Rurouni Kenshin: Tortured

If you followed a link to a site with a name like this, I’m assuming you have a sick and twisted mind. Congratulations! C’mon in.

First, the dull stuff

Credits are at the bottom of the page, along with links.

Reader Advisories: Yes, there are spoilers here; implicit ones anyway. Really, this page is written for people who are already familiar with the story and will recognize the references. Since the manga and anime are so close to each other (until that travesty of a third season, anyway, to say nothing of Seisouhen, neither of which will be considered here), I don’t make a whole lot of distinction between them unless it’s important. I played with name meanings using the JEDI and Savergen online dictionaries; they’re great toys. I did so, however, without benefit of kanji. Meanings of the correct spellings, as gleaned from faqs and correspondents are included; if you can add to them, let me know.

Important Additional Advisories: A few things keep coming up in responses.

1. You should be aware that I was in a slightly peculiar mood when I wrote this, and my synatx reflects that. These pages are not intended to be an easy walkthrough, or particularly transparent; you’ll have to work for it. Think of it as textual analysis in the form of prose poetry. If you can’t handle that, go read someone else.
2. The divisions of the pages (namely Tortured and Untortured) reflect the mangaka’s deployment of the characters, not my personal opinion of who (would have) had a harder life (if all these things had happened to real people). These are narrative categories, addressing how the characters are used within the parameters of the manga’s meta-story, not a view from inside the characters’ heads based on background plus characterization. Some characters get narrative attention paid to their pain, and some get token notice, if that. If you don’t like it, argue with Watsuki.

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So, about RK

I must say, while I’m impressed at the political sophistication of this show (I’ll explain that later), I’m even more impressed at the mind twists. Someone either had a really good instinct for the patterns of human weirdness or else really knew their psychology. And apparently wished to display it for our edification, as we have one tortured, scarred, traumatized soul after another paraded past our gaze. (For any film theory people out there, I use that last word very deliberately.) So, let’s see. People first, then we’ll do politics and philosophy later.

Reading music for this page is “One Third of Pure Emotion,” by Siam Shade, because that’s my favorite out of the songs for this series.

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Himura Kenshin

So what was wrong with the kid’s original name, anyway? Shinta, if I’m breaking it down properly, comes out to proud heart, lonely heart (we’re Sgt. Pepper’s…no, no, no) or great heart. Though Zero Stance’s author, Selene says Shinta is more common as a girl’s name (further note, she’s one of the goddess/heroines of the Ramayana; thanks Selene!), which I could see a manly type like Hiko objecting to. The surname gets by him, though I would have expected a snide remark about the suitability (I think, if you take it back to the roots of the words, it breaks down loosely to a bunch of fire) (Sakura points out that those characters, used conversationally, would be red and village; many thanks!). Then again, maybe it’s Hiko who gives him that surname, which might explain how a peasant boy got one in the first place.

Addendum 1/31/02: I’ve found something that gives some weight to the idea that Hiko bestows a surname on Kenshin. Apparently, in this period, it was traditional for boys of noble/samurai families to first have a child-name which was changed to an adult name round about the age of fifteen. A third, very formal, name, granted even later, includes the clan name and does not appear to have been used to actually address or refer to someone. By discarding Shinta as a child name and bestowing Kenshin as an adult name, Hiko signals that this boy is now a functional part of the warrior caste. At which point, of course, he would be due a surname too. Information on naming customs comes from Gilles’ Anime Compaion Supplement.

Interesting that Kenshin seems to be one of the only characters who’s name-meaning is made something of in the context of the story, though some of the others are pretty good if you look them up. But then, Takeuchi has probably spoiled me; now I expect all my favorite manga writers to think like crossword puzzles. Do crossword puzzles occur in Asian languages? And what do they look like? And can anyone tell me why Kenshin is repeatedly drawn with plant matter in his mouth?

I have to say, I love Kenshin’s voice. His seiyuu, Suzukase Mayo, definitely goes into my book of favorites, along with Ogata Megumi, Seki Toshihiko and Shiozawa Kaneto (even if he is dead! *glares at universe, reproachfully*). There’s something about a voice in the low end of any vocal range–resonance, huskiness, yum.

Note on how I use his names: when I say Himura, I mean the whole person. Battousai and Kenshin refer to his divided halves.

So, here we have what amounts to a split personality; only Himura seems to have done it deliberately. Well, more deliberately than that sort of thing is usually done, at any rate. That doesn’t stop him from see-sawing back and forth helplessly between his opposing selves. If there’s one thing this man lacks, it’s balance. Himura segregates himself into Battousai, who gets all the focus and drive, and Kenshin, who gets all the people skills. I think there’s a message of sorts in that: it isn’t natural to be that nice. You do notice that there are only three people in this show who are consistently polite and cheerful: Kenshin, Soujirou and Enishi. See a pattern? I mean, come on, how many of you really, honestly think Kenshin is sane? I was very caught by this implication that the only people who are unfailingly courteous are psychos. Now there’s something to think about the next time the corporation throws a customer service seminar.

So, Kenshin is a saint and Battousai is a killing machine. But who gets the passion? I would argue that it’s Battousai. That’s who surfaces whenever Himura’s deep feelings are stirred up. When Jin’e threatens Kaoru; when Saitou tries to kill Himura. If K/K fans are looking for a reason why Kenshin never makes any demonstrative gestures or even open avowal of his feelings for Kaoru, I suspect this is one strong possibility (at least in the internal logic of the story; externally, it’s probably because it’s a shounen series and Watsuki skipped the mushy stuff). He knows that passionate emotion is the province of Battousai (ironic as that seems) and is afraid that letting it out will mean Kenshin submerges.

This isn’t necessarily as contradictory as it seems; yes, Battousai seems to be the coldest killer you could ever (briefly) meet. But the motivation for becoming Battousai was compassion; Kenshin wanted to make the world safe and peaceful. That desire was what kept Himura going. It must have been pretty damn strong. On the flip side, have you ever tried being punctiliously polite while in the grip of any passion? It’s…difficult. You have to figure, Kenshin doesn’t have a whole lot of contact with passion if he’s running around de gozaru-ing all and sundry. Not that he doesn’t do an awfully good sultry when he’s in the mood. It just doesn’t happen very often. And you observe the sword in this nicely sultry shot, casually propped (edge down, note; inwardly directed violence?) over the shoulder? I don’t think that’s on accident. Passion goes with violence, for him.

It’s possible that the Himura Kenshin of fourteen was better balanced than the Kenshin of twenty-eight, but I tend to doubt it. First, on the general principle that fourteen isn’t usually an age at which balance is a major priority. Second, because of how he got involved in the art of killing in the first place. I’ll get further into this in the Philosophy section, but remember that it wasn’t exactly Shinta’s/Kenshin’s choice. It was Hiko’s choice.

7/1/02: After watching, and listening, to the Kyoto Arc a few more times I think I want to amend my reading of Himura a bit. If you pay attention the Kyoto storyline shows us a much more complex range of response on Himura’s part than theTokyo Arc. We have a handful of indicators that interact with each other, here. One is his eyes: they move along the spectrum from wide, reflective purple to narrow, reflective purple, to narrow, non-reflective, constricted-pupil purple, to yellow. There’s his voice, which ranges from light and a bit squeaky to light to deep to deep, flat and cold. The only time I hear that last is in the OVA, by the way; it’s really fairly alarming. His language makes a third indicator, based on the presence of “oro”s, of “de gozaru”s, of “sessha”s, of “omae” and occasionally “kisama” in his references to others, and of “ore” in his references to himself. Now some of this is simple. The yellow eyes invariably accompany a lower voice and a shift to “ore” and “omae” in his language (no “oro” and no “de gozaru”). Hiko, in the process of bawling Himura out, lays out for us that this is the state in which Himura has no care for his own life–it’s a state of radical self-sacrifice driven by his desire to protect and by his guilt. The wide, reflective purple eyes invariably accompanies the light voice and “de gozaru”s. “Oro” tends to go with the light, squeaky voice. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen “oro” go along with anything but the wide eyes, either.

Usually the wide eyes and light voice equate to the silly-harmless-rurouni act; the narrowed eyes and lower voice indicate that the act has been dropped and Kenshin is being serious, generally about a fight of some kind; the narrowed, flat, pinned eyes and a switch to “ore” signal the first step into Battousai; and the yellow eyes mean he’s ready to kill and be killed. During the Kyoto Arc, however, that gets complicated. Kenshin drops into the “ore” speech pattern three times while still in narrow, reflective purple-eyed mode: when he speaks of Arai Shakku after remembering their parting, when he says to Hiko that he can’t just stand by when people are suffering in front of him, and the entire passage of his learning the ougi until he heads back down the mountain. After that, however, he sticks solely to “sessha,” picks up the “de gozaru”s again though not as frequently as before, and never once, no matter what duress he’s under, shows the smallest flash of yellow eyes. His eyes stay narrow, reflective purple except for the instant in which he executes an attack.

This finally brings him into line with all the other fighters we see. And just to drive the point home, it’s Aoshi who’s now shown with flat, pinned eyes. All the time he’s talking about how he’s thrown away limits and distinctions between good and evil, his eyes stay that way, not dilating and gaining reflectivity until Himura smacks him, verbally, back to his senses. Interesting that, at that point, both Himura and Sano mention that they’ve never seen Aoshi look like that, and that he’s actually reverted completely to the Aoshi he was before getting mixed up with Kanryuu. So, consistently flat, pinned eyes are the sign of a killer untroubled by ethics and happy to die.

The alteration I want to make to my reading is that Battousai doesn’t have all the passion so much as he’s driven by Himura’s passion. Battousai himself is separate from his motivation–quite passionless and cold, divorced from the results of his actions. The serious Kenshin also has an element of passion, and is the face that can actually express that passion verbally–but, of course, that side of Kenshin only shows in dangerous circumstances. Because Himura has guilt on the brain he doesn’t want to show anything but his silly/harmless side to Kaoru. The idiot.

I should take a moment here to note that Himura, as a seven year old, uses “ore” for himself. Hiko, speaking of narrow, reflective purple, thinks that his student’s eyes are the same as they were during his previous training. I tend to think of that as Himura’s base state, but it isn’t where he winds up after Hiko beats some sense into him and he learns the final attack. He mixes several of his previous modes, which says to me that he’s finally gained sufficient flexibility to qualify as sane again. Or, possibly, to qualify as sane for the first time.

A Moment for Disbelief

When I was first introduced to con culture ten (ten?! yeah, 1990. gack!) um, ten years ago, I was very taken with the pin that said “I am willing to suspend my disbelief, but not to hang it by the neck until dead.”

Since I ran through Ranma 1/2 and Sailor Moon before arriving at Rurouni Kenshin, I’ve gotten very good at suspending my disbelief especially when it comes to physics. But my disbelief is about to asphyxiate, so I figured I’d let it down for a breather.

Who decided this guy only weighs 105 pounds? I happen to weigh 105, and stand 5’6″, and unless he has the bones of a bird, Kenshin has to be at least 120. Muscle weighs a lot, and he has significantly more upper body development than I do, tiny wrists and all.

Just had to get that off my chest. And I won’t say anything about little things like mass and inertia because we all know the rules are different for anime. Anyone who hasn’t already must visit Anime Cafe’s Laws of Anime.

I will say, those delicate wrists probably really are a lot tougher than they look. Still, if they were mine, I’d wrap them. (Sprains. Ow.)

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Hiko Seijuurou

Gee, what a nice guy. NOT! OK, so he’s kind of sexy; that’s no excuse. Hm. Let me clarify that. He’s kind of sexy with the mantle on. Once it’s off he bears a somewhat regrettable resemblance to the Incredible Hulk in a corset. Mind, I chose the less Hulk-ing of the two mantle-less Hiko pictures I have, here. Not, perhaps, an anatomically unlikely representation for a guy who walks around toting the equivalent of a wolfhound over his shoulders, but still.

At any rate, this is not someone who produces what you might call an optimal learning environment. Recall that, after his comment, that Kenshin’s eyes are as piercing as they used to be, no matter how his form has deteriorated, he adds that this will make it more fun to torture, er, train him. It kind of makes me wonder just what kind of people the other masters of Hiten Mitsurugi have been. The current one certainly has his share of contradictions. Here’s what looks like a genuine misanthrope, a hermit, but he’s the custodian of a form dedicated to defense of the helpless. Just how many helpless people does Hiko meet up there on his mountain? OK, so he lives up the hill from Kyoto, which is a major population center. He doesn’t seem to visit very often.

He does, however, seem to have a better grasp of psychology than his student. Which makes me wonder why he doesn’t bother to use it more often, but never mind. Recall what he says when he’s trying to talk Kenshin out of taking part in the brewing war. He points out that Hiten Mitsurugi is the kind of contribution that will likely prove a winning advantage to whichever side Kenshin chooses. I think the subtext here is that, however hard Kenshin might try to choose the ‘right’ side, he will find that there isn’t a whole lot of straight-up right and wrong in wars. Especially not civil wars. He compares the impact Kenshin would have if he joined to the arrival of Admiral Perry and Co. to force the country open to outside trade. In other words, Kenshin (and Hiten Mitsurugi) would be a mysterious threat of unknown proportions, his presence a divisive force, a spark for chaos, a weapon of terror. Katsura, the Ishin Shishi leader who first spotted Kenshin, recognized the same thing (or why else employ the kid as an assassin, instead of as a melee fighter which seems a lot closer to what Hiten Mitsurugi is designed for?).

Nevertheless, Hiko does seem to be on good terms with himself, which can’t be said of most of the other older characters in this story. He obviously does have an altruistic streak alive in him somewhere, or he wouldn’t have come to help the besieged Aoiya (even if it was pretty snarky to make Kenshin think he wouldn’t, even for a few minutes). And he clearly has a much better grasp than poor Kenshin on the difference between individual action and organized violence; he knows that the only way to remain genuinely true to his own conscience is to stay his own master. Military service is right out. However he does it, Hiko maintains his balance. And a truly obnoxious attitude, but I will admit to a certain sneaking sympathy for “I am the best; deal” arrogance.

In a lot of ways Hiko seems closer in personality to Saitou than to Kenshin. He and Saitou share a certain ruthlessness and a sardonic outlook on life. And they’re both arrogant bastards. I do kind of wonder what might have happened had Hiko wound up (somehow) taking Saitou as his student. Now there’s a fic idea.

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Saitou Hajime

(Loosely, to begin again)

One of my aunts used to be a cop. For twenty years. In Detroit. Then she retired. She’s currently working as a saleswoman in the children’s department of a Jacobsen’s store. I suppose everyone deals with the stress of the job in their own way. I admit, though, I do have an extremely hard time picturing Saitou selling baby shoes.

On the other hand, one of my correspondants passed along the info that the real Saitou Hajime became a schoolteacher after the war ended. And I have to admit, I think he’d make a kick-ass basic composition teacher. (Thanks to RM for the tip!)

So, here’s the man who’s middle name is obviously “integrity.” And he’s nuts. Not in any flamboyant fashion, of course, just sort of quietly and implacably. The kind of nuts that’s the logical conclusion of extreme sanity. And it rather strikes me that one of the only reasons Kenshin succeeds (manga-wise, anyway) in finally turning away from killing (read, the sword) is because Saitou stays with it. We might even say that Kenshin passes off the harsher functions of justice, embodied in Battousai, to Saitou. Saitou is the one who will abide by “Aku, Soku, Zan” until he dies; Kenshin, on the other hand, searches out a different code. The thing that really caught my attention was that they both survive this story. Saitou’s adherence to his code doesn’t get him killed or even significantly disillusioned–I’m not sure it’s possible to get much more disillusioned than where he is when we first meet him. Nor does he go destructively psycho… well… ok, he doesn’t go unproductively psycho, how’s that? He’s not Shishio, coldly crazed with the thirst for revenge and dominance. And he’s not Jin’e, drunk on the thrill of killing. His goal is justice. He’s just unutterably ruthless in the pursuit of his goal. And wasn’t that one of Battousai’s hallmarks?

On the other hand, remember what I said above about flat, pinned eyes being the mark of a murderer? I think it’s worth mentioning that Saitou never shows this symptom.

I find it a little hard to say whether Saitou has been emotionally scarred in the same way Kenshin was. He’s not a character who’s especially willing to let anyone, even the audience, get a clear look at his emotions. I tend to doubt it, though. For one thing, he’s married, and seems to care for his wife; that implies at least a vestigial capacity for intimacy. (In fact, he doesn’t do sultry too badly himself, especially when he’s got a cigarette in hand. And he can practically do strip-teases with those gloves. Not bad.) And he isn’t quite as pragmatic as he likes to appear. Consider that, for all he rags on Sanosuke, most of his irritation seems to stem from Sano’s continuing refusal to go learn the things Saitou thinks neccessary to keep him alive; Saitou doesn’t give Sano a good shaking, upon meeting in Kyoto, until Sano admits that he has not, in fact, gotten any practice with defense. Consider the fight with Enishi’s minions–after claiming it’s none of his business, Saitou winds up pitching in anyway. I find it a bit difficult to believe that this is purely because he wants to keep Kenshin in one piece until their challenge is resolved, if only because I think he already suspects by that point that Battousai may no longer be available. Besides, the man is explicitly identified as a type O, which does not match at all with most of his actions. At least not the immediate ones. On the grand scale, yes, he’s a unifier. What he wants is to keep his people together and in good shape. But the way he pursues that goal is not what one would normally term good teamwork. If Watsuki took the trouble to decide Saitou’s an O anyway, his idea of Saitou’s character must have included some latent altruism (of course, Hiko and Shishio are type Os too…). And, hey, maybe to round the sybolism out he’s a LEO *stifled snickers*.

This is not to say that Saitou isn’t a bit fixated on the idea of fighting it out with Kenshin (or, rather, Battousai). Which is understandable. Duty isn’t his only motivation by a long shot. Ah, adrenaline, the greatest mood-intensifier ever known. Never mind synthetic drugs; if you’ve really got the taste for it, adrenaline is all you need. I would judge that Saitou has the taste. At least he sure looks cheerful in this picture, about to cross swords with the boy who’s been making mince out of Saitou’s fellows. And then, of course, there’s the issue of skill. Of form for it’s own sake. Duty, adrenaline…and pride. It’s a powerful mix.

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Shishio Makoto

Not as many pictures for him; how many shots of a mummy can you realistically get? I mean the facial expression is a bit limited.

Actually, Shishio’s given name is probably one of the best descriptors in here. He is faithful–utterly, unswervingly faithful to his own code. The fact that most civilizations profess to abhor the code of social darwinism doesn’t change that. I find it interesting that Shishio is characterized as an anachronism (rejected by the progression of time–very poetic). His code is a variety of rabid individualism: everyone for himself. Feudal periods, like Edo, are not characterized by individualism of any sort. The movement of feudalism is toward generating as many and as strong bonds between people as possible, usually to stave off the chaos of a decaying central authority. Shishio, instead, strikes me as a potential direction for the post-Edo era. One in rather dire conflict with Kenshin’s version. And Saitou’s version, for that matter; Saitou is far more interested in stability than Shishio.

Wa-hey! I’ve finally (3/01) found backup for the above little intuition of mine. Apparently Fukuzawa Yukichi, a big wheel among the early Meiji enlightenment thinkers, said “the strong devour the weak” adding that “we should side with the civilized nations…in search of choice morsels” (Fukuzawa Yukichi zenshuu, Keiou ginjuki ed., vol 9, pp195-6). Sharp lad; the government took his advice in a really big way.

Shishio definitely has a brain, though. I can imagine few things more deadly dangerous that giving someone like Soujirou a weapon, and I can’t imagine that Shishio didn’t know that when he passed over the wakizashi. That’s one of the more curious twists in the Kyoto plot. Shishio is unmoved by vulnerability, but he is capable of nurturing latent strength. He won’t come save Soujirou, but he will train the boy after he’s proven his basic survival aptitude (kill before being killed). His way is not, then, presented as a dead end in the reproductive sense beloved of darwinism.

Well, except for what seems to be a fatal arrogant streak. In the final analysis, Shishio does himself. And that’s when the plot takes a real turn. Instead of ending things with the fireworks, Watsuki gives us a coda. Shishio takes over Hell; now there’s a popcorn concession. The unspoken points seems to be that this is where Shishio will be a) most comfortable and b) most successful. So hell, as Watsuki presents it to us, is the place where unbridled power resides. And the oh, so Luciferean Shishio gets to be the most powerful of the angels, fallen through pride to rule of the nether sphere (fallen? hm; I wonder). Well, the Morningstar always was the most interesting character in that story. I quite agree with the author of Kuni Tori that Shishio’s final destination rang Paradise Lost bells.

Oh, and while I have been unable to find shishio in the dictionaries, I wonder if it’s based on shishi (lion, patriot, heir, limbs/extremities, storehouse)? Which reinforces the link to the Ishin Shishi, and the government they formed, which tried to kill him after using him. Though the only possibilities I’ve found for o on its own are at/in/on, cord/strap/thong, tail/ridge. Laine, author of RK FAQs see link below, says it means masculine. If we add this to “makoto” for “faithful/true/etc.”… the faithful ballsy patriot? What a lovely freight of ironic meanings!

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Shinomori Aoshi

Point of interest: according to Laine the shi in his surname is the character for four rather than the one for death or truth; though, as Leena Shah points out, the association most people would make from hearing Shinomori is “forest of death”.

Onward, then.

I think the word we want here is cold. Hard to believe Aoshi is two years younger than Kenshin. If Saitou tends to cover up his actual thoughts and feelings with banter and insults, Aoshi takes the rather more brute force approach of not showing anything at all. Not the most subtle or efficient way to go about the thing, but hey, he’s, what, eight years younger than Saitou; we’ll cut him some slack.

Again, it’s a bit hard to tell whether Aoshi is one of those scarred, traumatized souls I mentioned at the beginning. We don’t hear a whole lot about his past, and the only real hitch in his psyche seems to be the point that the Oniwabanshuu didn’t get to have their turn during the war. I have a hard time figuring out just how this could produce the kind of cryo-persona we see in Aoshi right from the beginning. Though I suppose, f we extrapolate, there’s a certain logic to the idea that someone who wound up in charge of his whole clan at the ripe age of fifteen might have gone the icy route in the interests of maintaining his authority.

His mind twist about Kenshin makes a bit more sense, though it does lead me to believe that Aoshi’s character included some heavy tendencies to over-reaction right from the word go. Let’s try to trace this logic tree, after all. All of my men were just killed by my employer; rather than be satisfied with dismembering said employer, I’m going to fixate on the red-head who helped them save my cojones; due to some bizarre sideways-think, I’ve decided to defeat the red-head which will satisfy the spirits of my departed men for both a) their immediate deadness and b) the fact that we didn’t get in our licks during the war. Right. Whatever you say, Aoshi my boy, whatever you say. Now that I look at it, that really doesn’t make any more sense. It does point out the fact that Aoshi was probably fixated on Kenshin/Battousai as soon as they met–that Kenshin seems to have represented both Aoshi’s martial disappointment and his shame at being on the losing side in one carrot-topped, disaster-prone package. Otherwise I don’t think that Himura would have wound up as the distraction-from-guilt of choice. Probably a good thing for Aoshi he did, since it’s Himura who points out that Aoshi is using the pursuit of the “strongest” distinction as a way to distract himself from his guilt over his men’s deaths.

How Aoshi wound up both disappointed at not having taken part in the festivities and shamed that his team lost is another question. You’d think the two would cancel out. All things considered, I take it back. I can believe this guy’s younger than Kenshin after all.

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Yukishiro Enishi

Around the bend. Down the street. Into the woods (to grandmother’s house we go…no, no, no). He seemed like a fairly normal boy (obnoxious, obstreperous, etc.), having a fairly normal reaction to his big sister paying attention to someone new. And then, bam! it turns out that this new guy is the one who killed sis’s fiancé and on top of that is the one who kills her! To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure it would matter to Enishi whether this had been on purpose or on accident.

What I find far more attention-getting is the fact that Enishi took off for China to acquire the skills and money to carry out revenge on his sister’s killer. Though, in the process he manages to repeat exactly the offense he blames Kenshin for–killing the innocent and upright (at points he really reminds me of Soujirou); Enishi really displays a far more classic story than Shishio as far as revenge obsessions go. So it isn’t surprising that the end of his story is a classic redemption instead of the rather peculiar twist that Shishio got. But back to China.

Given the anxiety-of-influence issues between Japan and China I’m almost surprised that the technique Enishi brings back works so charmingly against Hiten Mitsurugi. Not that there isn’t a dig at China in the person of Enishi’s mob lieutenant who is interested in command of the organization but manages to fumble his first real bid for independent decision. Kind of along the same lines as Shampoo in Ranma.

Looking at it more closely, though, it becomes clear that Enishi’s weapons skill isn’t what nearly destroys Kenshin; it’s Enishi’s psychological skill. Vicious boy, isn’t he? He may be the only character in here whose mental manipulation of his opponent equals Kenshin’s. Only instead of trying to circumvent fights by driving wedges into his opponents’ psyches, Enishi uses similar insight to much more cruel ends. Also interesting, you know, that it isn’t actually Kenshin who does a number on Enishi’s mind at the last; it’s Kaoru, with that journal.

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Seta Soujirou

But speaking of younger. Note that I’m interpolating a lot of Soujirou’s internal operations based on what we find out about his past. The information we get isn’t really all that detailed. But, as far as Watsuki and Co. matching history to manifestation, can we say “terrifyingly accurate”? The smile that never stops–that isn’t happiness, but rather blankness–that conceals, even from him, what he may do next.

That’s the function of that happy face, after all. To conceal. If the family torturing him isn’t gratified in their expectation of pain, they may stop sooner. Not a perfect tactic, but most survival tactics aren’t; survival is the goal when winning isn’t an option. It’s the sort of thing that tends to rack up a lot of anger, even while the tactic itself tends to make the anger very hard to see. Sometimes even harder from the inside than from the outside, because the facade will only be strong enough to last if it isn’t a facade–if it becomes the truth to him. And so the anger acts ‘on it’s own’ so to speak, lashing out from behind the blank smile without necessarily touching Soujirou’s surface consciousness at all. Thus, the lack of ki to be read; it isn’t that it’s not there exactly, I would say. It’s just obscured.

That kind of layered consciousness can be the source of some…peculiar behaviors. Like, say, killing people flippantly (“Game over! I win.” Love it). Something suppressed for so long starts to acquire a life of it’s own, if only by virtue of being the center of all the personality bits that get shoved down there with it. Of course Soujirou’s a natural; it isn’t exactly him fighting. It’s the rage. Never, ever, underestimate the boosting capabilities of anger; it’s astounding what can happen when you let it all go. It’s harder on the originator than building power through more positive channels, and it doesn’t have the same endurance, but it packs a hell of a punch and it’s much more…explosive. It may help to think of him as a permanent berserker who never shows any of the usual warning signs, like foaming at the mouth or such. As Kenshin, oh great manipulator of his opponents’ minds, seems to figure out, when Soujirou shows anger you’re actually safer. Well, relatively speaking.

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Summing Up

If you want to keep going, the younger characters are covered on the Untortured page and the serious (mostly) and thoughtful stuff is on the Politics and Philosophy page; the puzzlesome characters Yumi and Tomoe are on their very own page; the silly and thoughtful stuff is on the Art and Language page.

If you’ve had enough, here is a selection of links to other places. Though, if you’ve had enough, you may or may not wish to trust my taste in other pages. Then again, if you want to respond (I like responses) my email link is at the bottom of the page. If you feel the urge to be flamey or snippy, stuff a sock in it.

Links

For general info, I’ve found Anime Grimoires-Rurouni Kenshin very useful, sort of perpetually incomplete and definitely under construction.

Also see Rurouni Kenshin FAQs, which has loads of very useful info and a great section breaking names down according to the kanji. (Now down, best I can do is point you to the web archive snapshot.)

For episode summaries, Zero Stance can’t be beat. (Or, at least, didn’t used to be.)

I’ve found good manga translations at Maigo-chan’s Ruroken Translations and Serizawa Kamo’s Rurouni Kenshin Translation Index. Between the two, the whole series is covered.

Another site worth looking at is Kenshin’s Attic; hugely entertaining. Other sites that feature actual talk/analysis about our favorite characters and not just good wallpaper and an image gallery, are Racoon Girl–Kaoru, and Kuni Tori, a Shishio site.

And if you’re looking for good fanfics, both Available Seating–fanfiction at the Akabeko and MadamHydra’s Lair have excellent examples.

(Note that links go up and down as I lose or find sites.)

Credits

We all know that the world/characters of Rurouni Kenshin originated with Watsuki and Co. The ideas in here are mine except where otherwise noted. Pictures were taken from The Kamiya Dojo, the Anime Inn, CandLA RK Image Gallery, Man Behind the Mantle, Yahiko: Spirit of a Warrior, and are used to illustrate critical text with no commercial infringement.

Rurouni Kenshin: Untortured

Accompaniment for this page is “It’s Gonna Rain,” by Bonnie Pink; my second favorite.

For our next page, we have The Youth (who mostly have boring name meanings so I didn’t do them) most of them rather bland in comparison. Not that they’re uninteresting, or without painful pasts, but none of them are presented as tantalizingly dark, tortured souls like the foregoing lot. Mind, the fact that Soujirou and Enishi are tortured prevents us from reading this as some kind of statement that all is sweetness and light for the future. But the younger characters provide much less angst for the plot, which occasionally tempts Watsuki into bad habits. Clearly, he’s read way to much Stan Lee and picked up an unfortunate tendency to provide a character purely to do the play-by-play. (“Oh, look! Kenshin has just done Move X–insert detailed description–which has had Effect Z! How amazing!”) This leads to:

Sagara Sanosuke

Who, in the manga, is mostly a sports-caster with a few muscle-flexing cameos. He gets to be much more interesting in the anime; among other things, he actually acquires some character complexity and conflicting motivations. With a few little twists, the anime storyline made that whole interlude with Katsu (for example) much richer and more loaded with hints of character development.

In the manga version, Sano’s submission to Kenshin is settled once and for all in their first fight and from then on Sano’s the faithful sidekick/sportscaster; which is sweet, but not very interesting. The anime version actually allows Sano to break away from his new friends and, in particular, get into a serious fight with Kenshin again. He loses, of course, but that’s not the point. Sano feels called on, by his ethical convictions, to join Katsu’s attempted arson etc. And when Kenshin comes to stop them and Katsu is unable to do anything useful about this, Sano steps up, faithful to his convictions however conflicted he may feel about them just then.

It’s the ambiguities of this confrontation that make it interesting to me. OK, so Kenshin pounds Sano into the ground again; that’s the easy part. Kenshin’s apology looks simple (sorry for kicking your ass into next week, Sano, you all right now?), but added to Sano’s very ambiguous “Thank you, Kenshin,” even that slips a little. What is Sano thanking Kenshin for? Stopping him from doing something wrong? (I suspect that’s what the anime team intended; the more kinky possibilities aren’t well supported in the rest of the show. All the same, I would like to think they recognized that possibility in what they produced.) Wrong for what reason, though? Because it was destructive or because it would have been ineffective? The latter would seem to ally Sano with Saitou, attitudinally. Because it meant Sano didn’t have to stop himself? Now, there’s an interesting one; it suggests that one of the reasons Sano hangs out around Kenshin is so that he can rely on Kenshin’s maturity (hmm) and indulge himself in immaturity without worrying. (And in any case, I gotta say, thanking the person who just finished beating you to the edge of unconsciousness is kinky no matter how you read it.) This is to say, in the anime, Sano’s submission to Kenshin is a far more problematized issue. Much more fun that way.

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Kamiya Kaoru

I think the best treatment of Kaoru so far is Homecoming (see link at the bottom of the main page). Rather than simply reiterate that page, let me point out a few sidebars and you can go look at Homecoming next.

Why do so many anime heroines so utterly lack cooking skills? Usagi, Akane, Kaoru; a significant percent of plot time in all three cases is taken up with their friends attempting to prevent these ladies from poiso… er, feeding them, some tactfully some less so. My own training, conditioned by the food-politics of 19th C British and US literature, is screaming for me to read this as an indication that aggressive women are dead ends–not able to offer sustenance. On the other hand, Usagi and Kaoru both have kids by the end of the series which seems to indicate that the ends aren’t that dead. And there’s always someone else to pick up the slack (Makoto, Kasumi, Kenshin… one of these things is not like the others…). So perhaps the point is actually that strong community bonds are the precondition for successful rebels; as long as there’s someone available to do what needs to be done, everyone can also do their own thing. Of course, these stories also make it easy by presenting the substitute as happy and willing to take over…

A correspondent reminds me that, in the manga, Hirume Gohei’s borther, Kihei, infiltrates the dojo as her housekeeper, on her father’s death, which would allow Kaoru to go along without learning housekeeping details for herself.

I have to admit, both Ranma and RK give me serious McCaffrey flashbacks. As a girl I was so delighted with Lessa, the strong and independent woman…until I unraveled the most basic point made in the Dragon books: it’s fine and dandy to have a woman character who’s stronger than both the men and women around her. Just as long as she’s hooked up with one man who’s stronger than she is. I think RK is actually less guilty of that than Ranma; at least in RK we get the idea that there’s more than one kind of strength, and that Kaoru’s strength of heart is at least as necessary for the continuation of lives and worlds as Kenshin’s strength of arm.

In addition, Hakucho notes that, “it seems to be that Kaoru’s maturation throughout the series is reliant on the influence and advice of Takani Megumi. I don’t know about the anime, but in the manga it’s due to Megumi’s confrontation of her when she’s sulking and depressed that Kaoru finally decides to go to Kyoto to see Kenshin again (as she was the only one he said “goodbye” to), and in the beginning of the Jinchuu arc with Enishi Megumi tells Kaoru that although Kenshin DID eventually survive all of his battles in Kyoto he is still only human and capable of dying, meaning that Kaoru would have to be much more stronger for his sake if she doesn’t want to lose him.” (personal email, quoted by permission)

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Takani Megumi

Ah, the fox-lady. Interesting that she doesn’t get a happy romantic ending. On one hand, we could read that as a sign that “proper” women who participate wholeheartedly in the makeup-marriage-hunting economy are passé. On another hand, we could read it as a sign that an independent, intellectual, collected woman who knows her own mind and keeps her own counsel is going to scare off all the men. I tend a little toward the latter, though the two certainly aren’t mutually exclusive, if only because Megumi is so overtly identified with a trickster breed (foxes, kitsune). No kitsune would ever fit the definition of a proper woman (if I recall correctly, possession by foxes was one of the historical diagnoses that tended to get made of schizophrenia). And kitsune, like any tricksters, aren’t necessarily very nice.

So another possibility is that Watsuki has simply followed the folkoric tradition that kitsune (and similar creatures) cannot stay happily married to humans. (For examples check out The Japanese Psyche by Kawai Hayao, translated by Gary Snyder.)

Another interesting dichotomy that Megumi vs. Kaoru points up, though, is that sexually aggressive women are generally presented as alarming/disturbing. Consider Shampoo (or, worse, Kodachi!) in Ranma. It’s the physically aggressive but emotionally innocent and…well, unawakened Akane and Kaoru who are most attractive to the men. *disgusted look at the men* Wimps.

Appropriately enough, though, we’re never entirely sure what Megumi’s truth is. She’s the actress, the shape-changer. Does she really like Kenshin, or is she just trying to get a rise out of Kaoru? (gee, how… unchallenging) Is her relationship with Sano more sibling-like or more romantic? And if it’s romantic, why does Sano take off for parts unknown (at least to the fuzz) instead of hitching a ride to Aizu with her?

Then again, maybe she acts like such a vixen around her friends because she needs to blow off steam after being the good-healer/doctor all day and knows they won’t hold it against her…too much.

Addendum 9/05: One of my correspondents, asking about some of the above thoughts, got me to clarify one of the things that annoys me about the shape of the romance in RK. Sailor Jupiter mentioned how much more human characters like Kaoru appear in contrast to their rivals-in-love. That made me verbalize the following: I expect that’s one of the reasons figures like Megumi and Kodachi show up at all– for contrast with the rather more realistically innocent heroines. What initially spurred my contempt for the men this equation seems designed to appeal to is two-fold. On the one hand, Megumi, at least, has sufficient sympathetic moments to show that she’s a real person under that front of hers and the idea that none of the men in the story have enough guts to try and see behind the front irritated me. On the other hand, there’s also something about the category of Innocent Unawakened Maiden that makes me twitch when that category is the default for our female romantic leads. That aspect of it doesn’t bother me quite as much in Ranma, because Ranma is equally presented as romantically innocent… or possibly just romantically dunderheaded. RK, however, is a show explicitly aimed at boys and men, and the male romantic lead is almost thirty. The age difference itself doesn’t bother me, but it does mean that the relationship automatically gains a sexual, as well as romantic edge. The implicit prescription that all the viewers find a young girl an ideal sexual object disturbs me, however representative of a Japanese national kink it may be.

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Makimachi Misao

To finish out the round of girls. The youngest, the bounciest, the one who may even have a quicker temper than Kaoru which takes some doing. Interesting that Misao’s voice actress actually has a fairly low, mature voice. Also interesting that Misao’s animal-associate is much more a) vicious and b) well, svelte than Kaoru’s. Raccoons, while you don’t want to tangle with them, do tend to waddle comically (I’m going on the assumption that tanuki and racoons really do have significant appearences in common–I’ve also seen it translated as badger; interesting note, though, that Kaoru gets a trickster icon, too). While I’m not sure about the svelte part (I don’t think Misao’s quite old enough to be svelte yet), the vicious seems appropriate enough to someone who favors throwing knives. Really, given the Stan Lee streak in this story and the way Misao looks with a fist full of those kunai, I’m almost surprised she didn’t get a wolverine. It’s possible that Watsuki gave Misao the weasel in order to point up the fact that she’s part of a fighting clan; otherwise, we might have forgotten that bit in all the genki-ness.

The way that age is matched to romance is pointed up very clearly with Misao. Yahiko, who seems to be just emerging from cooties-phase, doesn’t have a consistent romantic interest in the story; instead, he goes gaga over whatever cute girl he happens to see that day. Misao, just a bit more to the far side of that stage, most definitely does have a consistent interest. What she does not have is subtlety. While Kaoru, only a few years older, is mooning over Kenshin silently and second guessing all her approaches to him, and while Megumi, only a few more years older, has gotten to the stage of toying with the men, Misao lights out after Aoshi in a very… straightforward manner. Maybe she should have gotten a bloodhound for an icon, instead.

Like Yahiko, though, Misao has a strong sense of responsibility. When Aoshi goes around the bend, it’s Misao who picks up the pieces. A favorite topic for speculation seems to be whether Misao is still okashira when the dust settles; I think the fact that Watsuki doesn’t tell us is significant. Whether she stays the Oniwabanshuu leader or not is immaterial. The point is that she took the position on at all. Another possible reason Misao got a rather more serious animal associate than Kaoru. Kaoru has great strength of heart, but I tend to think Misao has a little more steel in her spine.

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Myojin Yahiko

Gad, what a brat. I have this recurring nightmare of a fic: crossover romance between Chibi-usa and Yahiko. Run awaaaaay! Though he does mature nicely as the story goes along, especially in the Revenge arc. In fact, I think he matures more than Sano or Kaoru. Probably because he’s the logical focal point of identification for the target audience of a shounen manga.

But what a little role model he is! Yeah, he teases Kaoru unmercifully (little demons of chaos, am I glad I’m an only child), but we also see very clearly that she successfully pounds him into the ground when he does. Message: go ahead and tease the girls, but be prepared to get justly walloped for it. Next item, he picks an appropriate role model for himself. He’s imitating Kenshin, after all, not any of the various other possibilities (Sano, Aoshi, Saitou). Message: OK, boys, go find a girly-looking man who washes and cooks which cheer, and has to be in psychoticly-protective-mode to do fatal harm, and be like him. Last item, Yahiko knows when to grow up. During the Revenge arc, when everyone else is falling to little bits (except, of course, Aoshi), it’s Yahiko who is calm enough, dispassionate enough, rational enough, to agree to have “Kaoru’s” body exhumed and eviscerated. Whooo-ee. Message: it doesn’t matter how young you are, you can make a difference; when the time comes, recognize it and do so.

And, as we’re getting to the political/philosophical end of this discussion, note who our audience-identiy character idolizes and tries to emulate? Kenshin. That’s what gives so much weight to Kenshin’s agenda, when his priorities are so very different from the other strong characters’. If you’ve missed Yumi and Tomoe, don’t worry, we’re getting to them too.

Rurouni Kenshin: Tomoe & Yumi

The two puzzlesome curiosities that don’t particularly fit into these pages anywhere else. So they got their own.

Yukishiro Tomoe

Snow white really would fit her so well–perhaps an audial pun is intended? Laine says tomoe, spelled this way, is hope; Selene says it refers to a circular comma pattern.

A mitsutomoe is a pattern motif that looks vaguely like a whirlpool, a circle divided into three (mitsu) comma-shaped drops (tomoe). There’s a nice page at http://www.mii.kurume-u.ac.jp/~leuers/trinity.htm with pix and a discussion of various possible interpretations within Shinto: the unity of the three realms of the gods, the three primal elements, and other fundamental sets of three. (Fox, tanuki, and weasel? Naaaaah…)

You can see mitsutomoe scattered all over the background in the second episode of the first RK OVA, while Kenshin is struggling with his ambivalence about you-know-who. In the Imperial treasures of sword, mirror, and jewel, the jewel (magatama) is also supposed to be a comma-shaped drop, or a necklace made of them. And to increase the polysemy, the etymology of _tomoe_ is apparently based on the concept of a sprouting seed, the same shape as a raindrop or a flame.

–Julie Lim (quoted by permission from personal email; many thanks!)

Making anything of this is problematic, since she has so little screentime. And she’s so bloody withdrawn. She could give Aoshi lessons in cool.

I’ve read several running debates over whether Tomoe is a sweet, misunderstood and confused girl, an ice cold traitor, Himura’s true love, etc. Myself, I incline to a sort of middle ground. We don’t see much of her, now, do we? And she’s certainly one of the most reserved characters in here. But my general impression is that she is in earnest when she agrees to become Himura’s “sheath.” Not that you can read anything off her face, but her body language when she brings in Himura’s blankets and he nearly kills her upon being startled out of sleep… it indicates some kind of realization to me. Now this could just be the realization that she’s not going to be able to cut his throat in his sleep, but it struck me more as the realization of what it might be like to be both that young and, bluntly, naive, and also that deadly.

The worst I can say about her is actually that she’s not honest with Himura. If she had truly called off her vendetta against him, she should have told him about it. Yes, it would have been hard. But true trust is better than false trust and if false trust is injured by admitting “hey, honey? I’ve been working for your enemies for months now but I’m not any more,” at least it leaves the field free for the development of true trust.

Actually, though, my analysis of their relationship is weakest when it comes to her reasons for love. I can see why someone like Himura, in the middle of that kind of chaos, would be drawn to someone like Tomoe who is so contained, stable, serene–the eye of the storm. But why would Tomoe, who is equally embroiled in that chaos, be so drawn to Himura? I can see where her realization that he’s an idealistic boy who’s being used rather ruthlessly by the people his ideals led him to accept as his leaders might let her forgive him for murdering her fiancé. But that done, what else might actively draw her to him? Does she like danger? Or innocence? Or is she one of those angels in the house who are irresistibly drawn to pain because making it better gives them a sense of self-worth? That would be the…traditionally reinforced option. Her jumping Kenshin, to put it bluntly, seems to be precipitated by the moment when they’re walking home in the snow, she falls, he helps her up, and tells her that he will protect her. So perhaps part of her attraction to him is that, after a rather trying period in which she has had to look after herself, probably for the first time in her life, she has found someone who will take that burden from her again. I’m inclined to think that any of these might be equally true, because Watsuki didn’t envision Tomoe as a developed character–she was merely a useful twist in Kenshin’s background and the excuse for he and Enishi to get into an extended fight.

All in all, I think Tomoe is the character who is left second-most-blank for us to fill in. The first, of course, being Tokio.

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Komagata Yumi

Now here’s a lady with a bit more fire than Tomoe. In a lot of ways, she’s just as mysterious though. What motivates this woman? I suppose the sappy way to put it is love, but it looks like an awfully complex version thereof to me.

She’s another character without a whole lot of background. We have no idea what led to her becoming a courtesan. She might have been sold into it by her family or by slavers; she might have chosen it for herself, as a way to an influential position supposing she didn’t come from an upper class family and couldn’t marry into influence. She certainly seems attracted to power. Consider her reactions, not simply to Shishio but to his steel-clad battleship. When he asks her if she will love it (the way she loves him, for himself not his body) she looks up all flushed and wide eyed and agrees that she does. That fascination, as a correspondent pointed out, lasts past death; Yumi is shown accompanying Shishio as he starts off to conquer hell. Then, too, she seems pretty impressed with Aoshi, when he says that he has abandoned all morals and limits in his search for strength. And she certainly seems to know all about what Shishio is planning. She’s not exactly behind the scenes or limited to some bower or bedroom; she shows up absolutely everywhere with him–at the hot springs, travelling, at the fortress. She’s more on the ball than any of the gentlemen of the Juppongata, excepting Soujirou who has his own problems. If she didn’t choose the life of a courtesan, she has certainly made the best of the cards dealt her. This picture is actually pretty darn representative. It’s Yumi front and center, the focus of attention and action, bending all the other figures around her.

Update 10/05: Hakucho reminds me that Yumi does say she chose to become an oiran, and took pride in her position until she was embittered by the legal hash following the Maria Luz incident. That incident led to Japan making rulings against slavery in their country or territorial waters, and was followed quickly by the Prostitute and Geisha Emancipation Act. That Act, however, was followed by a good deal of disorder in the sex industry and, under pressure from Britain in particular, was quickly hedged around with so many new regulations on prostitutes of all classes that the women’s situation was even worse than before. So just as much as she might like the idea of being consort to the new ruler-of-all, she might also like the idea of sending Meiji down in flames.

She does not, however, really seem to hold to Shishio’s own ideals; very few of his followers do. They tend to get caught up in his charisma and rely on his strength not their own; which, if we follow Shishio’s notions to their logical conclusion makes his followers lunch sooner or later. Yumi’s version is a bit different–she clearly does have her own strength. Nevertheless, she’s obsessed with Shishio and with helping him in both an intellectual and a physical manner. Whence, of course, her death.

Now that was stupid. Courageous, noble, honorable, all that jazz. But stupid.

I have to admit, though, if she had played the blind for Shishio’s sword out of her own conviction that his ideals were correct, I might not be as disappointed. But to do it, not because she thought he was right, but because she loved him? Beh. I can be as sappy as the next person but that makes my skin crawl. If only because I can’t possibly imagine Shishio reciprocating, even if he thought such an action was the only way to accomplish his goal of kuni tori. For one thing, he would never think that. His ideals don’t include things like self-sacrifice; it’s everyone for himself, which is what doesn’t seem to translate to his followers. (To paraphrase the great Lois McMaster Bujold: Individualists always do just fine in tyrannies, as long as they get to be the tyrants.) But back to Yumi.

In a backhanded way, I think she comes out of this as one of the greatest tragic, noble (idiot) heroes. She displays the strongest integrity, determination and courage of any of the Kyoto arc bad guys. She strikes me as a rather strange outcropping of the ethics of suicidal nobility, which most of this story really doesn’t endorse. Not that way. Curious that the representative is a woman. Not that it isn’t inside the bounds of traditional femininity, but she’s almost the only villain to display these values in the entire show. So, is this ethic being feminized? There’s a scary thought for the future.

So, lets look instead at something a bit silly. If you haven’t been there already, check out the Art and Language page. Have fun!

Rurouni Kenshin: Politics & Philosophy

Politics

At this juncture I should, perhaps, note that my field is Colonial and US literature to 1900. That means I wind up teaching the accounts of both the Revolutionary and Civil wars in the US. If anything my attitude toward this nation’s history is more cynical and caustic than the opinions expressed below. It’s awfully hard to read things like the Federalist Papers, John Adams’ letters or Reconstruction writers without getting cynical. Among other things, this means that I’m familiar with the whitewashing that happens in any national consciousness after an internal war–the stories we tell ourselves to try and make the whole thing less nasty, bloody, vicious, harsh, utilitarian and above all confused than it was. If you’re disturbed by dour attitudes toward politics, you should probably skip ahead to the Philosophy section.

When I speak of the political sophistication of this show, I am not speaking in a particular sense but rather in a generic one. As far as particulars go, RK strives not to go there at all. The backstory of our older characters is really remarkably vague. A resounding silence surrounds Ishin Shishi politics, in particular–a silence of downright derridian proportions. Nowhere in the RK storyline does it mention that the revolutionary party was also the nationalist/isolationist party (and given how many misconceptions I find floating around about US civil war politics, I hesitate to assume that it’s common knowledge); all we get are some fairly vague references to dignity (ishin; this one also means intrigue/treachery and restoration; I kind of wonder when that first definition came along). Nothing about how they were pissed off at the Tokugawa shogunate, at least in part, for caving in to Admiral Perry and Co. We certainly don’t have the aftermath of their success spelled out–that the victorious party did a spectacular 180 and more or less threw the country open to Western trade in the name of the new “civilization and enlightenment” agenda. This was not, necessarily, out of keeping with a general agenda of restoring/promoting Japan’s “dignity.” But it was certainly a radical change in immediate goals. Clearly, there were some politically pragmatic souls high up in the Ishin Shishi infrastructure at the time of victory. (Well, victory enough to start setting national policy, at any rate.)

What we get instead is a sort of undercurrent of institutional criticism. Saitou is probably the best example. His agenda is stability, for all that he’s, personally, immensely flexible in an odd sort of way. He supported the Shogunate, but when that was thrown down he cheerfully (well, sort of) accepted a rather highly placed position in the new government. By his own admission, however, he did so in order to root out the inevitable corruptions of the Meiji system. He seems to serve, less any particular government, than an ideal of Japan as a nation and people. Everyone, including Kenshin, seems to feel that Saitou is an anachronism in the Meiji era, that he doesn’t belong, that he is part of Edo. But the fact that he supported the Shogun while apparently harboring ideals much closer to the stated ideals of the Ishin Shishi makes me think he’s much more than a simple hold-over. Rather, he seems to be the constant; just as constant as the corruption he resists. Saitou is not really ideologically bound to either Edo or Meiji. His ideals stand on their own, apart from any particular government. This says to me that one subtext in this show is that any particular government will be inescapably corrupt, and what a given person needs to do is decide exactly what her own position is and then act on it.

From the other direction, Himura shows up some of the same thing. His ideals never falter; it’s just that his experiences after placing himself under the command of a particular government were so disillusioning that he refused to ever have anything to do with government as such again. Instead, he went out among the people, seeking to put his ideals back into practice on an individual level. Hiko, upon hearing about this, tells Kenshin that he’s finally gotten the purpose of Hiten Misturugi Ryu right, after a significant detour. This nicely echoes what he yells at the fouteen year old Kenshin–that he must remain a free agent in order to genuinely protect the people.

Governments in general come out pretty smeared in this story. Possessing ideals and sticking by them, however, seems to be applauded. Talk about the personal being political. That’s what I mean by a sophisticated message.

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Philosophy

I hate to break things into dualisms; threesomes are so much more fun. But dualism is a major pattern of thought in both Asian and Western culture, and it seems to have been one of the primary structuring tropes of RK… I’m sorry, I’ve been reading literary criticism for my candidacy exams, let me try that again. Dualisms are a big thing in RK. Hm. Maybe that was too far in the other direction. I’ll work on it.

At any rate, one of the major patterns I espy in this show is the need to balance what I’ve started to call desire with an ethical code. Desire, in this particular instance, encompasses that adrenaline rush I mentioned earlier–a taste for living on the edge, the desire to test oneself, one’s skill, on the edge of death. The hunger for extreme stimuli that leads people into competition with deadly weapons, understanding that, at the historical point in question, after a long period of increasing stylization, “martial arts” wasn’t a simple matter of skill or form any more. It was death. Desire includes the thrill, the endorphins, the pride of survival, as well as the love of the form itself. It’s the sort of thing that people who don’t have it tend to label as crazy.

RK offers us lots of really bad examples of what happens to characters who don’t manage to balance their desire with a code that provides both motivation and limits. Jin’e, for instance. I would argue that one of the main reasons he falls to Kenshin is that he is operating on nothing but his desire. And desire necessarily involves a certain enchantment with death. In fact, Jin’e seems to view death with downright erotic fascination–recall that when he knows he’s defeated by Battousai he actually asks to “feel the sword” of his opponent. Recall also his refrain that killing, fighting and eventually death are “good feelings”. Jin’e graphically demonstrates the problems of not having a code to supply counterbalancing pressure to live; once defeated, and denied his… release… by Himura’s blade, there’s nothing left to keep him alive. No “try, try again,” no “live to fight another day.” None of that. So the idiot kills himself. Gee, how productive.

Shishio manages a little better. He has motivation to keep going all right–revenge. Now, he does have a code of his own, as well. Survival of the strongest–social darwinism. But this code, taken alone, doesn’t look beyond simple survival. My opinion is that Shishio’s drive to dominate his nation (world, universe, etc.) doesn’t primarily stem from his code, as he claims, but rather from his desire to destroy the government that only ever acknowledged his skill/power by attempting to kill him. After all, if he really believes that only the strong survive, all he would have to do in order for his ideal to take over is wait. He isn’t willing to do so, which says to me that the more significant motive here is revenge.

In fact, the implication we’re left with seems to be that revenge just might be strong enough to defeat everyone else except that he shoots his own foot off with his illusions of omnipotence. For all the melodramatic declamations that “time” and “the new era” reject Shishio and so produce his demise, in the final analysis it was his arrogance in ignoring his time constraints that did him in. So, perhaps revenge minus megalomania would be successful. Even Sano mentions at some point, speaking to some villain or other, that Shishio is one of the strongest men he’d ever met. I get the feeling that Watsuki might have been a bit uncomfortable with the conclusions we come out of the Kyoto arc with, since he offers another revenge driven character who is not prey to megalomania in Enishi. And Kenshin does a Kenshin on him, which, you note, he does not succeed in doing to Shishio, and redeems the poor boy. This second round tells us that revenge, as a motivation, will always sabotage the one who relies on it. A much sweeter moral than Shishio presents.

That gets us to the character who is probably better balanced than anyone but Hiko. Saitou. I didn’t say he was sane, mind, just that he’s balanced. If you’re getting the idea that I think Saitou is a pivotal character in this story, you’re right. Between them, he and Kenshin crystallize just about all the major issues in RK. At any rate, Saitou obviously has the desire. In spades. His fixation on fighting Battousai demonstrates that nice and clearly. He also, however, has an ironclad code of ethics that gives him something more than the thrill of death’s closeness to live for. “Aku, Soku, Zan” seems to provide all the motivation Saitou needs to keep going right through the kind of defeat that would lead a lot of other people to despair and apathy, right through the alterations that knock the world he’s known ass over teakettle. This does not, note, mean that he’s nice. He’s not. He has to have reasonably sharp perceptions to be such a good fighter, but he appears totally uninterested in using those perceptions to engender or guide much in the way of sympathy. But nice doesn’t seem to be a major issue here (curiously enough, given our title character). Saitou has great integrity; that’s enough.

Of course, we do have the counter example of Kenshin always before our eyes, saying that integrity alone isn’t enough; that empathy and sympathy are also necessary in order for life to have real meaning. All Kenshin’s pals back this message up, Kaoru most especially with the sword that protects life. Kenshin’s gloss on that issue (quoting Hiko) is a particularly sophisticated twist, in my opinion. “A sword is a weapon. The art of the sword is the art of killing. Whatever pretty words you use to speak of it, this is its true nature. What Kaoru-dono says are the words of one who has never dirtied her hands. An idealistic joke…. But, I like Kaoru-dono’s idealism better than the truth. If one can ask so much, I would have the world to accept this joke as its true nature” (manga, Vol. 1, Maigo-chan’s translation). Kenshin understands that reality is what we make it; that the world around us is only the story we tell each other. That truth can change. This is what Saitou would never accept; I doubt that Hiko would either, though there is some possibility there I think. So we get Kenshin as the figure for willingness to change–and, above that, willingness to recognize that knowing our world is the story we tell of it entails the responsibility for changing the story. Responsibly. No wonder the poor man is so wound up all the time. In Kenshin’s case, though, it is his very belief in the potential of change, and his willingness to be a locus of change, that get him through the war, the blood on his hands, and the transmutation of his world into something no one anticipated.

What Kenshin doesn’t have, I would say, is the desire. And that is what almost destroys him. A code alone isn’t enough to get a person through a life lived by the sword. An effort to live so without the support of desire will only result in madness. That’s really my own explanation for Battousai. Battousai exists as the most extreme expression of Himura’s wish to protect, but, because the sword and the edge of death hold no true attraction for Himura, Battousai has no care for his own survival. There’s no incentive for him to survive, no pleasure in what he does and therefore no motiveation on his own behalf to keep going. Remember that it wasn’t Kenshin who made the initial choice to learn the sword; Hiko did it for him. My reading is that, while Kenshin might enjoy the form itself, he’s not especially keen on killing. Left alone, if he didn’t just get erased, I think his determination would have flowed into a different channel. Perhaps even into the priesthood somewhere. Since he was trained to weapons, his convictions drove him into the war. And because Kenshin didn’t have the desire that would have given him some sort of consolation for how he was bringing a new era about, he concentrated all his drive and passion for the cause, if not the blade, into Battousai. And abstracts aren’t enough to keep a person alive.

In the end, I think, Watsuki broke away from the ideal of balance, at least for Kenshin. Himura does not balance Kenshin and Battousai. Rather, he abandons the sword and lets Battousai fade. This is in line with Kenshin’s character, if not with the philosophical underpinnings of the rest of the show. Kenshin changed his own story.

So, there’s the serious stuff. If you want the puzzles, that’s on the Yumi and Tomoe page. If you want the silly stuff, it’s on the Art and Language page. If you have a taste for this sort of speculation, you used to be able find another philosophical peroration at the site Why Shishio Won, whose author is even more cynical than I am. I will re-link this page if the author resurfaces. Cheers!

Rurouni Kenshin: Art & Language

First a little toying with language and then some analysis of the series art.

Linguistics

I love etymology. It says such fascinating things about the operation of human minds and cultures. Unfortunately, I don’t read Japanese, so I can’t do it properly for anime. Still, there are some very entertaining tidbits to be had by looking in dictionaries, even having to rely on romaji transliterations.

For example. Shishou means “master or teacher,” we all know that. So far so good. It also means “stab or puncture wound” (how appropriate to this case), “stabbing or stimulation” (not saying a word), “obstacle, hinderance, impediment or difficulty” (how very appropriate), and “anthology” (…whatever). Obviously, I can’t say whether the kanji are the same or not, but the list made me laugh anyway.

Watsuki admits that “rurouni” is not an actual word, insofar as that is not how one would write/say “wandering masterless samurai.” The JEDI suggests that the word for this is tenjikurounin. The concept however, seems linguistically redundant. Again, if I’m breaking this down properly (which is not a given by any means) the character “rou” already indicates wandering; the wandering part seems embedded in the concept of masterless. It does strike me that Watsuki may have been going for a pun, calling on another meaning rou: comforting or striving; but that’s a different issue. Thing is, though, the only definition I’ve found for ru, at least on it’s own, is bend over. While this could be linguistically related to the whole wandering/meandering/curved meaning group, it was still a bit… disconcerting. I was immensely tickled, however, to discover that “rounin” can also indicate someone who failed their college entrance exams. This connection suggests, to my mind, all sorts of delightful things about the dangerousness of a little education not confined by an institutional affiliation. Academia–the last bastion of feudalism.

Speaking of puns. Everyone seems to agree that the kanji shin used in Kenshin’s name is the one that indicates heart. What interests me is that the word for a live blade, in Japanese, is shinken, the shin in this case being the one that indicates death (I’m fairly sure, correct me if I’m wrong). You could translate shinken, loosely, as “killing sword.” Call a spade a spade, yes? I imagine Watsuki may have intended another wordplay here, using these oh-so-tension-filled contrasting (or is is complementary?) meanings of shin. Besides, what better name for Kenshin than the killing sword reversed?

WARNING: if you do not have a sick and twisted sense of humor, skip this last item. It is not quite accurate to say that “oro” isn’t a real word. It isn’t a standard variation on exclamaitions of surprise (though orooro seems to be an adjective indicating nervous/flustered/in a dither/all shook up), but it does have a meaning. It means lochia or post-natal vaginal discharge. Afterbirth. Again, I can’t vouch for the kanji, but even so…

I warned you, didn’t I?

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Artwork

The visual representations in this show are wonderful fun. These people all need haircuts so badly. Not that I don’t like the long hair; it’s lovely. But these people are supposed to be sword swingers, for crying out loud! Never mind lines of sight; I’m generally willing to accept the maxim that if you can see it coming it’s already too late. But having ticklish and prickly bits of hair trailing in your face is really, really distracting. I’ve found exactly two shots of Kenshin in which he seems to be brushing those bangs out of his eyes, see here and here. Two. Right. And it could easily be a sex-appeal move in both cases. Or perhaps a headache brought on by too much Hiko, in the case at the top. You’d think, really, that he’d do it more often. Or steal Sano’s headband or something.

And you notice it’s the ones who are good guys we get to see more often in superdeformed style?

While it’s the not-so-nice-guys we get to see all dark and brooding and, really, pretty hot? So, what’s the subtext here? That beatuy is dangerous?

Though we do get Himura in this sort of pose, too. But, then, I suppose he’s due dark-and-brooding screentime on behalf of Battousai; interesting that his brooding shots aren’t always marked with Battousai’s eyes.

The ones I find most interesting, though, are the artbook/cover art pictures. The things they say about characters’ characters and relationships to each other are just fascinating. Take the ‘family’ shots, for instance, that feature the Kenshin-gumi.

The first one is easy: they’re messy, they’re loud, they’re having a great time. Possibly even Kenshin Let’s hear it for the non-traditional family. The second one has more possibilities. Notice, for instance, that Megumi is on the far side from either Kenshin or Sano? Next to all the kids, in fact. Perhaps that’s why she didn’t get tied up with a romance in the story; maybe she’s genuinely not interested and just teases the boys for fun. And, inverting that, Sano is over next to Kenshin with kids between him and Megumi. So, how do we read that link? As a ‘familial’ connection between him and Megumi? As an indication that he’s closer to Kenshin than to the fox-lady? And then, Kenshin, while obviously part of the group, is sitting with his back partially turned to them. The outsider, even among his family-of-choice. Or perhaps it’s the fireworks he’s got his back turned to; no taste for explosions? Or not comfortable with the atmousphere of celebration? Maybe he’d rather brood. Interesting that both Yahiko and Sano are outside the little balcony. The ones who like living dangerously, perhaps? Or the ones who dislike domestic enclosure? That would make it even more interesting that Megumi is inside.

The shots of Kenshin and Kaoru also have lots of milage.

The first picture, once again, is the simpler. And one of my favorites. Kaoru looking at Kenshin while Kenshin plays with a sparkler. All the same, call it atmousphere or call it my own romantic streak, I get the impression from that picture that he’s happy she’s there. Now, the second set of shots are a lot more loaded. The strangest one, I think, is the top tableau. It looks pretty simple; Kenshin gets all protective and Kaoru gets all helpless looking (peh!). The strange thing is that he’s holding that sword between them. (And how’s he drawing it? Holding the sheath with his teeth?) So, he’s protective of her but won’t let her get too close; there’s their whole relationship encapsulated in one little graphic.

The lower image is unusual in that it shows Kaoru looking a lot sexier than usual (and wearing the obi from hell). So there she is, leaning back and a bit more low cut than usual, and here he is standing above her (but not over her, note) with the sword. What, is he a harem guard now? If we want to get into the really peculiar possibilities, that grip he has is pretty well positioned to spin the blade over and down on her. Sex and death. Oh, Freud…Herr Doktor Freud…AREN’T YOU DEAD YET!? But the more sexualized Kaoru gets, the more distant Kenshin gets in these shots. The only shot I have in which she is more unclothed than this, he’s absent altogather.

This shot is also one that plays the sexy-cute connection for all it’s worth. I mean, come on. Ankle socks? And the hair half coming down, and the soulful gaze upward (to the superiorly situated spectator). Sigh. I suppose I’m just not culturally equipped to enjoy this style–good thing, too.

Though, speaking of unclothed, the boys come in for their share. Kenshin seems most often to appear en deshabille in shots with Sano. I’ve really started having trouble believing we aren’t supposed to think there’s some sexual tension between those two.

On the other hand, the nature of that tension is extremely elusive. These two pictures are a case in point. Anything we can conclude from one can be denied by the other. The stances are almost identical: one standing behind, feet apart, one in front on one knee. But the positions are traded. I suppose I could make something of the fact that in the less overtly weapon-laden shot Kenshin is the one standing while in the more agressive shot it’s Sano. But I would also say that the more sensually loaded picture is the first; it shows more skin for one thing, but even aside from that there’s more dynamic tension between their positions than in the second. And, given the age=subtlety-in-romance connection apparent among the women, I think we could also read this as a manifestation of Kenshin’s status as the older. Curious that Kenshin is the unclothed one in both shots; is he more vulnerable or just more sexualized?

By contrast, Kenshin is always fully clothed when pictured with Hiko. So, is there an effort here to head off any sexualizing of their relationship? They’re also, if you note the first picture of the very first pair shown above, often shown with their backs to each other. Ignoring or defending?

Just in general, I get a kick out of the boy-shots. The variety of expression is great. This one, for instance, is the perfect tough-guys shot. Kenshin with the rather vicious smile. Saitou with the evil eye. Hiko, looking ready to punch someone. Sano, looking a whole lot more ready to punch someone. And Aoshi looking icy. Oooo, aren’t we all so dangerous? (muffled sniggers) They are, of course, but the poses are so melodramatic.

In this one, on the other hand, everyone looks rather cheery. Aoshi looks like he might be contemplating cracking a smile. Saitou, unusually, looks rather benign and rather limp-wristed to boot. I actually think Sano looks like he’s about to tweak Kenshin’s bangs or something. And Kenshin looks remarkably cheerful for someone who’s almost in a headlock.

Interesting positionings. In the macho, aggressive shot, Kenshin is all the way to the back; in the cheery, if snowy, shot, he’s all the way to the fore. Aoshi, who is in the front of the macho shot, moves to the back of the cheery shot. I suppose we couldn’t expect him to participate in the cheery-ness. Saitou seems to stay firmly in the middle of both; he’s the one who never moves a jot whatever the changing circumstances may be. Sano, too, doesn’t move much. He’s foregrounded in both shots. Perhaps he’s just an exhibitionist?

For a good overview of the visual symbolism of the OVAs (1-4), check this page out.