Rurouni Kenshin: Meiji Swordsman Romantic Story

AUTHOR: Watsuki, Nobuhiro

ARTIST: Nobuhiro Watsuki (illustrator)

PUBLISHER: Shueisha (Japanese); VIZ Media (English)

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION:Ruroni kenshin meiji kenkaku romantan, 1994-1999

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 1994-1999 (English translation, 2003-2006)

Publication History

Nobuhiro Watsuki established the world in which Rurouni Kenshin would be set in his first professional work as a manga artist, Crescent Moon in the Warring States, published in a special issue of WeeklyShonen Jump in the spring of 1992. Two subsequent stand-alone episodes under the title Rurouni, Meiji Swordsman Romantic Story, published in Weekly Shonen Jump specials in 1992 and 1993, acted as pilots for the series. In Rurouni, Watsuki established the character of Kenshin Himura and introduced prototypical versions of some of the series’ other main characters.

When production began on RurouniKenshin, Watsuki anticipated it would be approximately 30 chapters in length. Instead, the series ran for 255 chapters, which were serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump between 1994 and 1999. Upon completion of the series, Watsuki authored two epilogue stories, including the side story Yahiko no sakabato, published in Weekly Shonen Jump in 2000, and the series’ official endpoint, Haru ni sakura (Cherry Blossoms in Spring), published in the art book Kenshin kaden in late 1999.

The 255 chapters of RurouniKenshin, along with Crescent Moon and the two entries of Rurouni, were released in North America in twenty-eight volumes by VIZ Media between 2003 and 2006. VIZ further condensed the series into nine VIZBIG Editions, which also included Yahiko no Sakabato and Cherry Blossoms in Spring.

Plot

Rurouni Kenshin was inspired by Watsuki’s passion for historical novels, particularly Moeyo Ken (1964; Burn, O Sword) by Ryotaro Shiba and Sugata Sanshiro (c. 1943) by Tsuneo Tomita. Rurouni Kenshin follows a wandering swordsman in Meiji-period Japan through a series of escalating conflicts. It is intended for young male readers, although a consistently large portion of its readership has been female.

Rurouni Kenshin is set in 1878 Tokyo, following the 1867 defeat of the pro-Tokugawa shogunate Shinsengumi by the pro-imperialist Ishin Shishi, marking the end of Japan’s Edo period and the beginning of the Meiji period. Kenshin, a wandering swordsman sworn never to kill again, is revealed to have been the Ishin Shishi’s foremost assassin, Hitokiri Battosai. He takes up residence with Kaoru Kamiya at the Kamiya Kasshin-ryu Kenjutsu dojo. They are joined by Sanosuke Sagara and Kaoru’s only pupil, Yahiko Myojin.

In the “Megumi arc,” Kenshin and friends agree to protect Megumi Takani from Kanryu Takeda, a crooked industrialist with the Oniwabanshu ninja clan in his employ. The Oniwabanshu attack Kamiya dojo, and it is revealed that Megumi was forced to produce opium for Kanryu. Megumi returns to Kanryu after he threatens to burn down the dojo, but Kenshin, Sanosuke, and Yahiko travel to Edo Castle, where they battle the Oniwabanshu for Megumi’s freedom.

The Meiji government sends former Shinsengumi captain Hajime Saito to assess Kenshin’s abilities in the “Hajime Saito arc.” Satisfied with Kenshin’s skills, the government requests that Kenshin assassinate former Ishin Shishi assassin Makoto Shishio, who plots to overthrow the government, beginning the “Kyoto arc.” Kenshin travels to Kyoto alone but is joined thereafter by his friends and Saito. With assistance from the remaining members of the Oniwabanshu, Kenshin and his companions defeat Shishio and his group of assassins, the Juppongatana (Ten Swords).

In the “Jinchu arc,” the Kamiya dojo comes under assault by Enishi Yukishiro and his five comrades, who seek revenge against Kenshin for his actions as Hitokiri Battosai. In retribution for his sister’s accidental murder by Kenshin during the Bakumatsu (the end of the Edo period), Enishi stages Kaoru’s death. Kenshin almost dies of starvation in his near-comatose state of grieving. However, his allies discover that Kaoru’s death has been faked. They, along with Kenshin, travel to Enishi’s island, where Enishi is defeated and Kaoru is rescued. Four years later, Kenshin and Kaoru are married and have a son. Kenshin passes on his sword to Yahiko.

Volumes

• Rurouni Kenshin, Volume 1, VIZBIG Edition (2008). Collects Volumes 1-3 and the pilot stories Rurouni, Meiji Swordsman Romantic Story. Kenshin’s core group of allies is established and the Megumi arc begins.

• Rurouni Kenshin, Volume 2, VIZBIG Edition (2008). Collects Volumes 4-6 and includes Crescent Moon in the Warring States. The Megumi arc concludes. Kenshin and his friends have a brief rivalry with a murderer claiming to defend the future of kenjutsu (Japanese swordsmanship).

• Rurouni Kenshin, Volume 3, VIZBIG Edition (2008). Collects Volumes 7-9. Saito tests Kenshin’s abilities, and the Kyoto arc begins. En route to Kyoto, Kenshin frees a village from the Juppongatana.

• Rurouni Kenshin, Volume 4, VIZBIG Edition (2008). Collects Volumes 10-12. The Kyoto arc continues. Kenshin’s allies arrive in Kyoto. Kenshin completes his Hiten Mitsurugi-ryu training in preparation for the battle with Shishio.

• Rurouni Kenshin, Volume 5, VIZBIG Edition (2009). Collects Volumes 13-15. The Kyoto arc continues, featuring battles between Kenshin’s allies and the Juppongatana. Kenshin fights Aoshi Shinomori of the Oniwabanshu.

• Rurouni Kenshin, Volume 6, VIZBIG Edition (2009). Collects Volumes 16-18. The Kyoto arc concludes, and the Jinchu arc begins.

• Rurouni Kenshin, Volume 7, VIZBIG Edition (2009). Collects Volumes 19-21. The Jinchu arc continues. The fourteen-chapter “Remembrance” story line relates the events that led to Kenshin becoming a wandering swordsman.

• Rurouni Kenshin, Volume 8, VIZBIG Edition (2009). Collects Volumes 22-24. The Jinchu arc continues. Kenshin and his allies battle Enishi and his comrades at the Kamiya dojo. Enishi retires to his island with Kaoru.

• Rurouni Kenshin, Volume 9, VIZBIG Edition (2010). Collects Volumes 25-28 and follow-up episodes Yahiko no Sakabato and Cherry Blossoms in Spring. The Jinchu arc concludes. Five years later, the characters reunite.

Characters

• Kenshin Himura, a.k.a. Hitokiri Battosai, the protagonist, is an effeminate-looking man with long, red hair pulled back into a ponytail and an x-shaped scar on his left cheek. He is a wandering swordsman seeking redemption for his crimes as Hitokiri Battosai. A practitioner of the Hiten Mitsurugi-ryu style of sword fighting, he wields a sword with a reversed blade to prevent the death of his foes.

• Kaoru Kamiya is Kenshin’s love interest and master of the Kamiya dojo. She wears a simple kimono, and her dark hair is often pulled back in a ponytail. She falls in love with Kenshin, although she vehemently denies her love for him. Her staged death in the Jinchu arc destroys Kenshin’s fighting spirit.

• YahikoMyojin is the fierce-eyed, messy-haired orphan of a samurai family. He desperately yearns to be as strong and skilled as Kenshin and becomes a student of the Kamiya dojo. He is quick to fight those stronger than him and learns Hiten Mitsurugi-ryu by sight. He aids Kenshin in defeating members of the Juppongatana and Enishi’s comrades.

• SanosukeSagara is tall, has spiked black hair, and wears a bandana around his head. Aku, the kanji for evil, is emblazoned on his back. He is headstrong and fights without regard for his own well-being. Sanosuke is Kenshin’s first major opponent in the series, but he aids Kenshin in every major conflict thereafter.

• AoshiShinomori is tall and thin, has long bangs, and wears a trench coat. He has a stoic disposition and is selflessly devoted to his comrades. He is head of the Oniwabanshu and leads them in battle during the Megumi arc. He later joins forces with Shishio to fight Kenshin, only to turn against Shishio and aid Kenshin in battle thereafter.

• HajimeSaito is a former Shinsengumi captain who works as a spy for the Meiji police force. He lacks compassion and believes in swift death for his opponents. He is introduced as one of Kenshin’s foes, but because of his duty to the police, he reluctantly assists Kenshin in both the Kyoto and Jinchu arcs.

• Makoto Shishio, the antagonist of the Kyoto arc, was Kenshin’s successor as Hitokiri Battosai. He is covered in burns and completely wrapped in bandages as a result. He is ruthless and desires absolute power. He leads the Juppongatana in an attempt to seize control of Japan.

• Enishi Yukishiro, the antagonist of the Jinchu arc, has spiked white hair and wears Chinese-style clothing and small, circular sunglasses. He has an obsessive personality and suffers from severe psychological trauma. He stages Kaoru’s death but cannot murder her because she resembles his sister.

Artistic Style

Many of Watsuki’s character models are based on existing photographs of key Meiji-era figures. Other models reference the creations of other artists working in manga, anime, video games, and American comic books. Watsuki places these patchwork characters in realistically rendered cities and landscapes of historical Japan. This juxtaposition draws the reader’s attention to the purposely incongruous characters, reinforcing the character-driven nature of the series. As is typical of shonen manga, these landscapes tend to disappear during battles in favor of backgrounds characterized by dynamic motion lines. This emphasizes the intensity of the confrontations, while the lines draw the eye to specific parts of the frame. Moreover, the reader is encouraged to proceed quickly from one frame to the next by Watsuki’s minimalist art during the battle sequences, creating the impression of frenzy.

The series’ few color pages are dominated by reds, browns, and metallic blues. The simplicity of Watsuki’s color palette and his extensive use of white backgrounds allow for smooth transitions to and from the brief color passages. Watsuki initially uses color ink for these pages but later switches to Copic markers to save time. Characters and backgrounds also undergo revisions in the interest of time efficiency, making them easier to draw. The most drastic revisions occur midseries, when Watsuki alters his character models to have smaller eyes and decreases the number of lines used in drawing hair and clothing. These changes give the characters a slightly more cartoonish appearance in the later chapters.

Themes

The primary theme of Rurouni Kenshin is responsibility. Kenshin’s actions throughout the entire series reflect his deep sense of responsibility for the lives he took as Hitokiri Battosai. He has since sworn to use his sword only as a means to protect the lives of others. However, a conflict arises between Kenshin’s quest for atonement and his newfound responsibilities to his friends, whom he cannot abandon even though they face constant danger as a result of their association with him. This conflict results in Kenshin’s incapacitation in the Jinchu arc. At the conclusion of the Megumi arc, Megumi undertakes a similar quest when she becomes a doctor to atone for her production of opium while enslaved by Kanryu.

Another major theme in Rurouni Kenshin is power, which is expressed in terms of both physical and political power. Sanosuke and Yahiko’s quest for power is linked to the theme of responsibility, for they strive to increase their physical power throughout the series out of a sense of responsibility to fight alongside Kenshin. In both the Hajime Saito arc and the Kyoto arc, former soldiers of the Bakumatsu are contracted by the Meiji government to assassinate former Ishin Shishi assassins so that the true methods of the new regime’s ascent to political power may remain hidden from the public.

In the Jinchu arc, Enishi believes his dead sister has been urging him to kill Kenshin. Thus, revenge becomes an important theme in the series’ final arc. Once Enishi has successfully carried out his revenge plot, he finds his hallucinations of his dead sister have not been appeased. Thus, revenge in Rurouni Kenshin is portrayed as hollow and unrewarding.

Impact

The people and events of the Bakumatsu period have spawned countless popular texts in Japan, including Shiba’s Moeyo Ken. Drawing inspiration from such texts, Watsuki modeled many of the characters in Rurouni Kenshin on real-world figures of the Bakumatsu, and he appropriated major events of the era for the construction of his narrative. While Japanese audiences were well-acquainted with many of these people and events prior to the publication of Rurouni Kenshin, the specifics of the Bakumatsu and Meiji periods remained relatively unknown to most audiences outside of Japan.

Within half a year of the manga’s publication, Rurouni Kenshin was already slated to cross media platforms with the release of a CD book chronicling the first four chapters of the manga. The series subsequently inspired video games, action figures, art books, novelizations, an anime, and a feature film spin-off of the anime. Rurouni Kenshin also became an international multimedia success and even established anime as a marketable form of entertainment in Indonesia in 1996. Thus, Watsuki introduced many international audiences to the key players and events of the Bakumatsu and Meiji periods for the first time. In addition, Rurouni Kenshin encouraged historical objectivity among the preexisting fans of Bakumatsu literature by presenting both the positive and negative aspects of the Shinsengumi and Ishin Shishi.

Films

Samurai X: The Motion Picture. Directed by Tsuji Hatsuki. Fuji Television Network/SPE Visual Works, 1997. The English-language version of this animated film stars J. Shannon Weaver as the voice of Kenshin Himura and Kara Bliss as the voice of Kaoru Kamiya. The film’s story line does not appear in the manga. In this theatrically released spin-off of the Rurouni Kenshin anime, Kenshin and friends must quell a samurai uprising against the Meiji government.

Television Series

Rurouni Kenshin. Directed by Kazuhiro Furuhashi. Aniplex/Fuji TV, 1996-1998. The English-language version of this anime stars Richard Cansino as the voice of Kenshin Himura and Dorothy Elias-Fahn as the voice of Kaoru Kamiya. Many of the manga’s chapters are omitted or condensed to accommodate the inclusion of original story lines. Most significant among these alterations is the complete absence of the Jinchu arc. The series spawned two original video animations and the feature film Samurai X.

Further Reading

Chrono, Nanae. Peacemaker Kurogane (2002-2005).

Watsuki, Nobuhiro. Buso Renkin (2006-2008).

Bibliography

Watsuki, Nobuhiro. “Free Talk.” In Rurouni Kenshin, by Nobuhiro Watsuki. Vol. 5. VIZBIG Ed. San Francisco: VIZ Media, 2009.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Rurouni Secrets: An Interview with Rurouni Kenshin Author Nobuhiro Watsuki.” In Rurouni Kenshin Profiles, edited by Kit Fox. San Francisco: VIZ Media, 2005.

Wyman, Walt, and Kazuhisa Fujie. The Rurouni Kenshin Companion: The Unofficial Guide. Denver, Colo.: DH, 2006.