Black Pearl

"Seeing, but never seen; protected, yet never known to its protector. Our father's tomb, hidden inside a black pearl deep within your eye."

- Sesshōmaru



The is a demon relic which provides its bearer with a gateway to "the other side".

Background & Purpose
Knowing that his elder son Sesshōmaru would actively seek the Tessaiga following his death, Tōga decided to keep the sword with his remains in the other world — where his firstborn could not follow — until Inuyasha was able to use it himself. In order to provide Inuyasha with access to the other world, and thus the sword, he commissioned the demon Hōsenki to create a jewel that could open a gateway there. Once forged, Tōga had Myōga hide the pearl within, or behind, Inuyasha's right eye.

Some 200 years later, Sesshōmaru finally tracked down the pearl's location after decades of searching and claimed it forcibly from his younger brother's eye. He used it to open the portal to his father's resting place and passed through it, with Inuyasha, Myōga and Kagome following him. Once the sword was claimed, the characters returned to the world of the living through the same portal. After closing the way, the pearl returned to Inuyasha's eye and became a permanent part of him.

In the later seasons and chapters, the characters discovered that a jewel shard had somehow made its way to the netherworld. After asking how to use the pearl to reach the graveyard again, Tōtōsai and Myōga informed Inuyasha that by providing him access to his inheritance, the pearl had served its function and could no longer link them to the netherworld.

Manga vs. Anime

 * In the manga, in order to extract the pearl, Sesshōmaru gouged out Inuyasha's eye, which slowly recovered, over the course of the next few chapters. In the anime, this was modified, so that Sesshōmaru simply used a stream of energy to extract the pearl, without damaging the eye itself, though the pupil did temporarily disappear.
 * The pearl returning to Inuyasha's eye is exclusive to the anime. In the manga, the group's return was never really shown, and its fate was not revealed until the group tried to get another from Hōsenki where it was revealed that it had simply vanished into thin air, upon completing its purpose.

Trivia

 * The Black Pearl is so potent a relic that it takes enormous skill and possibly decades to forge. Hōsenki's son explained it would take roughly 100 years for him to master the process of making one.
 * When Inuyasha returned to his father's grave for the second time, the Black Pearl was somehow able to give him visions of his troubled past as a way to warn him that he was not meant to go there a second time.
 * Sesshōmaru's search for the Black Pearl is what got Jaken his job. The demon weapon Nintōjō had the ability to track down the pearl, but Sesshōmaru was unable to use it himself. When Jaken proved capable of tapping into the power, he was allowed to accompany the daiyōkai as his servant.
 * The Black Pearl looks much like a tainted Shikon no Tama.