Rurouni Kenshin and the Real History: Gensai, Saito and the Sword Ban

Rurouni Kenshin puts a fictional swordsman inside a real hinge in Japanese history: the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate and the first decade of the Meiji state. Some of its people are invented, some are real, and one, Saito Hajime, is both. This guide keeps three things apart: what the historical record says, what the manga and the 1996 anime show, and what Nobuhiro Watsuki himself said. Where we line them up, the reading is ours, not his.

What Watsuki said about the history

The fullest English record we found of Watsuki on this subject is a fan-press report of his Anime Expo 2002 panel, published by AnimeOnDVD, which we read through the Internet Archive's copy. It is a volunteer report written from the audience, with answers given in the third person rather than transcribed, and in places the writer notes what she could not catch, so treat the wording as the reporters', not Watsuki's. By that account, Kenshin began as a short story written without much research; Watsuki then read a great many books, but because he wanted to draw kimonos and swords the series is "not very accurate to the Meiji period." Asked why he chose the era, he said he did not want to draw Edo-period hairstyles, and "He is also a big fan of the Shinsengumi, but he couldn't do the actual revolution since he wanted to do more human drama."

That is a useful warning label from the author himself: the series is a drama set against the Restoration, not an account of it.

The setting: from Toba-Fushimi to Meiji

The record. The Boshin War, as the Japanese reference works on Kotobank define it, was the civil war between the new imperial government and the old shogunate's side, running from the Battle of Toba-Fushimi on the third day of the first month of 1868 to the end of the fighting at Hakodate in the fifth month of 1869. Shogakukan's Nipponica encyclopedia, on Toba-Fushimi, gives the shogunate's side about 15,000 men, including troops from Aizu and Kuwana, against about 4,500 from Satsuma and Chōshū; the smaller force, better equipped and in better spirits, drove its enemy back in a day, the fighting was over by the sixth, and the former shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu fled to Edo by sea. In 1877 Saigō Takamori and the Kagoshima samurai rose and were crushed in the Satsuma Rebellion, which Kyodo News's reference note calls the largest and last revolt of disaffected former samurai against the Meiji government. On May 14, 1878, Ōkubo Toshimichi, by then the government's dominant minister, was cut down at Kioizaka in Tokyo by six disaffected former samurai led by Shimada Ichirō.

The series. VIZ's series page sets it up in one line: a manslayer whose "killer blade helped close the turbulent Bakumatsu era and slashed open the progressive age known as Meiji," and who then vanished. Shogakukan's Digital Daijisen Plus, also on Kotobank, records that the manga ran in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1994 to 1999, collected in 28 volumes, and that the television anime aired on Fuji TV from January 1996 to September 1998.

Kawakami Gensai, the assassin behind the assassin

The record. Nipponica's entry on Kawakami Gensai describes a low-ranking samurai of the Kumamoto domain, born in 1834, who went to Kyoto in 1862 as an activist of the "revere the emperor, expel the barbarians" movement. In 1864, with comrades, he assassinated Sakuma Shōzan, an advocate of opening the country, at Sanjō Kiyamachi in Kyoto. Heibonsha's encyclopedia on the same page says he was also called Hitokiri Gensai, "Gensai the manslayer." After the Restoration he briefly held a government post, resigned, and was executed in Tokyo for sheltering ringleaders of a mutiny among Chōshū's irregular units. Kodansha's biographical dictionary, on the same page, dates the execution to the fourth day of the twelfth month of Meiji 4 under the old calendar, which it gives as 1872 in the Western calendar; Nipponica gives the year as 1871.

What Watsuki said. The connection usually repeated, that Kenshin is modeled on Gensai, is attributed to Watsuki's character notes in the first volume of the manga. We could not open that page: the Internet Archive library scans of the series that we found are restricted, and none of them is the first English volume. So this guide does not state the link as Watsuki's own words. The 2002 panel report does not settle it either: asked which historical figures most shaped Kenshin, the answer as reported describes an assassin of the Restoration and says his name "was missed."

Our reading. If the link holds, what carried over is a profession and a reputation, not a life: Gensai stayed a militant and died at the new government's hands, while Kenshin, in Wikiquote's summary of the anime, is a former assassin who "protects people with a vow never to take another life."

Saito Hajime and the real Shinsengumi

The record. Nipponica's Shinsengumi entry describes a band of masterless samurai formed in Kyoto in 1863 under the Kyoto Protector, Matsudaira Katamori, led by Kondō Isami with Hijikata Toshizō as vice-commander, about 200 strong at its peak around 1865 and famous for the Ikedaya raid of 1864. At Toba-Fushimi, it says, Hijikata commanded and the Shinsengumi lost along with the shogunate's army; Kondō was beheaded at Itabashi in the fourth month of 1868, and Hijikata was killed at Hakodate in 1869. Kyodo News's reference note on Saito Hajime gives him the dates 1844 to 1915, says he joined the group in 1863 and became its youngest officer, and says he fought at Toba-Fushimi and, after Kondō surrendered, joined Aizu in resisting the new government's army. His later life is documented in pension records held by the National Archives of Japan, as Kyodo News reported in the Nikkei on September 5, 2015: under the name Fujita Gorō, he became an assistant police inspector in the Home Ministry's police bureau in February 1877, went to the Satsuma Rebellion that May as a half-platoon leader in a police unit, and was wounded by a bullet in July. He later served in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police and retired in December 1892.

The series. The 1996 anime puts a character with the real man's name and unit on screen. In the episode Wikiquote lists as season 2, episode 3, Saito names himself "Shinsengumi squad three captain, Saito Hajime," and an unsorted line on the same page has him say: "The police are like the Shinsengumi."

Our reading. Saito is where the series stays closest to the record: a Shinsengumi officer who survived the losing side and ended up serving the Meiji state as a policeman. The drama Watsuki said he wanted, set beside the revolution rather than inside it, is exactly what the real Saito's life supplies. His lines are collected on our Saito Hajime page.

The Sekihōtai: Sanosuke's grievance is real

One more piece of the record sits inside a supporting character. In the episode Wikiquote lists as season 1, episode 4, Sanosuke vows not to lose "to the men who made Captain Sagara and the Sekiho army bear the evil mark of 'aku.'" The Sekihōtai existed. Heibonsha's encyclopedia describes it as a vanguard unit raised for the imperial side in the first month of 1868, after Toba-Fushimi. Sagara Sōzō's company advanced proclaiming that the land tax would be halved; the new government changed its policy, and in the third month of 1868 Sagara was seized and executed at Shimosuwa under the name of a "false imperial army."

The sword ban of 1876

The record. The Haitōrei, Dajōkan proclamation No. 38 of March 28, 1876, banned the wearing of swords except by those in court ceremonial dress and by soldiers and police in uniform. Yamakawa's dictionary of Japanese history says it was issued on the recommendation of the army minister, Yamagata Aritomo, that it wounded the pride of the former samurai, and that it was the direct trigger of the Shinpūren rebellion.

Our reading. A wandering swordsman in early Meiji Tokyo is therefore carrying something the law had taken from civilians, while a uniformed policeman was among the few still permitted a blade. We have not checked how the manga's own pages handle the ban, so we do not describe a scene. The watch order guide covers which adaptation tells which part of the story.