Rurouni Kenshin 2023 – 18

「左之助と錦絵」 (Sanosuke to Nishiki-e)
“Sanosuke & Nishiki Paintings”

The long arm of the Boshin War easily reached into the era depicted in Rurouni Kenshin. It reaches even today’s Japan, truth be told – the cultural divisions at the heart of that civil war still exist in modern society. Most of the events depicted in the series were instigated be people scarred in one way or another by that chapter in history. And of course that applies not just to Kenshin himself, but to all the main characters who surround him.

Tsukioka Tsunan (Umehara Yuichiro) is the latest casualty of that conflict (and its aftermath) to stir the waters. We already met him – as the small child alongside the young Sanosuke, serving under Captain Sagara of the Sekiho Army. We already saw the path that trauma set Sano on – if he hadn’t met Kenshin he’d probably have wound up dead or in jail before much longer. Tsunan, a very different personality from Sano, drifted in a different direction – and the two boys lost contact with each other.

When Tae (and Tsubomi) ask Sano to go and pick up copies of a Nishiki painting (which were all the rage at the time) of the one-armed swordsman “Iba-hachi” (it’s the least he could do, quite frankly), that all changes. The artist, Tsunan, is popular – but one painting in particular just doesn’t sell. It depicts the captain of the “traitorous” Sekiho Army, Sagara – and the two little boys flanking him are all the evidence Sano needs to guess the true identity of the artist (Tsukioka Katsuhiro, his old comrade from those days).

That Tsunan is still fighting the war inside is neither surprising nor, in a sense, damning. Having suffered the injustice and horror the boys did, it’s understandable that the desire for revenge would drive them. Sano got lucky, and found someone to drag him out of the darkness (someone who’s seen even more darkness than he). Katsu found success, but became a loner, brooding over what happened. His natural skill with weapons – including bombs – planted the seed of an idea in him, an incredibly foolish one that nevertheless would appeal to anyone who’d been through what Katsu had.

The tone of this version of events is somewhat different than in the 1996 version, but I interpreted them more or less the same way. To me is seemed pretty obvious that Sanosuke knew what Katsu was proposing – crippling the Meiji government with effectively a string of terrorist attacks – was completely hopeless. But he felt his debt to Katsu – and Sagara – was such that it trumped all else. Then again, one could argue that he was doing his best to bring Kenshin in on what was happening without openly betraying Katsu’s trust.

In fact, the scene where Tsunan sketches Kenshin at Sano’s undeclared farewell party is entirely original as far as I remember. And it’s a very interesting one too – he draws the Battousai without a face, claiming that he can’t see the man behind the scar. Kenshin’s response to what he lived through was to become effectively apolitical – and in this era in Japan, men were expected to choose a side and stick with it. That notion is utterly foreign to Katsu, who dismisses it as a facade. But that it’s genuine is all the more evidence of just how remarkable and unusual Kenshin is – he would be in any era, but all the more so in this one.