Himura Kenshin
Himura Kenshin is a male anime and manga character who features in Rurouni Kenshin.
Contents |
Biography
Himura Kenshin (Japanese: 緋村 剣心) was born into a peasant family under the given name of Shinta. After losing both his parents to cholera by age nine, he was sold into slavery. With his life turning for the worse, he was taken under the custody of three young women who were fellow slaves, Akane, Kasumi and Sakura, and grouped together to take care of him in the face of being a child slave. Later on, the slave-traders' caravan was attacked by bandits who killed all of the peasants except for Shinta, who was saved by a skilled swordsmaster named Hiko Seijūrō. Killing the bandits, Hiko suggested to Shinta that he travel to a nearby village and start rebuilding his life. Hiko traveled to the same village, but after spending an evening there and hearing no news of Shinta's arrival, he assumed the boy committed suicide. He returned to the site of the massacre with the intention of burying the bodies of everyone who died there. When he arrived, he was shocked to find that, not only had Shinta not committed suicide, but he had spent the previous night burying the bodies of everyone at the site, including the slavers and the bandits. Impressed by the boy's gentility and kindness, Hiko honored the gravestones of the young women who gave their lives to save him, and renamed the boy "Kenshin", as he felt that the name 'Ken' (sword) and 'Shin' (heart) were more fitting for a swordsman. He then informed his new ward that he would teach him everything he knew about swordsmanship.
After a few years under Seijūrō's guidance, Kenshin learned of a revolution that was occurring all over Japan, one whose members professed to the ideals of removing the oppressive shogunate from power and ushering in a new era of peace for the common people. Inflamed by this news, Kenshin desired to join these revolutionaries in order to put his swordsmanship to use in ushering in this new era. Hiko however, was unmoved by both the news of the revolution and his student's passionate desire to play a role in it. He attempted to explain to Kenshin that war was not so simple as his student believed it to be, and that Kenshin, for his own sake, should not get involved. Furthermore, he informed Kenshin that the tenants of Hiten Mitsurugi-ryū were at odds with becoming involved in a political war, as the killing involved in such an undertaking would often be of people who did not necessarily deserve to die, and the decision to kill them would not be Kenshin's to make. However, Kenshin was adamant in his desire to aid what he saw as an honorable and noble cause, and he abandoned both his training and his master, leaving his knowledge of Hiten Mitsurugi-ryū incomplete though still highly skilled for his age. His sword skills soon attracted the attention of Katsura Kogorō, a leader of the Chōshū Ishin Shishi. Seeing the phenomenal power of Hiten Mitsurugi-ryū, he recruited Kenshin and brought him to Kyoto, where he was assigned the role of an assassin. Within the first six months of his career, he killed over 100 people, and eventually became known as the Hitokiri Battōsai. As time passed, however, Kenshin began to grow disillusioned with his role in the revolution. Instead of ushering in a new era of peace, he eventually came to realize that he had simply become an extremely skilled murderer, and that the killing that he was engaged in did not seem to be doing the good, or any significant difference, that he had hoped it would. Nevertheless, he continued his role as an assassin. One night in 1864, he was ordered to kill Shigekura Jūbei, a high ranking samurai and bakufu official. He engaged Jūbei and quickly killed both him and his first bodyguard, Ishiji. Having killed both men with virtually no fuss, he turned to eliminate the remaining bodyguard, Kiyosato Akira. Kenshin and Akira engaged in a brief, one-sided duel until Kenshin mortally wounded his completely outmatched foe. However, to Kenshin's astonishment, his opponent managed to cut the left side of his face as he received his mortal injury. Kenshin quickly recovered from his shock and dispatched his dying opponent, before honoring the man's incredible will to live.
Later in his downtime, while drinking at a pub, he recalled a lesson from his master, noticing that the sake that he was drinking tasted like blood, to which it should not. As a pair of men loudly boasted upon barging into in the pub for free favors, claiming themselves of the Ishin Shishi, before harassing a young woman, Kenshin angrily confronted them and told the two to get lost even though they weren't talking to him. Afterwards, Kenshin departed the pub, inwardly concerned about the fact that the two men had managed to bother him to the point of anger. He came to the conclusion that all the killing that he had been doing had started him down the road to madness, and reflected upon Hiko's warning not to get involved. However, he was unable to discern the reason for Hiko's warning. As he walked, the two men from the pub who Kenshin had humiliated attempted to ambush him, but before they had an opportunity to attack, they were slain by a bakufu assassin. The assassin, introducing himself by killing off the last of the escaping men who begged for help, was there to eliminate Kenshin, and engaged the Battōsai, but was quickly cut down. In the midst of this grisly scene, the woman whom Kenshin had seen earlier at the pub appeared just as Kenshin cut the bakufu assassin apart. Shocked to see her, Kenshin momentarily toyed with the idea of killing her; having seen him, the woman was now in a possession to potentially compromise his identity. Before Kenshin could make a decision, the woman fainted, and Kenshin found that he was unable to bring himself to kill her. Instead, he took her back to the inn that he and his fellow members of the Chōshū clan were operating out of. Once she awakened the next day, Kenshin learned that her name was Yukishiro Tomoe. Having seen Kenshin, the revolutionaries informed her that, in order for her to continue living, she would need to stay where they could keep an eye on her. Despite Kenshin's desire to have her leave, she agreed to stay on as domestic help around the Chōshū clan's headquarters. While there, she eventually began to form a relationship with Kenshin, befriending him and helping him maintain a grip on his sanity. Much to his own surprise, Kenshin would soon fall in love with Tomoe. After the crisis suffered by the Chōshū clan in the Ikedaya Jiken, Kenshin married Tomoe and fled with her to a remote village in order for them to lie low together until the revolution was renewed.
Several months later, Tomoe met with the leader of the Yaminobu, a pro-Shogunate covert network of ninjas that had formulated a plan to assassinate Kenshin. She realized that all along they had actually used her to create Kenshin's weakness. Meanwhile, Kenshin ran off to find his wife, but was ambushed by Yaminobu ninjas and severely wounded. He managed to defeat them and eventually found Tomoe with the leader of the Yaminobu. In a desperate attempt to defeat the leader, Kenshin blindly swung his sword, striking down both his assailant and Tomoe, who jumped in at the last minute to save Kenshin from a fatal attack. Tomoe's dagger slashed Kenshin's already-scarred face as she fell into his arms, creating the famous cross-shaped scar across his left cheek. Kenshin helplessly held Tomoe as she died, smiling, in his arms. Devastated by his wife's death at his own hands, Kenshin would later learn even more tragic news when he discovered through Tomoe's private diary that she was previously engaged to the bodyguard he killed who had given him the first half of his scar.
Following the death of Tomoe, Katsura, feeling heavily responsible for Kenshin's loss and his manipulation under the miserly traitor Iizuka, recruited Shishio Makoto to replace the Battōsai as an assassin, and reassigned Kenshin as a guerrilla swordsman protecting the Imperialists. After the end of the Bakumatsu in the late 1860s, Kenshin abandoned his sword and left the Ishin Shishi's ranks with his experiences resolving him to protect others without the need for death and bloodshed, in honor of his late wife's memory. Arai Shakkū, a famed swordsmith of the Ishin Shishi and acquaintance of the Battōsai, realizing the change that the turbulent era brought on to his friend, the virgin perspective that he now resolved to keep, and concerned how his friend would carry his journey without the need for self-defense and necessary force to carry out his ideals against the wayward, issued Kenshin the challenge to uphold his new-found path and tossed him the first of his signature weapon into the future, the kageuchi of the Sakabatō, which fully marked the end of Kenshin's career as a hitokiri.
Overview
Personality and attributes
He was once known as the legendary assassin Hitokiri Battōsai (人斬り抜刀斎).
Powers and abilities
He was a living legend well known throughout Japan for his surreal mastery of swordsmanship, able to effortlessly cut through steel, and one of the few last master swordsmen into the Meiji able to perform the act of modoshigiri, in where an accomplished wielder of the sword wielding the best of blades are able to cut so neatly, the target can be reattached as if it was never cut. Having inherited the Hiten Mitsurugi-ryū sword style, Kenshin's skills at age 14 allowed him to become an elite assassin for the government. The focus-point of his style is enabling him to move at "godspeed" to its fullest, striking and running about at speeds so immense and suddenly that he routinely outpaces the human eye and even dodges gatling gun fire. His signature skill in battle is the Battōjutsu, where his mastery of this skill and reputation for defeating his foes in a single blow earned him the moniker, the Battōsai. In the unlikely event his first strike misses his enemies, Kenshin is equally adapt in dual-sword combat, using his sheath as a secondary weapon, able to use his ambidextrous swordplay to instantly unleash a secondary strike from his sheath, making it almost impossible to beat him once he takes the battojutsu stance.
His sword was the Sakabatō Kageuchi that was given to Himura by Arai Shakkū immediately after the Battle at Toba-Fushimi.
Notes
- Himura Kenshin was created by Nobuhiro Watsuki and featured in the setting of Rurouni Kenshin.
In other media
Television
Films
- In Rurouni Kenshin, Himura Kenshin appeared in the setting of the 2012 live-action film where he was portrayed by actor Takeru Satō.
Video games
- In Jump Force, Himura Kenshin appeared as a playable character in the crossover fighting video game where he was voiced by Japanese actor Mayo Suzukaze.
Appearances
- Rurouni Kenshin:
External Links
This article is a stub. You can help Multiversal Omnipedia by expanding it.
