Kohaku

* Anime
* Manga

Year 5753+ (Petrified by Senku)
Year 5753+ (Revived by Senku & Stanley)
Year 5753+ (Petrified by Senku)
Year 5753+ (Revived by Senku)

> "My blade may find that sharp tongue of yours before either of us knows it."
>
> — Kohaku, Dr. Stone, Chapter 17
>
>

**Kohaku** (コハク, *****Kohaku*****) is a young woman who is a descendant of modern humans. She is Ruri's younger sister and the daughter of Kokuyo. She is one of the protagonists of the series.

After meeting Senku and witnessing his bravery, courage and talent, Kohaku invites him to her village. Since Senku assists and fascinates the village with many of his scientific inventions and turned out to be the savior the village ancestors talk about in the stories that are passed down, the population is ultimately rallied to fight and stop Tsukasa's tyrannic empire.

After Taiju, Kohaku is the most loyal to Senku. Since learning about science, and the delicate, complicated work it takes to make modern inventions, Kohaku often teams up with Chrome to scavenge ingredients and "persuade" Kinro and Ginro to help with the labor.

## Appearance

     Kohaku is a young woman of average height with a slim figure. She has a delicate face, blue eyes, and blonde hair tied-up in a spiky ponytail.

Her appearance is that of someone who appears to be a mixed heritage of American/Japanese, denoting her as the descendant of Byakuya Ishigami and Lillian Weinberg. She shares a strong resemblance with her older sister, Ruri, but has wild hair in comparison to her sister's soft, flowing hair, and a slimmer body.

Her most typical attire consists of a V-neck, sleeveless and short navy blue dress. Underneath she wears makeshift garments akin to a bra and a fundoshi (traditional Japanese garment). The dress is tied with a rope tied in the middle, and uniquely shaped stone sandals. She also wears a tan ribbon as a choker around her neck, which resembles the one worn by Lillian as well.

She has a different fur dress and footwear for the winter, and occasionally takes on different outfits, either for functional reasons (such as the dresses she wore in Treasure Island) or out of her own volition, such as the party dress she wore while helping Senku gamble against Ryusui and Gen on the trip to America.

Her wooden shield is eventually replaced with a metal lined one made by Senku.

In Dr. STONE: 4D Science, she cuts off her ponytail, giving her short hair for a while, but it grows back almost immediately.

## Personality

Kohaku is a kind young woman, willing to put her sweat and tears, as well as her own life on the line to protect those she holds dear, taking rigorous care of her sickly older sister, and even willing to participate in the tournament for her hand in marriage just to protect her. She purposefully lied and took a scolding in order not to reveal she was attacked by Tsukasa, as not to distress her sister and the villagers.

She is just as caring towards her friends and comrades, being particularly dedicated to Suika, playing for her the role of an older sister herself.

Furthermore, Kohaku is always attentive to give emotional support to people going through hardship in general, such as Mirai upon the loss of her brother. She can sometimes be seen thoughtfully worried for people, in which cases she tends to sit down with her arms around her thighs, if there is nothing more she can do to help.

On her flip side, she tends to be extremely cautious or even threatening with people who haven't earned her trust. Gen was subjected to this for a rather long period of time, with multiple threats on his life from her, and even Senku found himself in a similar standing early on. After he interpreted her words as her confessing to having a crush on him upon being rescued, she would not dare fall asleep near him without her knives firmly grasped. It should be noted that if she feels safe instead, she will fall asleep basically anywhere and in any situation.

To further complicate the matters, she has a choleric and impulsive personality that makes her burst in rage or carry out reckless actions if provoked, which could potentially lead her into fatal mistakes. While she could be daring in general, usually it took some rather specific scenarios to send her on a blind rage, most typically having her friends be captured by an enemy.

People such as Senku, Gen and Kokuyo have made attempts to wrangle these uncontrollable reactions, with varying degrees of success. Despite their efforts, she makes little to no improvement; however, as the story progresses, she encounters much fewer of the situations that would have pushed her over the edge, as she spends most of the time not separated from her group of close friends.

In less dire situations she is able to make conscious decisions, but that can still go poorly given the parade of new dangers she doesn't understand, either from unexplored nature or new people, as well as her own subjective decisions informed by her strong sense of justice and bad temper. This volatile combination tends to bring her into dangerous situations such as her battle with a more competent fighter like Tsukasa, whom she decided to attack after witnessing him taking Yuzuriha hostage and then killing Senku, not being concerned with whichever motives he might've had.

Despite how violent she can be, Kohaku has admitted that she could not bring herself to kill a person, and if she were to do it, she would have to do it under orders, diminishing her responsibility in the act. This is not without precedent, as whenever she threatened to explicitly kill someone prior to this admission, it could be observed that she often sought the approval of someone else. One example was when Gen admitted to be a spy for Tsukasa, she asked Senku if she should dispose of him. Prior to this, when Gen first showed up at the village, she instead shifted the decision onto Gen himself, by leaving up to him whether she should kill him or not, based on his choice for his next move.

### Interests

Kohaku is a playful, outdoorsy woman who seems to enjoy plenty of physical activities such as swimming, running, sparring and dancing, and also modern sports such as snowboarding. She excels at fighting, hunting, and general survival skills, thus her contributions to the kingdom are mostly in fighting or doing physical labor. Still, Senku will occasionally leave smaller projects to her such as when she prepared the wort in anticipation to make beer.

She enjoys teasing her friends, especially when it's about the subject of romance, sometimes jokingly offering herself for hugs, or even marriage.

Despite her making infrequent advances or displays of interest towards anyone (usually Senku), serious or not, she has shown a consistent interest in romance as mentioned. Whenever a romantic topic or situation comes about, she's eager to observe and give commentary; Seemingly eager to experience it vicariously through others, such as Amaryllis (which Gen took note of), and especially her sister Ruri, as she is highly supportive of the prospect of her having a relationship with Chrome, and which she pesters him about whenever she can. This is also the only context in which she will side with Ginro's sleazy meddling in other people's relationships.

On a similar note, she is also not a stranger to displays of affection, and she seems to especially like hugs.

Perhaps unfortunately for her, no one has come forward with any true romantic feelings towards her, at best getting some unwanted attention based on her looks. Ginro is the most common culprit of this, with Magma also commenting that he finds her and Minami beautiful, and at one point entertained the idea of taking both Ruri and Kohaku as wives upon becoming the village chief. Ibara, in his deviousness, also took a liking to her, as well as Moz, who expressly stated that he did not care about a woman's strength as long as she had a pretty face. Kohaku dismissed him and promptly fought him on the grounds of being an enemy and not her type.

Other than this preoccupation with romance, Kohaku is a tomboy by nature, having little interest in more typical feminine behavior and activities; she has little knowledge about them, and neither do they come naturally to her. However, she does not take it lightly to have her femininity insulted by the likes of her male friends picking on her habits, strength and temper by calling her a gorilla, a lioness, or insinuating that she isn't cute. Similarly, although she is not troubled by changing clothes or swimming around boys, she will likewise retaliate if they should stare at her body with lust.

     Kohaku is overall a very vocal person, often engaging in unpromptedly voicing any miscelaneous observations she's made (to the point of stating the obvious at times), explaining her reasoning and motivations to carry out her sometimes questionable actions (such as attacking Tsukasa and refusing to become Ruri's successor), or simply expressing her disapproval or disinterest towards the nerdy excitement of her friends, among other things.

She has a tendency to use elaborate language and expressions (sometimes using words that are highly verbose, obscure, archaic, or any combination thereof), which on occasion can backfire and lead her to be misunderstood, such as accidentally making Senku believe she fell in love with him. This can be partially due to Ruri and the influence of her larger vocabulary; a vocabulary which includes a number of English words (a trait shared by the Ishigami villagers and the people from Treasure Island).

Illustrating her self confidence, she tends to start sentences with a stern "Hah!" when being assertive.

While people such as Chrome are very eager to learn everything Senku has to offer, she finds this endeavor very daunting and is apathetic to it, dismissing it on the basis that she couldn't keep up with it. Still she sometimes engages in the learning experience (or does through osmosis) and can be critical of Senku's teachings, questioning why people don't get flung off the earth if it's actually spinning, and also noting that the north star is not truly aligned with the north.

While she lacks the expertise of the scientists, over time as she tags along she becomes less dismissive of their scientific endeavors, and even becomes sensitized to small details and clues that she wouldn't have noticed before, things she may think that the scientists can use or extract information from.

While once she was shocked to find that the treasure inside the Soyuz capsule appeared to be just sand, soon she realized that it wouldn't be the first time the kingdom had made wonders from seemingly ordinary things like that. Much later, in contrast, chapter 151 starts with her proclaiming that she's "found something extremely interesting", which turns out to be some fragments of corn plant debris stuck to the skis of Stanley's crashed airplane.

The aforementioned tendency to use elaborate language and expressions ties into a greater yet obscure aspect of her personality, that being, that internally Kohaku has a habit of meditating about her general experiences and abstract concepts she encounters. Occasionally the results of these trains of thought are allowed to be spoken out, resulting in refined observations that may seem uncharacteristic for her superficially brutish character, and ideas vastly different from those of her peers.

Minor examples of this can be seen right at her introduction and are brief but more or less frequent.

While it's not clear why she is so specifically fascinated with Senku's persistent and methodical ways, the same ideas she expressed when she just met him would accompany her through the series. During her fight with Moz she brings this up again, and she uses similar language after she gets the idea to make Hyoga spin a shovel kan-ryu style to dig a tunnel (something he was deeply upset about), calling it a beautiful act of diligent progress.

Examples unrelated to her inspiration taken from Senku, include the time she finally met Taiju in person, and she seemed to revel in the observation that although she had never met him before, she already knew his name.

More substantial monologues happen rarely, one noteworthy example was the time Chrome had an argument with Senku over who should risk their lives to collect sulfuric acid. Having first realized that Chrome's argument was akin to some of her own experiences, she goes on to reflect aloud on how everyone would be happy if Ruri married someone like him, and observing how despite that, the gods still wouldn't allow it.

A topic that comes up a few times is her own interpretation on the value of science. While Senku sees science as the satisfaction of an inherent curiosity, and the source of knowledge to make life better, Kohaku seems to value science in a more humanistic way, as the collaborative endeavor that unites people from all walks of life, coming together to achieve greater goals. So she would lecture Hyoga while he dismissed her as a desperate primitive during the aftermath of the 20 second battle.

Not only does science to her unite people from different places, but also across generations, into the distant past and future; with every short human life that joins in building a collective legacy that outlasts the living body and the mortal remains. With this sentiment she comforted Senku upon their visit to the Soyuz capsule in treasure island, after he lamented that nothing at all remains of their ancestors.

These thoughts of hers would come up even in the direst of situations. In the heat of what she knew would likely be her final battle, against vastly better armed troops, she took a moment of reflection to contemplate how she could physically feel the support of her allies as their body heat warming her own back. Merely a few moments later, she found herself comforted by similar thoughts as she laid defeated and dying from the gunshots she received.

## Abilities and Skills

* **Enhanced Physical Prowess**:     Kohaku appears to be well known in her village due to her combative abilities, as both Kinro and Ginro were afraid of her. Tsukasa, a world-class fighter, stated that she would have been famous for her fighting abilities back in the pre-petrification world. Kohaku possesses great strength and endurance, credited by Chrome to be one of the few superhumanly strong individuals within the village, being able to carry a heavy pot filled with hot water on a daily basis for her sickly older sister, Ruri. In an extra, Kohaku rates herself with 1000 battle points, Kinro having 500 and Ginro having 100 respectively. Despite her skill, she is inferior to Tsukasa Shishio, Hyoga, and Moz; Tsukasa had proper marital art training, Hyoga is a spear expert and Moz is simply better-muscled. She does however seem to perfectly match Kirisame in fighting skills.

* **Enhanced Strength**: She tasked herself with carrying a heavy pot filled with hot water over long distances multiple times a day for her sickly sister Ruri, Senku estimated it to be just shy of 50 kilograms (which is around 110 pounds). When Senku tries to lift the pot in order to help Kohaku, he quickly succumbs to its weight; granted Senku is incredibly weak in comparison, but for anyone to carry 50 kilograms a long distance without tiring is an amazing feat.

* **Enhanced Speed**: Her more notable traits are her speed and agility, which makes her highly proficient in close-quarters combat. When fighting, she attacks with a flurry of blades and kicks. She also possesses quick reflexes, as she was able to easily stop an attack from Kinro and Ginro when they both attacked her. Because of her speed, the two of them fear her wrath. Naturally she also excels when it comes to plain running, only being matched by Homura in this regard. Aboard the new Perseus, she observed that the ship seemed to be on par with her top speed on land, according to herself. The ship had been previously stated to have a top speed of 20 knots, or 37 kilometers per hour. Notably this speed is exceptional but not superhuman, being close to Usain Bolt's average speed at his 2009 world record in the 100-meter sprint, of 37.58 kilometers per hour, and considerably below his own top speed at the same event, measured at 43.99 kilometers per hour.

* **Enhanced Coordination**: She's able to simultaneously juggle and bounce multiple rubber balls at a very fast pace effortlessly, while also engaging in a conversation.

* **Enhanced Senses**: In addition to all this, Kohaku is gifted with incredible eyesight. She first noticed something is off about the North Star not being true north, being able to spot Tsukasa and Senku from afar, and finding oil from just a crude aerial photo taken from a hot air balloon. However, she was unable to sense Kirisame in their first fight. Matsukaze even blitzed right through her, without her noticing.

* **Hunting**: Kohaku is an accomplished hunter. She caught a wild boar for Francois with ease when they were looking to capture some for their farm. She's one of the most reliable people when it comes to hunting. Additionally, her extraordinary eyesight helps in all these endeavors.

* **Instinct**: Perhaps because of her experience in hunting, Kohaku possesses a sharp instinct, able to discern information and situations correctly.

* **Intelligence**: While not as smart as Chrome or skilled as Kaseki, she proves to be quick on the uptake in an understanding of some of the science Senku demonstrates, and the complex strategies they use in their endeavors, like her covert acts to send Senku supplies and critical information despite the lack of 2-way communication and her illiteracy. She also used a coded word to get her allies' attention, during an enemy attack. When Ginro was severely wounded, she realized that in order to save him, she would have to petrify him and did so by threatening to reveal Ibara's secret. It's also been shown that even prior to Senku's arrival, she had rudimentary skills in arithmetic, likely learned from the hundred tales, and which she used for simple tasks such as estimating the size of schools of fish.

* **Fine Motor Skills**: Kohaku lacks the crafting know-how available to others in the kingdom such as Kaseki or Yuzuriha, but her ability when it comes to fast and precise movements puts her at an advantage in niche tasks such as carving stones. She was tasked with carefully breaking open Byakuya's time capsule without damaging the glass record within, and later she carved a prism out of a calcite crystal, with good enough optical qualities to function as a sunstone.

### Equipment

     Kohaku wields two primitive-looking knives and an orange-colored buckler, the shield her father gifted her as a child. Later, she discards her dual knives in favor of the katana that Kaseki and Senku forged for her and the other warriors. After her shield is repurposed as a gear, it is replaced with a similar one, which is instead lined with sheet iron, and bears an emblem of the Kingdom of Science.

While infiltrated at Treasure Island, she was instead equipped with a wireless earpiece (a crystal radio made to look like an earring) and a bladed weapon concealed in the form of a thigh strap.

After being depetrified for the second time, she goes back to dual wielding knives with her shield attached to her back.

## Trivia

* Her name is the Japanese word for amber, which is fossilized tree resin.
* Kohaku is the first woman to walk on the moon.
* As stated above, despite her seemingly absurd speed, she is not a faster sprinter than the current world record.
* On the cover of Chapter 17, her eyes were mistakenly shown as yellow/brown even though it was stated that she has blue eyes. This mistake was later fixed with the cover of Chapter 22.
	+ On the cover of Volume 26, her eyes were colored green.
* Kohaku ranked 2nd in the 1st Character Popularity Poll.
	+ She was close to rivaling with Gen who ranked third place.
* She is the first girl to kiss Senku.
* Kohaku only hits Chrome (and occasionally Ginro) for calling her a gorilla even when Senku does the same.
	+ Senku did, however, get a roughening from her in the side story accompanying Chapter 18.
* After the second global petrification, Suika remade Kohaku's shoes with knots like hers since she is her best friend.
* She was originally a bit less than two years younger than Ruri, but after the second petrification event, the sisters are now the same age.

## References

1. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Volume 22 — Extras
2. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Volume 4 — Q&A
3. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 212, Page 7
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 178, Page 18
5. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Volume 19 — Extras
6. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 121, Page 19, Kohaku is petrified along with Ginro.
7. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 138, Page 10
8. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 192, Page 21, Kohaku is petrified along with the rest of the world.
9. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 197, Page 4, Kohaku is revived by Suika.
10. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 223, Page 12
11. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 224, Page 13
12. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 226, Page 4
13. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 226, Page 7
14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 17, Page 4
15. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 16, Page 1
16. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 16, Page 3
17. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1goTZiKOk\_g [Boichi, PLZ draw this!] A Queen and beauty, KOHAKU AND AMARYLLIS!
18. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 19, Page 10
19. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 83, Page 6
20. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 34, Page 15
21. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 30, Page 12
22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 16, Page 7
23. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 63, Page 6
24. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 23, Page 9
25. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 99, Page 5
26. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 146, Page 3
27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 105, Page 11
28. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 31, Page 17
29. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 22, Page 6
30. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 105, Page 2
31. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 27, Page 14
32. ↑ 32.0 32.1 Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 31, Page 16
33. ↑ 33.0 33.1 Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 147, Page 10
34. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 59, Page 7
35. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 147, Page 6
36. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 36, Page 13
37. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 138, Page 12
38. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 197, Page 5
39. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 212, Page 8
40. ↑ Dr. Stone: Terraforming, Page 21
41. ↑ Dr. Stone: Terraforming, Page 26
42. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 85, Page 12
43. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 27, Page 4
44. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 111, Page 7
45. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 121, Page 3
46. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 21, Page 2
47. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 106, Page 19
48. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 138, Page 11
49. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 31, Page 7
50. ↑ 50.0 50.1 Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 17, Page 2
51. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 21, Page 8
52. ↑ 52.0 52.1 Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 20, Page 13
53. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 115, Page 4
54. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 151, Page 1
55. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 121, Page 4
56. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 162, Page 3
57. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 74, Page 11
58. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 77, Page 14
59. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 140, Page 10
60. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 188, Page 3
61. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 189, Page 1
62. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 17, Page 18
63. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 22
64. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 17, Page 6
65. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 201, Page 3
66. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 200, Page 16
67. ↑ https://www.britannica.com/story/how-fast-is-the-worlds-fastest-human "How fast is the world's fastest human" at Britannica.com
68. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 175, Page 3
69. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 107, Page 14
70. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 18
71. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 59, Page 15
72. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 48, Page 5
73. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 227, Page 2
74. ↑ Dr. Stone Manga: Chapter 107, Page 17
75. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZQLCsjJDsI [Boichi, PLZ draw this!] Sai and Ryusui Brother and kid and youth Suika