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The original was posted on /r/onepiece by /u/cocobeanso on 2023-11-06 17:45:29.

In Uni I majored in Chinese literature and recently was re-reading a book of mine when I came across something that I’m 90% confident informs the powers of the Gorosei.

In traditional Chinese literature, the five elements are extremely important, especially for the Confucian tradition. Below is the image that the textbook uses to present this belief, and its common to use a star or pentagram to present this. There is clearly a connection between the lower left corner of the pentagram and our boy St. Saturn.

For an additional piece of inspiration that I’m confident of, Oda often finds character inspiration from musicians, and Jay Garcia Saturn is very likely inspired by Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead band. If I were creating undead demon gods, yeah, I think the famous lead singer of a band famous for songs like “St. Stephen” and “Friend of the Devil,” combined with fundamental Chinese pentagram qi stuff might just do it.

But I know what you’re thinking: One Piece is Japanese, not Chinese. This could just be a coincidence. How is this thematically relevant? Why are you so confident?

The Ox, Saturn, and (maybe) Earth all seem to correlate with St. Garcia Saturn

Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead

The story of One Piece and our main character Monkey D. Luffy is, without any doubt, inspired by the story of the Monkey King, Sun Wukong. (Monkey D. Luffy, King of Pirates & Monkey King… Sun Wukong & Sun God Nika) Oda trained under Dragonball Z creator Akira Toriyama, who has also cited this same story as inspiration.

The thing is, this story is from CHINA, not Japan. It inspired DBZ/Dragonball, and it inspires One Piece. Many people have heard of this story; but what many people do not know is that the author was pro-Buddhist and anti-Confucian. Indeed, throughout thousands of years of Chinese history, scholars and fiction writers had a long back and forth about the major schools of thought: Confucianism, Daoism (Taoism), Moism, Legalism, and Buddhism. The Monkey King story was a part of this long conversation. In the story, Sun Wukong attacks the Gods in Heaven, Gods who represent Confucian bureaucracy/thought, which is also reflected in the elite structures of the Dynasty, which necessitated mastery of Confucian literature to gain a position in elite government.

In the story, Sun Wukong is the king of all monkeys and attacks these Confucians rashly, and to the surprise of all. CENTRAL to this historical story is the attack on Confucianism… and CENTRAL to Confucianism is that “pentagram” of qi. For One Piece, this connection is not just a coincidence, but actually central to Oda’s story, themes, and inspiration.

People will be trying to theory-craft about the powers of the other “Five Elder Stars.” I hope this can be a contribution to helping with this, and that people will refer to the five elements and qi forces of Chinese Confucianism to help them with their theories (and later analysis).

Sun Wukong, on impulse alone, storms into Confucian heaven to attack the Gods

He uses his weapon to attack many enemies at once. Depictions of Sun Wukong often have him wearing long capes that are reminiscent of Luffy’s white swirls.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. For the source of the academic book, here’s an image below: