It's getting a tad off topic right now, but I also have a question --
anyone know any good jap history books or web sites? I need it for fanfics
anyway, so... 

At 09:20 AM 4/23/98 -0400, Andrew wrote:

Actually, it takes place in the year 1878. Kenshin wandered ten years
previous,
from 1868-1878.

	Wow. Historically, though, by this time--heck, by the later years
of Tokugawa, the samurai class had become a bunch of bureaucrats, and not
the once vaunted defenders of the Land of the Rising Sun. I guess the
charas in RK must the few exceptions....

That's basically the point of Rurouken -- it's 10~ years after, and
Kenshin, who used to be an assassin for the Ishin shishi (he's not based on
anyone who was alive at the time, except on a very superfical way -- there
was an assassin who was supposedly very bishonen? I think... hmm.) is now
trying to do what the Meiji gov't isn't doing -- that is, protect the
people who can't help themselves, using a sakabatou (reversed blade),
because he's also vowed not to kill. It's a very good series, with a lot of
historical facts and good background -- you get the impact modernization is
starting to have on japan, not to mention (in the latest anime) some of the
feelings that once-oppressed peoples had and such. 

Monica
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