Character · Rurouni Kenshin
Kenshin Himura
The most feared assassin of the Meiji Restoration now carries a sword with the sharp edge facing the wrong way.
In Otakana the clue reads: Wanderer with a cross scar and a reversed blade
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Rurouni Kenshin
- Letters
- 7 · Easy
During the wars that ended the shogunate, Kenshin killed for the imperialist side under the name Hitokiri Battousai and was very good at it. When the fighting stopped he walked away, took a sakabato, a katana forged with the blade on the inner curve, and swore never to take another life. The reversed edge means he can hit as hard as he likes and still keep the promise, which is a technicality he leans on constantly.
The wanderer who turns up at the Kamiya dojo in 1878 is red-haired, apologetic, says oro when startled and looks like nobody's idea of a killer. That is the joke the series keeps replaying: he does laundry, he is bullied by children, and then somebody threatens the household and his posture changes.
Nobuhiro Watsuki built the character on Kawakami Gensai, a real assassin of the period, and the series is unusually careful about the politics of the era for a Jump title. It ran from 1994, sold more than seventy million volumes, and got a live-action film trilogy that people who dislike live-action adaptations tend to make an exception for.
Spelling KENSHIN
KENSHIN is seven letters and reads cleanly in two beats, ken-shin, with an SH cluster in the middle and an N at each end. The written name is 剣心, sword and heart, which is a fair summary of the character. No long vowels here and nothing dropped in romanisation. The row wants the given name rather than the family name Himura.