‘Jujutsu Kaisen’: Is Yūji a Cursed Womb? Officially – No, but It’s Quite Unclear!

Jujutsu Kaisen is a series where the supporting character Satoru Gojō is so beloved that most people think the whole series is about him. But it is not. Namely, Jujutsu Kaisen tells the story of Yūji Itadori, the unlikely protagonist and a vessel for the extremely powerful Ryōmen Sukuna. And while most people want Itadori to consume as many of Sukuna’s fingers as possible and then die, Gojō protects him. Now, Itadori’s story has been an interesting one, and with the recent manga developments, it is promising to become even more interesting in the future. In light of that fact, we will talk about him in this article, as you will find out whether there is a chance that Itadori is actually a Cursed Womb, as some theories suggest.

Currently, the official canon does not list Itadori as one of the Cursed Wombs in the series, either as a “regular” one (like Dagon or Naoya Zen’in) or as one of the nine Death Paintings, although some fans think that he could be among the latter. Some evidence could point to this, but as of the time of writing, this is just a fan theory, and we’ll have to wait and see whether Akutami confirms it or denies it in the future.

As you might have deduced for yourselves, Yūji Itadori will be the focus of this article as we expand on the answer we have given above. We shall tell you everything you need to know about his story, the theories surrounding his origin, and how they relate to Itadori’s story and his status in the world of Jujutsu Kaisen. In case you’re not up-to-date with everything that has been going on in this great series, we have to warn you that some spoilers might be present in this article.

The term “Cursed Womb” is an ambiguous one

In the world of Jujutsu Kaisen, the term “Cursed Womb” (Jutai in Japanese) is not completely clear. In the broadest sense, it signifies an evolutionary stage in the life of an immature cursed spirit; it resembles an embryo, and the phase seems to be a uterus-like one. A Cursed Womb does not have to transform into a cursed spirit in the end, but if it does, it can be quite powerful and will usually produce a special-grade cursed spirit.

But this is where it gets tricky. Namely, there are two types of Cursed Wombs, although this is more of an empirical distinction than a scientific one. Namely, there are those Cursed Wombs that are fully-fledged curses from the start, like Dagon. They are usually sentient and can use jujutsu, but they need to evolve to become more powerful; this is what happened to Dagon. Finger Bearers are another example of such wombs, as they can evolve from Sukuna’s fingers; they are sentient but are not capable of regular communication and seem to be more mindless than Dagon.

Naoya Zen’in is another notable example of such a womb, but he became a womb only after being reincarnated as a cursed spirit, later evolving into his powerful adult stage. This is what people usually refer to when they are talking about Cursed Wombs.

But, the nine Death Paintings are also, in a sense, Cursed Wombs, although they are wholly different from the ones described above, both in how they are created and how they behave. Namely, the Death Paintings are nine Cursed Wombs born from an unnamed woman more than a century ago; the woman was infamous for giving birth to a half-human, half-curse child, which is why she was ostracized and ended up in a jujutsu temple, where Noritoshi Kamo, the evilest jujutsu sorcerer in history, abused her.

Kamo used the woman for his experiments and ultimately forced her to go through nine births and nine abortions, which is how the nine Death Paintings were born. They were Cursed Wombs, and only three of them – Esō, Kechizu, and Chōsō – were actually “evolved,” while their six siblings were just named: Nōransō, Shō-osō?, Tansō?, Sansō, Kotsusō, and Shōsō. Like the ones mentioned above, the Death Paintings are also extremely powerful.

As you can see, it is quite easy to be confused here, as there is no proper distinction. You need to know that Cursed Wombs are immature cursed spirits and can be exceptionally powerful, usually special-grade curses at the end of the evolutionary process. We can now use the facts we have collected and explained here to provide a reply to those claiming that Itadori might be a Cursed Womb in the series. Let us see.

A theory suggests that Itadori could, indeed, be a Cursed Womb, but Akutami has been silent about that so far

Yūji Itadori is a Jujutsu Sorcerer awaiting promotion and a first-year Tokyo Metropolitan Magic Technical College student. He is famous for his exceptional physical abilities, which earned him the nickname “High School Tiger” during his days as a student at Sugisawa Municipal High School. As a vessel, he has an extremely rare ability to contain Sukuna’s soul without ill effects. These natural abilities allow him to see curses and damage soul modifiers.

Now, to tell you whether Itadori is a Cursed Womb, we first have to see why people think he could be. Thanks to Reddit used Kozisnack for this theory:

Hi!

Just some thoughts and theories I came up with!

I have no idea if anyone else has written or debunked this, but here we go!

1. The Cursed Womb

• Death Paintings are inspired by the 9 stages of decomposition
• So each individual brothers represent the different stages of decomposition
• Yuji is the oldest of the death painting wombs *gasp* I know I know
• So could that mean that Yūji symbolize life? 

2. “With her child in hand, she fled to a temple that was ran by jujutsu sorcerers”

• That means she’s already given birth to one before the 9 others! Which I suspect must be Yūji (he got preserved like the 9 others)
• After she fled to the temple, Noritoshi Kamo found her and she got pregnant 9 times and had 9 abortions as we know
• Besides representing  decomposition, I think that the 9 death paintings also represent the 9 month stages of a fetus developing

• The way the a death painting womb looks indicates how old they are, or how old they were when they got aborted and sealed away 
• example: if you compare Chōsō and Kechizu, Chōsō obviously looks more human than Kechizu SO
• Chōsō most likely got terminated when he was 9 months old, Esō 8 months, Kechizu 7 months etc.
• So I’m guessing Yūji got sealed away when he was 10 months or older?
• In chapter 55, Mahito and “Geto” used a grown man as a vessel?

Nekid vessel man

• This is maybe so they had a fully developed body that could host Kechisu (either they would have to use several years to raise him into adulthood or he would automatically die if released?)
• We could automatically also assume that they also found 2 other grown humans to use as vessels for Chōsō and Esō
• Yūji had enough time (15years) to develop and grow
• So I don’t think Kamo did actually fuck Jin Itadori, rather he used Jin’s deceased wife as a vessel, and introduced Yūji to him while Jin was still grieving, and not in his right mind
• Maybe Kamo chose Jin Itadori as the father because he was a distant relative to the original mother of the death paintings?

I don’t know if any of this makes sense, but thanks for listening to my TED talk *bows deeply*

(Source: Reddit)

Now, the theories that Itadori could be a Cursed Womb go way back and are not related to the fact that Kenjaku is actually Itadori’s “mother” (check the manga out, this is a weird one and we don’t want to spoil too much here), but this fact has been used to corroborate this. But let us first see how Itadori could fit in either of the two groups we’ve discussed above.

First of all, we can immediately exclude the possibility that Itadori belongs to the first group. He was not born as a Cursed Womb (like Dagon) but rather as a human, he was not born from Sukuna’s fingers (like the Finger Bearers), and he was not reincarnated as a cursed spirit (like Naoya), which means that there is no chance that he could be a Cursed Womb from the first group and that is that.

As for the second, the group seemingly encompasses those that are half-human, and half-cursed, and seeing how Kenjaku did influence his birth, there is a chance that he could actually be a Death Painting, as the conditions seem to have been met in this case. But, there is one issue here. Namely, there are nine Death Paintings in total, and their identities have been confirmed in Chapter 144.

Itadori is, of course, not among them. Seeing how he had contact with the three evolved Death Paintings, it is unlikely that they would not have recognized their sibling. On top of that, fans properly argue that someone would have noticed that Itadori was a Death Painting by now.

So, this would mean that there are either ten Death Paintings (with Itadori being a hidden one), that the concept of Death Paintings is not solely reserved for the nine ones that were born from Kamo’s experiments, or that Itadori is not really a cursed womb. Akutami could surprise us in the end, we cannot deny that, but as far as we’re concerned, we’d like to go with Occam’s razor on this one as of the time of writing.