

The very first scene of the F/SN visual novel (even before the prologue from
Rin's perspective) has Shirou experiencing the fire that occurred at the end
of the Fourth Grail War, blacking out, and then waking up in a hospital with
Kiritsugu by his side. There, Kiritsugu identifies himself to Shirou as a
_mahoutsukai_ ; that is, one who uses _mahou_ (魔法).

Depending on what translation you've seen, _mahou_ is translated as "Sorcery",
"Magic", or "True Magic", by contrast with the lesser _majutsu_ , which is
"Magic", "Thaumaturgy", or "Magecraft". The point here is that _mahou_ is the
greater of the two arts, available to beings like Zelretch, while _majutsu_ is
the lesser, and is what is used by "ordinary" people like Kiritsugu, Kotomine,
and so forth.

Why does Kiritsugu call himself a _mahoutsukai_? As far as I know, Kiritsugu
never actually attained the ability to perform _mahou_ , what with the whole
him destroying the Grail and all of that.

(I apologize for using Japanese terms here, but the utter inability of
Nasuverse translators to be consistent with one another about terminology
leaves me no choice.)


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question
fate-stay-night
Why does Kiritsugu refer to himself as a "mahoutsukai" at the very beginning of F/SN?


From what i remember of the Translation of the game Kiritsugu introduced
himself as a Sorcerer. to be a Sorcerer _recognized_ by the Magic Association
one need to have wielded one of the [True
Magics](http://typemoon.wikia.com/wiki/True_magic#Magics).

In Tsukihime, Aoko introduces herself as a Sorceress which she is because she
wielded the 5th, however at the time of the original Fate/Stay Night release
the Nasuverse wasn't as defined as it was today. While the game explains
Thaumaturgy, Magecraft and True Magic (including the difference between
Medea's and Rin's Magic) a lot of the information and inner workings of the
Nasuverse (along with terminology) comes from the Fate/Complete Works Books,
so at the time a Sorcerer/Sorceress was probably just a term to make a Magus
seem more important before a majority of the True Magics were defined.

Also, in the wiki on [Magecraft](http://typemoon.wikia.com/wiki/Magecraft) it
says:

> However, modern Magecraft remains far inferior from that of the past, so
> much that someone like Medea, who comes from the Age of Gods when Magecraft
> was much more powerful, would seem like a sorcerer to the eyes of a modern
> magus, even though what she can do is not really Magic.

Taking that into example, Shirou, a child who knew nothing of Magecraft would
see Kiritsugu, who does use it, in the same way a modem Magus would see a
Magus from the the Age of Gods.

Also, rather than having to explain the difference between Magic and Magecraft
later on Kiritsugu probably figured it be easier if he had just said he was a
wizard, since both a sorcerer and a wizard are "users of magic" this probably
in japanese would be _mahoutsukai_ either way. This is another reason why Rin
disliked how Kiritsugu trained Shirou (even though Kiritsugu didn't actually
do anything), because Shirou doesn't know the difference.

Another reason for all of this however as stated by Krazer in the comments is
that we see the scene of Shirou though Shirou remembering the events of when
he met Kiritsugu (we can tell this though the use of descriptive text of how
Shiro feels). Shiro's idealized concept of Kiritsugu may have influence the
scene, this would ring true of Shiki in Tsukihime aswell when he first met
Aoko and he "remembers" Aoko refer to herself as a Sorceress when they first
met when he was a child (and in hospital much like Shirou) while in the
Eclipse Ending Shiki makes no mention of Aoko being a Sorceress.


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answer