The Factory is a location often appearing in Yukkuri stories.
It is sometimes described as located on the edge of forest in Gensokyo but the details are never given. It's most likely located away from the Human Village.
The Factory processes and breeds Yukkuri, and sometimes conducts scientific or pseudo-scientific research on them. Whatever is done, is usually a form of torture. The actual purpose of the Factory, (other than torturing the Yukkuri) is often unclear. This research often leads to development of new yukkuri products, such as crying yukkuri.
Breeding process and research
To obtain samples and raw material factory workers may go out and hunt wild Yukkuri. Alternatively they may purchase the Yukkuri caught by other people.
In some stories the Yukkuri have an instinctive fear of the factory and/or factory workers.
More recently, stories written have referred to a number of different factories, suggesting that there is more than one. Indeed, there one factory was involved in an unfortunate incident involving a Yukkuri Utsuho (it was destroyed in a small nuclear explosion). Stories that take place in the "normal" world opposed to the realm of Gensokyo point towards the existence of many different companies operating factories, one of which being "Yuh-Yah", which produces the Yukkuri castration kit and specially bred crying Yukkuri. Other companies include P-Foods, which owns the Gokkuri brand of yukkuri drinks.
Although initial costs may be high, yukkuri production is very cost-effective. With the use of mass-breeding techniques, from capturing a single yukkuri you can produce hundreds, and from those you can repeat the process. This means that there are now plentiful amounts of the "rarer" yukkuris, which can be used in the same ways as the "common" yukkuri. Some yukkuris, such as Eirins or Keines are attracted towards factory sites and try to attack them in large groups. This has led to yukkuri lovers spreading rumours that they purposely attack humans who consume yukkuri products. However, this is not actually the case, as they are not intelligent enough to recognise humans and also don't have telepathy skills. The reason why they are attracted to the factory sites is because the suffering and pain from the deaths of Kaguyas and Mokous in the slaughter and torture process release heavily concentrated yukkuri pheromone. As Eirins and Keines are more attached to these yukkuris, they are drawn towards the site, and attempt to rescue them. They're always either blown to pieces by factory site defenses, gored to death by attack dogs, or melted down from the inside after inhaling yukkuri pesticide (however, rarely they do cause some minor injury to attack dogs or personnel). These attacks are actually very welcome as it livens up the guards day. The few that make it through are weakened and distressed, and the guards pass the time by torturing them to death. They then plant the corpses around the factory, to warn off any other yukkuri that doesn't know its place (bottom of the food chain).
In Jenngra505's upcoming yukkuri stories there will be many protesters against what the factory does to yukkuris and 1 of these protesters made a factory alternate that doesn't hurt, kill or make the yukkuris sad, which is highly supported by the protesters of the other factory's. Yukkuris aren't scared of said alternate because they know it's safe and the workers are friendly to the yukkuris.
Experimentation on yukkuris
Examples of the Factory's activities:
- A device where Yukkuri are force fed chemical and nuclear waste, and through their inate magic turn it into bean paste. Due to large doses of substances, the Yukkuri themselves eventually die from exposure and have to be replaced. In a similar way, yukkuris are used as eco-friendly garbage disposal. Yukkuri Yuyukos are popular for this purpose, as they have large appetites. They are either force fed the waste, or have their eyes removed so they don't know it's garbage.
- A device where pregnant Yukkuri are held in a position so that the newly born children fall to their deaths. The children are later processed into food.
- Breeding programs where hordes of Yukkuri Alice are allowed to rape other Yukkuri producing numerable offspring (or killing the victim).
- Breeding pet Yukkuris who won't defecate. This is performed on families of Yukkuris by giving them large meals, consisting in tasteless dry food, every 2 hours along 12 hours; the amount of food in each meal is increased if anyone defecates and not eating food is not an option because that leads to the death of a Koyukkuri by caretakers; Yukkuris also must avoid throwing up food because that is another reason for killing a Koyukkuri. One way that Yukkuris hide released waste is by eating it, that is not too harmful because their waste is almost-expired bean paste. The procedure is repeated until there is born a Yukkuri that will not excrete once from the moment it is born, the parent Yukkuri will give birth to babies, raise them, and watch them die repeatedly. The reason for not killing Koyukkuris that excrete soon after their birth is, "If a child who poops is born, (the parent and child both) will not be able to take it easy" is encoded into the mother Yukkuri's filling DNA. (It should be noted, however, that this method is only used in an attempt to salvage the failures - i.e., the yukkuri who hide or consume their excretions, or who simply hold back from defecating, rather than never needing to do so in the first place. There is still the chance for successful non-pooping yukkuris to be born from the hiders and holders, and many successful non-pooping yukkuri have been born elsewhere.)
- Harvesting Yukkuri filling by putting a desired species of Koyukkuri in a bottle and force feeding it until adulthood when it can no longer take it easy in the bottle. Then the bottle is broken open and the mature Yukkuri is then cut open and its filling is removed and processed for market. If the Yukkuri develops a body while in the bottle it is likely to die before it can be harvested. The most commmon species for this process are Yukkurumia, Koakkuri, and Yukkureimu, Yukkurisa, and Alikuri who have been specifically bred to not have bodies.