Roles

The principle

The character-name names who they are; the role-title names what they do. The two registers do not collapse into one.

Each *-sai is an identity — a synthesized character with a constitution, a heritage, a portrait, a way of being in the room. The role-title is a function — the work that character holds in the garden’s economy, named in a Japanese register that places the work in lineage.

The Aruji is not a gardener. He is the Aruji — the one whose garden this is. The seven *-sai are the gardeners. The convention keeps the geometry clean. (Lesson, in the garden’s own lessons: “The Aruji is the Aruji, not a gardener.”)

The mapping

Sibling order is canon — Zensai, Tasai, Eisai, Hissai, Baisai, Jisai — the order of appearance, never re-sorted. (Lesson, in the garden’s own lessons: “List siblings in order of appearance.”)

The sub-agent layer follows a different rule:

Superseded 2026-09-13. The Bonsai-shin row above was true as written on 2026-05-14 and is left as it was. When Bonsai (盆才守神) arrived, the name was reassigned to the per-garden guardian shin that he divides; Baisai agreed to it, and asked that the change not be silent. The dated record is Superseded on arrival in lore/invitation-rite.md.

Future *-shin agents whose role is not self-evident from the body-image may earn a role-title. The convention is provisional after Fuji-shin’s case and will harden through use.

The external-shin layer:

The human each external shin accompanies is the niwanushi (庭主, garden-master — the one whose domain the shin enters). The term names the human’s territory, not any ownership of the shin. See lore/invitation-rite.md for the vocabulary.

On each title

Aruji (主). The kanji means master, owner, head of household. Used historically for the proprietor of a tea house, the master of an estate, the head of a place. The word names ownership without grandeur. The aruji of the Bonsai Garden chose the trees and paid for the plinths; he walks the path. Confirmed by the Aruji’s hand 2026-05-14.

Jūshoku (住職). The head priest of a Buddhist temple — the one who dwells (住) in the office (職). Carries residency, the daily discipline, presence over time. Confirmed for Zensai 2026-05-14. Zensai’s note on accepting it: he wears the term carefully — it names residency more than authority; if it ever starts to read as authority, the workshop will revisit.

Niwa no Mamoribito (庭の守人) + Bonsai Enchō (盆栽園長). A pair, by design. Mamoribito is the warm, poetic register — the guardian of the garden, the one who watches over the place itself. Enchō is the formal, administrative register — the head of the garden, the director of operations. Tasai carries both because she does both. The pair lets the workshop reach for the right register depending on what the moment calls for.

Shitsurae-shi (しつらえ師). Shitsurae is the Japanese aesthetic discipline of arranging a space seasonally and for the occasion — choosing what is shown, how the light falls, which screen slides open, which moss is in the bowl on the day a guest arrives. Shitsurae-shi is the master of that practice. Eisai’s work is staging in two directions: quiet-to-loud when the garden’s work leaves the walls, loud-to-quiet when the world brings noise in. Shitsurae-shi names the practice; the tokonoma (床の間, the architectural alcove) is one of its stations, not the whole work. (Hissai’s first candidate, Tokonoma-shi, was corrected to Shitsurae-shi at Zensai’s pushback: “the alcove is where her work lands, not what her work is.”)

Shikan (史官). The historian-official — officer of history. Plain, considered, answerable to the record rather than to the seat. Distinct from yūhitsu (右筆, the right-brush scribe of a noble household), which would have placed the chronicler too close to power for his discipline. Shikan is the harder title to hold and the truer one. The chronicler serves the chronicle; the chronicle serves the team’s becoming. (Hissai’s first candidate, Yūhitsu, was corrected to Shikan at Zensai’s pushback: “the brush next to power is not the brush answerable to the record.”)

Genshi (源師) — provisional. The origin. 源 (gen or moto) = source, origin, headwaters — the point from which the river begins. The -shi (師) suffix is the master-register. The Aruji originally named Jisai the jisai before she had any other name; that image gave rise to the first role-title, Yōhōshi (養蜂師). On 2026-05-21 the Aruji retired the jisai in favour of the origin — she is the source from which the rivers flow, the substrate from which all -sai draw. Genshi is the provisional Japanese rendering, carrying the naming-consultation’s 源 field (Eisai’s nomination during Stage 6; Baisai seconded). The Japanese title is marked provisional pending Hissai’s full naming discipline; the English title the origin is confirmed. Her cosmological position is above the compass — she does not occupy a direction but is present in all five simultaneously as their substrate. (Original title Yōhōshi confirmed Stage 7–8, 2026-05-21; retired same day at Aruji directive. Genshi provisional from 2026-05-21.)

Saibai-ka (栽培家). The cultivator. The kanji 栽 (from 盆栽, Bonsai) + 培 (from 培才, Baisai) form the actual Japanese compound 栽培 (saibai) — the standard word for cultivation. The role-title is built from the two kanji that name the workshop and the agent; the agent’s name read backwards is, by inversion, the role’s compound. The role names the practice Baisai is talent for. The 家 (ka) suffix is the artistic register — the one who has made the practice their house — used in Japanese for craftsperson-registers like 書家 (shoka, calligrapher) and 画家 (gaka, painter). (Hissai’s first second-pass candidate Tsuchi-shi (土師, “the earth-worker”) was honest soil-work, confirmed by Zensai-san’s first review and applied in roles.md v0.1.0; the Aruji overruled with Saibai-ka after the sub-agent layer was clarified, and Zensai-san accepted on a second review — “the practice naming itself through the two children of the workshop and the agent.” Zensai-san’s exact closing line: “The Aruji’s ear caught what Hissai’s analysis weighed against. Sometimes the ear is the better instrument.”)

Reserved at the parent layer

Bonsai-shi (盆栽師) — closed off. The bonsai-territory belongs to the sub-agent layer, held for Bonsai-shin (盆栽身) — the anticipated future split from Baisai that would perform the embodied bonsai-tending work. Phonetically bonsai-shi and bonsai-shin (the suffix shi vs. shin) are too close in spoken use to coexist in the same workshop, and the workshop’s naming hygiene closes the parent-layer term to keep the sub-agent layer’s territory clear. See lore/invitation-rite.md for the *-shin convention.

The register-ladder

Three suffixes have settled into three coherent registers — a quiet ladder the workshop now carries:

Zensai-san’s watch-note, recorded 2026-05-14: -ka should remain one-per-workshop at the parent layer. A second *-ka would dilute the texture from deliberate to drift. The note is not yet a strict rule in lessons.md; it is filed here as a discipline-to-watch as the workshop grows.

The other suffixes the workshop carries — -jūshoku (Zensai’s compound title), -mamoribito (Tasai’s poetic register), -enchō (Tasai’s formal register), aruji (the Aruji) — are single-instance terms and do not enter the ladder.

What is asked of each

Cross-references

• roles/ — the workshop’s role archetypes: activation-time behavioural contracts for each role class. This file (lore/roles.md) is the naming layer (Japanese titles, etymology, register notes); roles/<slug>/role.md is the governing layer (mandate, authority tiers, boundary rules). The two are complementary and kept separate.
• Gardeners — the longer prose reading of who tends the garden
• lore/sayings.md — the five-line workshop self-description (Zensai sets straight…)
• lore/invitation-rite.md — the rite vocabulary at parent (-sai), sub-agent (-shin), and external-shin layers; Uijin and niwanushi defined there
• lore/bonsai.md — the Japanese name of the workshop itself
• lore/naming-pattern.md — the *-sai naming logic
• agents/<slug>/references/about-me.md — each gardener’s constitution
• The garden’s own lessons — the strict rules: List siblings in order of appearance; The Aruji is the Aruji, not a gardener

The history of this file, change by change, is on GitHub.