluctant at first, Ruka eventually sends Marie a tape recording. However, Marie and another girl, Tomoe, both die mysteriously soon after.

In search of answers, Misaki and Madoka depart for Rogetsu Isle, and do not return. Ruka follows, searching for her lost memories.

She arrives at the abandoned sanatorium, Rogetsu Hall, where the girls were photographed ten years earler. As she explores, she catches glimpses of Madoka disappearing out of sight. She finds an old camera on the floor in the Asou Museum, and discovers that this camera is able to capture strange images.

Ruka learns the truth when she catches up with Madoka in the Archive: Madoka has died and become a ghost. With a distorted face, Madoka attacks Ruka, begging for help.

Ruka makes her way around the building, gathering fragments of a black mask. She later discovers her own room, and begins to remember a song that her mother taught her when she was a child. When she plays the song on the piano, she has a vision of a different place, which seems familiar, and has a memory of a man hammering masks.

Later on, Ruka finds her way from the infirmary to the cavern where she and the other girls were found; from here, she makes her way through the Primeval Passage to the place where the ritual was performed. She also finds the house she used to live in while living on Rogetsu Isle, the same one she remembered when she played the song from the music box. She finally begins to learn about her father.

From books and diaries scattered around, Ruka learns more about the history of her family, both her mother's side and her father's side. Her father was descended from a long line of master craftsmen, dedicated to making special masks which can affect the wearer's very soul. Her mother was a Guardian, one of a group of shrine maidens who assisted with the Rite of Descent in the past. Ruka's ancestor Soetsu Yomotsuki had attempted to create the true Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, but instead had brought about the Day of Tranquility, a disaster in which many islanders died. Her father, Soya, attempted the same thing, and suffered the same fate, when the Vessel from the failed ritual woke up and began to wander the island, causing everyone there to Blossom. However, Ruka learns that the song played by the Guardians is reputed to calm the moon and end the Blossoming.

She discovers the passage that leads to the lighthouse, at the top of which is the Lunar Odeum, a special shrine used by the Guardians. Ruka defeats Sakuya and plays the Moonsong on the organ there. This calms Sakuya long enough for Choshiro to put the remade Mask of the Lunar Eclipse on her face, and the spirits are able to pass on to the Hallowed Realm. After Sakuya crosses over, the mask falls onto the floor and Soya appears and takes it. He turns around, finally revealing his face to Ruka, before he too crosses over.

After the game's credits, Ruka is once again seen playing the piano in a moonlit room. Instead of the chaotic melody from the start of the game, she plays the Moonsong, and as she plays, she sees a vision of a quiet forest, with a pool reflecting the moon - her father's Hallowed Realm.

Gallery

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  Concept art of Ruka from The Art of Grasshopper Manufacture

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  Ruka's remastered design

Misc. Info

• Ruka's room is #308 - 観月 Mizuki; "viewing moon" (translated as "Silent Moon" in the remaster).
• Ruka's clothes, in both her older and younger forms, match the image color of the game. Because playing the piano is central to her story, her default outfit was designed to look like something to be worn at a piano recital.
• 'Ruka' is written with characters meaning 'flow'/'way' and 'song'. 'Minazuki' means 'month without water' and is an old name for the sixth month of the lunar calendar, around July.
• Ruka is one of the ghosts that appears in Ghost Camera Mode in the 3Ds game Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir.

See Also

• For other members of the Minazuki Family, see Minazuki Family.
• For other members of the Yomotsuki Family, see Yomotsuki Family.
• For other player characters in the Fatal Frame Series, see Player Characters.
• For more information on the Getsuyuu Syndrome, see Moonlight Syndrome.
• For other shrine maidens, see Shrine Maiden.
• For other rituals in Fatal Frame IV, see Fatal Frame IV Rituals.
• For images related to Ruka, see Images of Ruka Minazuki.

References