Just as a word of warning, I’m about to go full on nerd crazy about the Shitennou and what they represent. My professors would be sad if they knew this is what I use my research and analysis skills for.

Something that I think has bothered some Sailor Moon fans is the lack of explanation about the Shitennou. Besides their naming scheme after stones, they don’t have any distinctive weapons, attacks, or such compared to the easier to identify Senshi = Roman deities parallel. It just seemed like they had a lot of potential as Endymion’s guardians before they were reduced to rocks in Mamoru’s room. So here’s a much too long analysis of what their deal is.

If you do a quick look up of who the Shitennou are without the lens of Sailor Moon, you’re most likely going to come up with the Four Heavenly Kings of the Buddhist faith.

四天王 → Shi + Ten + Ou = Four + Heaven + King

They originate from India as Vaiśravaṇa, Virūḍhaka, Dhṛtarāṣṭra, and Virūpākṣa. But like a lot of deities that get assimilated into other cultures ,they get slightly changed in the process. In Japan’s case into Tamonten, Zochoten, Jikokuten, and Komokuten.

You can tell this is probably what they were going for by how they’re portrayed during the Silver Millenium war:

compared to:

It should be noted is that the four kings’ symbology is really vague and fluid. They all have similar looking weapons and each have certain items or animals that can be attributed to them but aren’t absolutely necessary in their Japanese portrayal (who seem to prefer to depict them as warriors). The following photos are the same deities from China with some of their other items:

Even more confusingly, their signature colors differ depending on the country.

So, who are they supposed to be?

Well, if you go by their initial designs in the Material Collection and their anime depictions (their uniform accent colors), they should be as follows:

(cut and pasted together from The Oracle’s scanlation, although I just noticed a typo in Kunzite’s word bubble, which should be “I have an affection for Zoisite." This is also where I’m pulling their quoted bits of personality from.)

Jadeite → red → Zochoten: South King, associated with summer and fire

Nephrite → yellow/red → Komokuten: West King, associated with autumn and metal

Zoisite → green → Jikokuten: East King, associated with spring (so many flower petals) and water

Kunzite → blue/silver → Tamonten: North King, the most powerful of the Shitennou associated with winter and the earth

You can also draw a connection with the semi-canon Senshi/Shitennou pairings if you assume Naoko Takeuchi wanted the couples to have parallels: Mars with Jadeite’s fire, Jupiter with Nephrite’s autumn/trees, Mercury with Zoicite’s water, and Kunzite with Venus just because they’re both leaders (love and cold would be a interesting fit though, yeah?)

BUT if you notice, Nephrite and Jadeite’s later manga depictions have different image/uniform colors. Jadeite is now blue, Nephrite is just red.

So what now?

Well, I’m going by assumption here, but I think that Ms. Takeuchi ending up ditching the ambiguity of the Japanese Shitennou and went for the more recognizable Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations.

Still going by their uniforms:

Jadeite → blue → Seiryuu, the azure dragon associated with wood, Spring, and East

Nephrite → red → Suzaku, the vermillion bird associated with fire, Summer, and South

Zoicite → green → Genbu, the black tortoise, associated with water, Winter, and North (I know it’s black, but I’ve seen modern depictions of Genbu as green because it’s more colorful to be in line with the others and you know, turtles and tortoises are cartoonishly drawn green)

Kunzite → Silver/White → Byakko, the white tiger associated with metal, Autumn, and West

(if you’re wondering why the pic of the creatures looks wrong now that you can associate them with directions, it’s meant to be held above your head since it’s a map of the sky. Apparently if you do that, the directions are correct)

As the Four Symbols, in Chinese mythology there is also a fifth legendary beast, the Yellow Dragon, Huang Long, who represents the Center, earth, and the emperor. Sound familiar to the Golden Kingdom, center of Earth and home to Prince Endymion? This specific dragon isn’t in Japanese mythology because for them the center is "void” rather than having its own symbol, but there’s a similar dragon called the Kōryū or Ōryū.

Now when we do that, it makes their positions a little more sensible. Remember, Jadeite was supposed to be in charge of the Far East, Nephrite for North America, Zoicite for Europe, and Kunzite with the Middle East. Let’s map that:

Like it was mentioned, the Four Symbols also have cardinal directions associated with them: Seiryuu-East, Suzaku-South, Genbu-North, and Byakko-West. If you take into consideration kyralih’s post about Endymion being from Babylonia, it wouldn’t be too far to stretch that Nephrite might’ve been in the southern part of North America and Kunzite was just a little bit farther west than where Endymion and the palace might’ve been. Also, since he’s the leader, he would probably be located closer to the prince anyway.

Something interesting also happens with how the Shitennou are paired with the Senshi when you read their new elements as personalities… but I’ll put that in the separate individual rambles. This is just for them as a group.

So finally, why the mineral/stone names? Probably just because they came from the Earth (Earth the planet, and earth as in dirt. It’s like a terrible pun). Technically, Beryl did too so she has the same sort of name. Calling them outright by such loaded names like Tamoten or Byakko probably would’ve tipped it off to readers too early who they were or make them wonder why such big names were acting as henchmen. That or maybe Ms. Takeuchi just liked stones. I dig ‘em.

And that’s my summary of the Shitennou as a whole and what they might mean. Keep in mind this all just conjecture because I don’t know if Ms. Takeuchi actually specifically stated what their entire deal was, but I figured with a little research, I could backtrack what she was probably aiming for.

I do have some headcanons for these four individually about their personalities and how they would interact if they were just normal people, but I’ll probably be posting those separately sometime later.

Thanks for reading my crazy rambling. I’ll try not to do it too often :)