Enju

Enju is the name of a woman who was resurrected in the same fashion as Kikyo by the demon sorceress Urasue. She is a character exclusive to the anime, appearing solely in Episode 92, "The Plot of the Walking Dead".

Gender: Female

Age:

Name meaning:

Background
Just like like "brother" Kawaramaru, Enju was brought back from the dead so she could serve Urasue, whom they both called "Mother" (in Japanese, they used the term "haha" (母), which is used for "birth mother"). As with all her "children", Urasue brought her back solely to take advantage of skills she bore in life.

Few details of Enju's life were revealed, other than she was a potter by profession and died relatively young. Urasue brought her back to assist her in building an immense army of mindless clay soldiers that did not eat, drink, grow tired or die. She planned to use these soldiers along with Kawaramaru's military knowledge to conquer all of feudal Japan and secure power for herself. Urasue trained Enju in using demon magic to generate fire for the kilns and to shape these soldiers by the thousands.

Unlike Kawaramaru, Enju witnessed Urasue's demise by the newly resurrected Kikyo firsthand (as revealed in a ret-conned scene from Episode 15), and though she was saddened by the loss of her "mother", she took comfort in the fact that she was no longer bound in creating killing machines and could finally return to the peaceful slumber of death. However, her dreams of peace were soon shattered when, to her shock and horror, her "brother" Kawaramaru decided to carry forward with Urasue's dream of supreme conquest, and more or less enslaved her. Through undisclosed means, he managed to force Enju to continue producing Urasue's vast host against her will until he departed to carry out the actual battles required to seize power over Japan as its undead emperor.

Role in the Story
Without Kawaramaru watching over her, Enju managed to escape from her work of forging clay soldiers and ran as far as she could until the souls that animated her body could no longer do so and she collapsed near a riverside in the sleep of the dead. To her fury, Enju awoke to the sight of shinidamachu bringing her the souls of recently dead maidens, thus engendering her with new "life". Her rage was compounded when she saw the master of these soul-collectors was Kikyo, the slayer of her "mother". Cursing the miko for meddling, Enju created a harmless but distracting twister of fire and vanished without a trace.

Later, Enju is seen continuing her escape, putting more and more ground between herself and her brother. Still feeling weak, she stopped to rest and suddenly found herself surrounded by the clay soldiers her brother had sent to bring her back by force. Inuyasha arrived, following the scent of the medicinal herbs Urasue used, and destroyed the puppets; during the commotion, Enju fell and lost consciousness.

She awoke to find "more meddlers" and expressed her wish for everyone to just leave her alone to die. After explaining her past to Miroku, Sango, Kagome and Shippo, she told them she detested her existence, and wanted nothing more than to die, especially since she helped to create that terrible and abhorrent army. More clay soldiers arrived and were quickly dispatched by the group, much to Enju's surprise (mainly because they couldn't be destroyed by conventional weaponry). They then pledged to help Enju destroy her brother's army, but in return they wanted her to give life a try and to see her second chance as a gift. Enju agreed to their terms, though seemingly unsure how she would do so, and they set out stop Kawaramaru, who was on the move to conquer yet another castle.

During the confrontation, Enju finally revealed to her brother just how she felt about the wars he was mongering. She told him that, as dead people, they had no right to take anything away from those of the living and that she wanted him to give up his violent ambitions. He refused, believing it was their destiny to rule the world as the living dead. After he summoned Urasue's hell-demon puppet, Enju watched as Inuyasha wiped her brother and his army out of existence with the Kaze no Kizu.

After placing a fragment of Kawaramaru's armor in the river to commemorate him, Enju returned to life as a simple potter. While she working, she was pleasantly surprised to see one of Kikyo's soul-collectors bringing her a soul as a gift. She sent it back to its owner with the message that she was giving life a second chance, a message that the priestess took to heart.

What became of Enju thereafter was never revealed, although it was clear that unless she was able to replenish herself with the souls of young maidens, she would simply become an empty, lifeless shell. It may be that Kikyo had her shinidamachu continue to supply Enju with souls, and when Kikyo died again, Enju soon followed. However, seeing as how she and Kawaramaru had kept themselves animated up until their introduction and had furnished each of the soldiers with souls, Enju was probably capable of procuring them for herself. She may have even been able to conjure her own shinidamachu, seeing as how she knew what they were beforehand, but it's also very likely that Urasue taught her other methods as well.