... waaahhh!!! i did not understand this chapter at all... i'm confused, can someone help me? is tsukuyomi the same as tomoyo??? and, souma, does she have an eternal youth or something. and amaterasu... OMG! this is so confusing. the Empress of Japan? but i thought Japan was divided [Suwa, Shirasaki...] so then...
argh~! i reread it and i still couldn't understand what they were talking about...
and i want to cry for kurogane-kun... his past is so sad...
Okay... this might be able to help you understand Kuro-chan's world better...
Instead of basing the leaders upon actual Japanese history, it's based on Japanese mythology... Tsukiyumi and Amaterasu are the gods of Moon and Sun, respectively. (Though, technically, Tsukiyumi should've been Amaterasu's brother, not sister) Amaterasu is believed to have founded Japan, and her grandson was known to be the first emperor of Japan. Since Japanese legend says Amaterasu was the grandmother of their first emperor, it's only fair to let Amaterasu be Kuro's Empress. Plus, from the looks of it, she's too young to even be called "Nana" or "Grandma". During the early organization of Japan, I don't think such divisions you talked about even exist yet... do they? I dunno. I don't think Amaterasu is THAT great
I'm not sure about the non-aging thing, but as far as I know, CLAMP rarely draws old people... very, very rarely, there're... elders of Yasha and Kumolo tribes, Hoshimi-jiichan, Yuzuriha's grandma, Subaru's grandma... that's about all the old people they've ever drawn.
You wouldn't expect CLAMP to ruin the beauty of the characters they've drawn, right? Even in RG-Veda, when Taishakuten is "old", he still looks the same...
Hmm... maybe you can simply think that the leaders of Kuro-chan's world possess immortality the moment they ascend to the palace positions... That's how I'd see it, even though I know it's mostly because CLAMP doesn't want to destroy fan's image of Souma and Kendappa (Amaterasu)