Gensokyo

This article is referring to Gensokyo as a location. For Gensokyo in the games, see Koishokyo and Gensokyo (FTK2).
Gensokyo (幻想郷, lit. "Land of Fantasy") is the primary setting of both the Touhou Project and Find the Koishis.
== In Canon ==
Isolated from the Outside World for more than two centuries, and designed as a safe haven for youkai who have been deprived of their power due to humanity's discovery of rational thinking and disproving mythology, Gensokyo serves as the refuge of the vast majority of Touhou's cast, with several known exceptions. Ultimately, it also became the land of the forgotten, with things that humanity has tossed away finding a second purpose here.
The place was primarily forged by the three Sages; Yukari Yakumo, Okina Matara and Kasen Ibaraki, though this status as a team has long since been strained. In terms of vigilantism, the place is enforced by judge, jury, and executioner Reimu Hakurei, though others have assisted or hindered her in this endeavour to maintain order. After all, Gensokyo is regularly besieged by incidents that leave Reimu to resolve the affair. Whether it be a youkai pissing the bed and wreaking havoc about it, petty bullshit that the rest of the fantasy world has been dragged into as collateral, or an actual, genuine threat to Gensokyo's existence coming in and fucking things up, it's up to the shrine maiden and any myriad of dysfunctions wanting to play hero to solve the problem.
Gensokyo is separate from the outside world enough to warrant it's own pair of afterlives, with celestials such as Tenshi Hinanawi (who lives in Heaven) and two underworlds being evidence that Gensokyo is xenophobic enough to separate itself on the spiritual level from the rest of humanity.
== In FTK Canon ==
This section refers to now-decanonized lore popularized by koisherminal.carrd.co.At some point in the late 2000s, the non-fantastic chunk of humanity known as 'the rest of us' discovered Gensokyo and conducted an expedition into it. After the prospecting of Gensokyo seemingly fell through, or the team discovered what they were fucking with, the decision was made to abandon the realm and leave behind everything. The abandoned technology is the apparent explanation for why elevators are the primary means of travel between the locations in FTK.
The Seminar Caves likely served as rational humanity's entry point into Gensokyo, given a terminal in it mentions it's status as a strategically important location for human travel, though koisherminal.carrd.co mentions a "primary elevator hub" separate from the Caves. Due to Gensokyo's reliance on boundaries as a system, the elevators piercing their way into what is essentially the metaphysical flesh of the place ended up causing issues that led to locations such as Cinnamon Acre being allowed to proliferate.
Apparently, the two things preventing Gensokyo's residents from climbing their way back into the Outside World is a steel polymer that lines the inside of the elevator shafts and a weaponizable ventilation system.Entry for "terminals" on the koisherminal.carrd.co database pageSection over.In FTK2, while Yukari's terminals in the Void Palace do mention a failed excursion into Gensokyo that led to the humans retreating, the decision to separate FTK1's lore from FTK2's suggests that this was the only one that was conducted. It is believed that this failed attempt was treated as an aggression and served as the motive for a conflict known as the Retaliation War. During this era, Gensokyo thought like their opponents for a while, constructing Shinto shrines into enormous War Shrines. Despite Gensokyo's magical advantage, it ultimately lost; humanity established a Gensokyo Occupation Zone (GOZ) on the location, which then became a scrapyard after their own Singularitrons bit them in the ass and began to wipe out chunks of their cities across the globe.
The Koishi crisis that unfolded an unknown amount of time afterwards wreaked havoc across Gensokyo, to a point where either it's residents have elected to retreat to higher ground or have stayed behind to create refugee centers or attempted to investigate the problem. Reimu's apparent disappearance and Marisa Kirisame's seeming reluctance to do anything have only exacerbated issues, leaving the player to do the dirty work on Yukari's nonexistent payroll.
It's not exactly made clear how places like Ancient Koigypt exist, given that no such locations exist in Touhou canon. While koisherminal.carrd.co raises the idea that they are created due to the elevators stabbing through the boundaries that Gensokyo lives and breathes on, FTK1's decanonized status means that a new explanation may have to be given in FTK2.
== Trivia ==
* Every location the player visits in FTK1 and FTK2 is likely still in Gensokyo, meaning that a desert and a candy-world are indeed visitable chunks of a feudal-era Japanese world.
* Gensokyo's geography in FTK1 and FTK2 would make any Touhou cartographer shit their pants with how inaccurate it probably is. 
* As a likely side effect of the elevators, Gensokyo appears to now operate on near-Escherian physics, given that the elevators the player uses to traverse locations either go down or up yet regardless lead to another location, sometimes in the same general area.
** The most egregious example of this is in New Heresy, where entering a building and falling down it's elevator shaft... leads the player to the inside of another building that is a mere distance away.
* "The Great Hakurei Barrier is impermeable" seems to be a lie or a half-truth in the FTK canon, given that it is easily stabbed through by elevators and the player can casually walk into them.
* Given that Gensokyoans appear to be incapable of operating the elevators (or seem fascinated by their presence), it's safe to assume that the need for polymer and ventilation was nothing more than a waste of money.
== References ==
Category:Locations