Character · Rurouni Kenshin
Hajime Saito
One thrust, delivered straight, with the left hand braced along the blade and no interest in a fair duel.
In Otakana the clue reads: Former shinsengumi captain who thrusts straight
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Rurouni Kenshin
- Letters
- 5 · Normal
Saito was third unit captain of the Shinsengumi, the shogunate's police force in Kyoto, and he fought Kenshin on the opposite side of a war both of them survived. He turns up years later as an agent of the Meiji government he once tried to destroy, wearing a police uniform, chain-smoking and entirely unrepentant about any of it. His creed is aku soku zan, slay evil immediately.
The technique is Gatotsu, a flat horizontal thrust with the sword held level and the left palm pushing the flat of the blade. It has variants for different angles and one for a target above him, and it exists to punch through a guard rather than to duel around it. He is one of the few opponents Kenshin never comfortably beats.
Hajime Saito was a real person. He served in the Shinsengumi, fought at Toba-Fushimi and Aizu, later joined the Tokyo police under the name Fujita Goro, and died in 1915. Watsuki kept the biography and added the cigarettes, which is roughly his method for the whole cast.
Spelling SAITO
SAITO is five letters and there should be more. The Japanese 斎藤 is Saitou, with a long O that English shortens without warning, so anyone spelling it by transliteration adds a U that will not fit. The AI pair in the middle is two beats, sa-i-to, not the English long I. Family name, one of the most common in Japan, and the given name here is Hajime.