Alec Hoshin

Hoshin of the Wilderness (荒地のホーシン ) was a man who lived in the years prior to the Great Calamity. He's most well known for uniting a multitude of small countries and founding one of the Four Great Nations known as Kararagi City State as well as implementing a culture that strongly resembles that of Japan.

He's considered a world-wide symbol of success for merchants and is someone every merchant looks up to, including Anastasia Hoshin who even named herself after him.

Appearance
Not much is known about Hoshin and how he looked like. But it was noted that he was a wanderer who travelled around the world.

Personality
It was unknown what he was like during that time, but it was mentioned that he was both brave and sympathetic. Some theorized that Hoshin was a lolicon himself as Ricardo described him to be a "lolicon", to which the word coined and became a term as "love at first sight", becoming a common word in Kararagi.

Though often overlooked, Hoshin was in fact a rather brutal and at times savage person who did everything to achieve his goals both as a merchant and as the founder of Kararagi City State. It is precisely due to this trait that he was able to unite all the countries and cities into one of the Four Great Nations. If one refused to join them, he did not hesitate to topple the entire city and giving birth to a new one from its ashes.

History
Roughly 400 years ago, before Subaru's arrival, Hoshin was summoned to the new world, more specifically, into a country that was devoid of life and went by the name of Kararagi. He introduced and spread his knowledge from his home world around the unnamed continent and started uniting the cities and small countries scattered around it. With the help of the Witch of Greed, he was able to successfully bring them under his thumb, thus creating the Fourth Great Nation which soon became known as Kararagi. During that time, he was involved with the ongoing Demi-Human War. He made several allies along the journey and fought in the battle of Banan and won, thus originated the phrase "Hoshin was Banan's setting sun".

He introduced cultures from his time on earth such as clothing like Kimono and Yukata, and foods like Okonomiyaki (later renamed as Daisukiyaki), and Dorayaki, which became a popular phenomenon in the new world. He also introduced the new world to Kansai dialect, a language that was used in the Kansai region from his home world. The language was adopted to the world and it became a native language in Kararagi City State.

Trivia

 * Different anecdotes about Hoshin are still circulating around the world. For example, in one of the failed loops of Arc 4, Garfiel used the anecdote "Hoshin was Banan's setting sun" as a declaration of hostility towards Subaru, Ram and Otto.
 * It was speculated that one of Ricardo's ancestors was involved in the battle of Banan. The reason being is that Ricardo was the only one that referenced him by name (before Anastasia adopted the name) in Anastasia's Kararagi Merchant Path as he knew what a lolicon is.
 * It was unknown wether Hoshin had bared any children. Anastasia only adopted the name from inspiration, and is not directly blood related.
 * It seems that Hoshin himself was from Kansai since he's the only one found in the new world that knows the language from his home world.