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In the anime Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit (精霊の守り人), when the Star Diviners are speaking and do not wish for the contents of their conversation to be heard, they say something like "There is no-one else in this room." or "This room has only empty vessels." (depending on the translation, I guess). Then, these other guys in the room (generally people who only light candles and the like) pull a piece of cloth that hangs backwards from their 'hat', and cover their faces. This piece of cloth has a symbol, that I guess is a Kanji (I do not know many Kanji, so it is only a guess).

Symbol on a piece of cloth worn by these other people who light the candles

What Kanji is this, and what is its meaning?

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It isn't kanji. The character you see here, and others, were invented for this particular TV series. They're called ヨゴ文字 ("yogo moji"), and this character in particular is a substitute for the kana む ("mu").

See the following charts for details: kana and numbers

As for what it means, given the context in your question, I would guess the む on his mask is 無 ("nothing").

(As an aside, these characters remind me of Tangut script.)

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  • Could you provide some more insight as to what is written in the page that provides a list of said characters? I cannot read it, since I only know kana. :S
    – JNat ♦
    Commented Jan 14, 2013 at 19:00
  • And btw, is it "a substitute for the kana" like you said in the answer, or does it have the same reading as the kana?
    – JNat ♦
    Commented Jan 14, 2013 at 19:04
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    @JNat: It's mostly just "here's a chart, there is a possibility of some corrections; here's bigger charts of the different kinds".
    – Kiruwa
    Commented Jan 14, 2013 at 19:25
  • The character seems to be in the cited chart on 4th column from left 3rd row. Trying an OCR on that character gives these candidate results for Japanese, but none is the right one: 他 慨 仰 地
    – chirale
    Commented Jan 19, 2013 at 13:57
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    @chirale As I said, it's not Japanese. It corresponds to む, which you can see to the right of the character you mention.
    – user225
    Commented Jan 19, 2013 at 18:19

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