Can someone translate the Japanese names of these stages?

Question

I've played this game on PlayStation 2 since I was a kid, and something that always killed me out of curiosity is the name of the stages. They're in Japanese! I've tried to scan the screen with the Google Translate app to find out what they say, but they seem to use a special kanji style, so I had no luck.

Is there some Japanese friend, or someone who can read this, please?

I've spent over a decade trying to find out what these symbols say, and I'm running out of alternative avenues. The 16 sets of characters are displayed, below.

Answer 1

After some more research, it seems like they are all the names of stars. Specifically, this table shows the Chinese and Buddhist(?) names of all the stars in the Big Dipper, and includes the names of 14/16 levels. The final two are 北辰 and 太一, which are the Chinese/Buddhist names for the North Star.

I'm not familiar with the game so I'm not sure if there's any significance to the names. It seems there's also a religious connection, eg. on the Chinese page for 太一 (translation by Google, because I don't speak any Chinese)

Taiyi (太一) is regarded as the North Star in folk beliefs and is the most noble star god. It is called the "Emperor Taiyi of the East" in "The Songs of Chu", and some people regard it as the "Emperor of Heaven."

Answer 2

Based on the accepted answer, here's the transcription of the stages and some considerations by a player of the game.

They are named by the stars of the Big Dipper. From Wikipedia:

The Big Dipper (US, Canada) or the Plough (UK, Ireland) is a large asterism consisting of seven bright stars of the constellation Ursa Major

EDIT: As @BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft said below these aren't accurate English translations:

Unfortunately most/all of the translations given by google are just straight up wrong, because they're not actual words in Japanese (or Chinese, as far as I can find). For example, 廉貞 ("pure" + "rightousness") is translated as "innocent", but that's just a total shot in the dark by Google. And 文曲 ("sentence" + "music") is translated as "bunka", which is not even an English word (it's Google's best guess for how that it would be pronounced, if it were a word)

With that said, my guesses of the meaning of these names in the game are even more abstract.

---

Ursa Major η star (Alkaid)

• Stage 1 A: 揺光 - Shaking light
• Stage 1 B: 破軍 - Defeated army

'Defeated army' or 'Broken Troops' may refer to the Oboro Clan in the game.

Ursa Major ζ star (Mizar)

• Stage 2 A: 開陽 - Kaiyo
• Stage 2 B: 武曲 - Martial arts

Ursa Major 3 star (Alioth)

• Stage 3 A: 玉衡 - Tamaki
• Stage 3 B: 廉貞 - Innocent

Innocent may refer to the Hiruko's niece in the game.

Ursa Major δ (delta) star (Megrez)

• Stage 4 A: 天権 - Heaven
• Stage 4 B: 文曲 - Bunka

Ursa Major γ star (Phecda)

• Stage 5 A: 天璣 - Tenri
• Stage 5 B: 禄存 - Resident

Ursa Major β star (Merak)

• Stage 6 A: 天璇 - Tenryu
• Stage 6 B: 巨門 - Giant Gate

Ursa Major α star (Dubhe)

• Stage 7 A: 天枢 - Heavenly center
• Stage 7 B: 貪狼 - Greedy wolf

Heavenly center may refer to the place where Stage 7 is, certainly very special for the characters of the game. Greedy wolf may refer to the Akujiki Sword or even the 7-B's boss

Ursa Minor α (North Star)

• Stage 8 A: 北辰 - Hokushin
• Stage 8 B: 太一 - Taichi

So each stage refers to one star. "A" refers to their Chinese names and "B" to their names in Buddhism.

At the beginning of the Stage 8, there's a cutscene where the last boss talks about the 7 stars and their counterparts:

On Wikipedia you can also see the constellation as the boss shows, a little different, but the idea is the same.

You suppose to start by Alkaid and go all until Dubhe, and then reach the North Star (that is not in Ursa Major, but is the brightest of the Dipper), stage 8, the Golden Palace, that in the game is a place emerged from hell, the world of the dead, or something, and is placed on the center of Tokyo.

I don't know much about Asian religions. They could get a little dipper, I mean, deeper into this, the back story of the game tells almost nothing about the stars.