What does Ni no Kuni mean exactly?

Question

The full title of the PS3 game is Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. Google Translate fails when I try to use the kanji, and the closest I can get is by writing the whole phrase in hiragana, which Google translates to:

The country of the

However, the title would become The country of the Wrath of the White Witch, which doesn't seem to make sense. Of course, this is dependent on a Google machine translation, so it might not even be reliable.

So I am wondering, what does Ni no Kuni mean given the context of the game?

It's 二ノ国, meaning "second country" here. Probably refers to the fact that it takes place in another world, but I can't be sure since I haven't seen it. — Cattua, Feb 08 '15 at 22:14
This is answered by simply looking at the Wikipedia page for the game. It gives the literal and the functional translation of the title. — Catija, Feb 09 '15 at 03:13
According to the Japanese Wikipedia page for the game, there are two countries in the story, 一ノ国 and 二ノ国, and therefore the title means "Second Country" or "The country number 2", but not "The Country of two", because there are two countries, not only one). Check [this related Q&A](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/96531/number-%e3%81%ae-noun/96557#96557) at the sister site Japanese Stackexchange for more details. — jarmanso7, Oct 09 '22 at 21:24

score 6 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 11 '15 at 06:17

According to the Ni no Kuni article on Wikipedia, it literally means Second Country or Country of Two.

So the final title is either:

The Country of Two: The Wrath of the White Witch
Second Country: The Wrath of the White Witch

Despite the difference in wording, they generally mean the same thing, which in essence is a country with two sides to it, e.g. two faces, dimensions, etc. This makes sense since the premise of the game is to travel between Oliver's world – world 1 and the parallel world – world 2 – world of magic (which is magically linked to Oliver's world) in order for Oliver to find a way to save his mother.

What does Ni no Kuni mean exactly?

1 Answers1