I felt like documenting my process so here it is. For convenience I kept the links separate in case my writing is boring.
Let's start with the core of this contest.
They say there's only 6 degrees of separation on any topic on Wikipedia, so I want to show your creative sides to prove this axiom.
1. Six degrees of separationEh, in all honesty, that's not the most outlandish thing to connect to Touhou Project but I'll totally get points for being clever right?
From here, there's actually a couple of paths I could've taken. The first thing that caught my eye was actually
World War I, and from there I can link to Japan! But everyone knows it's been overused by now? I'll have to find a new route.
Looking through the article, I eventually came across (under Research):
2. Urban legend (redirected from Urban myth)
Since Touhou is all about myths and legends, I thought this would be pretty appropriate. But this was
urban legends, so actual spiritual/mythological references were pretty lacking. I could've gone to
Folklore and then to Japan, but once again, that's pretty boring.
Next I tried "spirits" (under Other terminology) since that's definitely relevant:
3. SpiritWhat I immediately saw was (on number 5 under Metaphysical contexts):
4. ShintoRight, so the next one was (under See also):
5. Japanese mythologyFrom here, nothing actually seemed to directly correlate to Touhou, so I had to take a lot of tries before discovering this (still unused) pathway to success.
Under Installation (19-20):
6. MagatamaHurray for knowing what this was due to Phoenix Wright. :V
In the introduction:
7. HitodamaOf course, spirits taking the form of spheres with long tails, if you associate it with Touhou, can pretty much only be, like, one thing.
And there it was, under In popular culture (with both Youmu and Yuyuko):
8. Touhou ProjectWow, this was a complete waste of time! And I wasn't even able to get it in six degrees like how I originally wanted to (to match the article that I started with).
Anyway, there you have it. I guess it wasn't the most unusual pathway but it was still fun regardless. :V