For the uninitiated, Shaft is the villain of Rondo of Blood, the cultist who revives Dracula, and who ends up manipulating Richter in Symphony of the Night. His name earned quite a few laughs as people in the fandom keep wondering why an evil priest is called "stick" at best, and a slang for male genitalia at worst. Just one bit of Castlevania weirdness that we accept "just because", but that I came to think that hides something more.
So, to begin with, Shaft's Japanese name offers no clue at all. His name is not a "mistranslation". It's written "シャフト (
Shafuto)" and you translate this to "Shaft". Everything fits phonetically, but the meaning of the word itself seems to have
nothing to do with the character. Shaft could aswell be called "Table" and the effect would be the same.
But... What if there was ANOTHER way to translate this? What if
another name offers a clue?
See, "リヒター(
Rihitā)" is translated "Richter". It's correct also but get this: "Richter" is not an English word. "Richter" is a noun meaning "Judge" in German and we could make several cases about why this fits the character, one of which that he "passes judgment upon evil". Why are we assuming, then, that "Shaft" is English?
Before I continue the name analysis, let me tell you more about the character itself first.
Shaft is the run-of-the-mill evil cultist. Holds a black mass, sacrifices a damsel to revive a great evil, gets owned by the hero, correct? Not exactly.
Different from a faceless cultist that is evil for evil's sake, Shaft has a proper name and DOES actually receive a bit of characterization. In Rondo of Blood, Shaft doesn't revive Dracula "just because he's evil". Shaft is actually disgusted at the state of society. He believes that "peace is degenerate", as if people were taking it for granted, and his disgust led him to revive Dracula so Dracula can shape the "depraved world" as Shaft sees fit. Shaft wants "the dawn of a new world" and is willing to take any measure to get it. This background is given both on Rondo's manual and intro cutscene, in German writing and narration, with repeated focus on this "expectation of a new future" concept. Dracula X Chronicles just repeats the German intro narration from Rondo.
(https://i.imgur.com/Md10rDT.png)
Then come SotN. What does Shaft tell Alucard? That "Count Dracula has come to purify this corrupt world with the searing flames of chaos".
And beyond those, pachinko Shaft also has a description. Although the pachinko is not canon, we can plausibly accept that the characters imported from Rondo into that game are 1:1 lore transpositions. And this is what Shaft's description says:
A dark priest who hates peace and attempts to bring about destruction and chaos. He resurrected Dracula to fulfill his plan to change the world according to his wishes. He was a priest before but the more he served god, the more he saw the world covered in desire, and the god he believed in greatly disappointed him. He construed that the god lead peace causes corruption, dabbling in the dark arts to destroy it, with Dracula's resurrection, he plots to change the world into the one he desires.So, we are set here on who Shaft is and why he does what he does. He wants the world to change and takes drastic measures to do so. Now, one thing about all this: Shaft's main character traits are delivered in German. As said above, both Rondo and DXC have a German-narrated intro recounting Shaft's actions, and Rondo has the entire German script written on the manual. Why the random usage of German? Well, now I have an idea.
(https://i.imgur.com/iF7X7kd.png)
What if "Shaft" was not actually intended by the Japanese developers to be "Shaft", but instead the German "Schaft"? "Schaft" can be written in katakana in the same exact way as "Shaft", and it's also a German name, but that's not all. The German usage of the word adds QUITE a bit more meaning and nuance lacking in the English "Shaft" that could lead us to a more interesting path.
"Schaft", read by itself, is just a cognate of the English "Shaft". However the most recurring usage of the word in German is actually as a suffix. "Schaft" is used in a similar way as "Ship" is in English: "Friendship" (Freundschaft), "Kinship" (Verwandtschaft), "Readership" (Leserschaft). It is also popular to describe a group with a shared interest or characteristic: "Wissenschaft" (can mean a group of scholarly studies), "Bruderschaft" (meaning "Fraternity"), "Judenschaft" (meaning "jewish community"), "Gerätschaft" (a group of tools, "equipment"), you get the idea.
As you can see, "Schaft" can become very general. So then, is there a
specific,
academically relevant,
culturally contexted thing making ample use of "Schaft" that COULD have influenced Japanese developers and that DOES fit the character as the evil cult leader he is...? As it turns out, there is: a social Darwinism theory developed by German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies called "Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft", (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Gemeinschaft-and-Gesellschaft) generally translated as "Community and Society."
(https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1416873388l/1878398.jpg)
This work discusses how a society driven by "rational will" engulfs one driven by "natural will". Quoting a section from the Britannica article linked above:
"In the Gesellschaft, rational self-interest and calculating conduct act to weaken the traditional bonds of family, kinship, and religion that permeate the Gemeinschaft’s structure. In the Gesellschaft, human relations are more impersonal and indirect, being rationally constructed in the interest of efficiency or other economic and political considerations."This work talks about the idea of a cold, self-interested, profit-seeking union between individuals who have placed a defined goal above human interaction forcing a change upon the rural, traditional communities driven by organic, more humane values between other individuals. This work is very influential and was expanded upon later by other authors such as Max Weber (https://mws.quotus.org/article/MWS/2012/1/4). And what do you know, this is a well-known concept in Japan (as the great many Germanic things that Japan loves). To cite one example, best-selling author and economist Taichi Sakaiya wrote about it (https://books.google.com.br/books?id=m6ImWAIZVggC&pg=PA141&lpg=PA141&dq=%22taichi+sakaiya%22+%22gemeinschaft%22&source=bl&ots=py7emu3tcs&sig=ACfU3U3M8z5UzmLOLjibWcyT3WbIsOsqnA&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi4pfLprpLhAhUNJ7kGHbEoD64Q6AEwCXoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22taichi%20sakaiya%22%20%22gemeinschaft%22&f=false), offering his own vision on the subject. Tönnies' work has influenced sociology and how corporate thinking works (and not just in Japan), to put it in short. Max Weber himself has greatly influenced Japan (in a myriad of sociology subjects).
So, back to Castlevania. Shaft is disgusted at the current state of society. He wants a new world to be born, is willing to assemble a group bent on reviving Dracula to bring about this drastic change and remake the world as he sees fit, his group places human lives and traditional values below the goal, and all of it gets described to you in German. On the other hand, a German theory doubly uses the suffix that is the exact writing of Shaft's name in Japanese to explain the same effect of societal change, down to one of the terms meaning the same thing Shaft does: assemble a group united by a coldly-calculated self-interest in changing society acting together to achieve it by weakening traditional bonds and values via the resurrection of Dracula.
See the parallel? But there is more.
In the end, on the final dialogue between Dracula and Richter, Richter tells Dracula — the "means of change" Shaft brought forth — that his emotionless views of "justice is made by those in power" (the "Gesellschaft") are wrong, and that it's traditional values such as faith, love and honor that bind people and guide them (the "Gemeinschaft"). Dracula laughs because Richter has only averted him temporarily... Dracula will come back again by undermining faith just like he did to Shaft.
In conclusion, this is my proposition:
"Shaft" was intended to be "Schaft", in reference to the German theory about societal change brought forth by undermining tradition that has considerable academic impact. Under this light, the "random" German intro explaining Shaft's motivations makes sense to BE in German, the final dialogue with Dracula and Richter's defense of traditional values against Dracula's "power rules" argument makes sense, and even Shaft's name would fit the German theme the game has going for Richter.
My hypothesis is that these things are all references to the German theory, but the localization team couldn't pick up on these details since "Shaft" and "Schaft" read identically and because translating katakana to English is by default, inadvertedly fooling us for 20+ years and making Shaft into a butt of many jokes.