Day of Tranquility

This page contains spoilers for Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse.

Date of Event: First occurrence unknown; second occurrence September 17, 1970s
Location: Rougetsu Island
Game: Fatal Frame IV

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The Day Without Suffering was an event that occurred on two separate occasions on Rougetsu Island. The first was during Souetsu Yomotsuki's era, and the second during Souya Yomotsuki's.

Souetsu Yomotsuki, at the time the head of the Yomotsuki family and master of their traditional mask-making methods, made a Mask of the Lunar Eclipse for the Kiraigou. The ritual failed, and a disaster occurred, called the "Day Without Suffering." This disaster struck fear into the islanders, who blamed the unearthly mask. Souetsu disappeared and was never heard from again. His mask disintegrated into ash, and both the mask and ritual became taboo.

Welcoming outsiders to Rougetsu Island was seen as an opportunity to acquire the resources needed to recover. Eventually, even the Kiraigou was partly resurrected in the form of the Rougetsu Kagura, a largely decorative performance, but certain superstitions about the Day Without Suffering remained.

Generations later, in the 1970s, Shigeto Haibara sought out the help of Souya Yomotsuki in reviving the Ceremony. Using the Camera Obscura to reveal the past, they were able to restore old documents and obtain images of Souetsu's Mask of the Lunar Eclipse. Believing that something was missing from Souetsu's mask and that it was not truly "complete," Souya set about making the "true" Mask of the Lunar Eclipse. An artist hospitalized at Rougetsu Hall, Yuukou Magaki, claimed to have had a vision of a woman in red with a blurred face bringing disaster to the island.

Souya gave the completed Mask of the Lunar Eclipse to Shigeto, saying he would pray that the ritual was a success. However, this Ceremony also failed, and Sakuya Haibara, the Utsuwa in the ritual, fell into a coma-like state between life and death. Souya realized that this was a repetition of the disaster caused by his ancestor, and waited for the end to come.

Two years after the failed Kiraigou, Sakuya awoke and broke out of the basement shrine where she had been confined for two years, and the Day Without Suffering came again. Starting with Rougetsu Hall, she began making her way across the island, "cursing" anyone who saw her face with Blooming, and killing them in the process. Some islanders tried to flee to the tunnels, having heard a legend that those who hid there would be spared, but Sakuya followed them there, too.

While Souya awaited her in the Meditation Cave, he pondered the reason for the ritual's failure, and came to the conclusion that the mask was not to blame, but rather that some other element had been missing: a sound to calm the soul.

Later, a ship named Oboro-maru put in at Rougetsu Island port, and found many islanders dead, with their hands covering their faces, and many more missing. After a two week investigation, the cause of death could still not be determined, and the only survivor died without revealing anything. The island was abandoned.