Biography

Bare them sevens - three to a pall marks the venom, lush and terminal.

Tomoe and Kenshin met during the Meiji Restoration (1866 - 1869; while Kenshin worked as a hitokiri), and their story takes place 10 years before the manga and the TV series start.

THE BEGINNING

Tomoe was the daughter of a poor samurai family in Edo (today Tokyo), and her mother died while giving birth to her little brother, Enishi. Tomoe was engaged to a young man, Akira Kiyosato, whom she had known since childhood.

As Kiyosato felt he had to be a successful man to be good enough for Tomoe, he went to Kyoto and worked as a bodyguard for a shogun sympathizer, even though he was not a good swordsman at all.

WAY INTO THE ABYSS

In the streets of Kyoto, he was murdered by a young assassin - Himura Kenshin. However, Kiyosato was the first person ever to injure Kenshin, and gave him the first part of his cross scar. Tomoe fell into a deep depression after Kiyosato's death. She thought she was the one to be blamed.

In her sorrow, she joined a group called the Yaminobe who wanted to destroy the Ishin Shishi, the party of the assassins.

These people sent her out to find Battousai's weak point.

KYOTO

Tomoe sat in a bar drinking sake as some guys harshly hit on her. But there was a young man who told them to leave the girl alone, and when he left, the others said that he was surely a real patriot. Tomoe got a strange feeling and decided to follow the man, who was of course Kenshin, the hitokiri who had killed her fiancé. Needless to say Tomoe was drunk. There was already another man in the streets waiting for Kenshin, a ninja from the Oniwabanshu who had been hired to murder him. As Kenshin fought and killed the man, blood spilled on Tomoe who had just arrived at the scenery, making her fall unconscious in Kenshin's arms.

Kenshin took her to the inn he was staying at, and the lady there gave Tomoe work. He had intended to tell Tomoe to leave and to forget what she had seen. But it was already too late.

During the time Tomoe lived in the inn, she slowly began to realize Kenshin was just a troubled child. Suddenly, they were faced with the situation of running away together and pretending to be husband and wife, when the Shinsengumi (a samurai group sponsored by the shogunate to fight the revolutionists) found out about where the Choshu patriots, Kenshin's employers, were hiding. Kyoto burned, and Kenshin had to hide.

GROWTH TO LOVE

The Choshu clan had a small house for Kenshin in a small village called Otsu. This is where they hid and pretended to be married.

"When he doesn't kill, he is so kind." After coming to know what a wonderful character Kenshin had, Tomoe more and more fell in love with him. It's very subtle, but they're both just teenagers (Kenshin 15, Tomoe 18).

She forgave him, and she wanted him to find happiness. Kenshin told Tomoe he wanted to stay with her forever. He promised her to never kill again after the revolution was over.

ONCE A HITOKIRI, ALWAYS A MURDERER?

However, there was a traitor among the Choshu patriots. Tomoe's brother, Enishi, had recently visited, and Tomoe knew that the plot she had helped in was getting to its final. But now, she didn't want Kenshin to suffer. She wanted him to live happily. Tomoe went to the base in the forest her former helpers were residing in, and told their leader Tatsumi to leave Kenshin alone. She originally had been send to find out Kenshin's weak point, but she hadn't found one. But with staying with Kenshin, she herself had become his weak point. When she realized that it would be her fault if Kenshin died, she tried to bite off her tongue, but Tatsumi held her back from committing suicide.

The same morning, the traitor went to Kenshin and woke him up. He told him about Tomoe and that she had supposedly lied to him.

Kenshin felt betrayed. He went through the woods to find Tomoe, better said, fought his way through it. On his way, he was in such a madness that the enemies managed to trick him, and when he arrived, he couldn't see or hear properly anymore. He was even close to dying, he walked in some sort of ghost world.

Kenshin was attacked by Tatsumi, and would have surely been beaten down. Tatsumi held up his dagger and proceeded to kill Kenshin, as Kenshin raised his sword really slowly, because most of his senses were knocked out.

Suddenly, Kenshin rose from his ghost-like state. Just as Tatsumi had been trying to stab him, Tomoe had run out and was trying to hold him back. In this act, she had been just between Kenshin's sword and Tatsumi. Kenshin, who couldn't see or think properly anymore, had pushed his sword through Tomoe and Tatsumi.

Kenshin cried, and pulled Tomoe away from the dead Tatsumi. Tomoe said she was sorry, and called him loved one. She then took her dagger, and cut another wound in Kenshin's cheek, completing the scar we all know from Kenshin's face.

Tomoe's brother saw this all. His hair turned silvery white from shock.

In the OVA, which's version of Tomoe's end I like much more, Kenshin took Tomoe to their house and told her she would never suffer again. He had always carried a spinning toy with him which he had had since he was a child.

Kenshin set the house with Tomoe's body on fire, and left. As we see how the house burns, we also see the spinning toy burn. This is a symbol of Kenshin putting the first cut to his past, and the child in Kenshin dying.

In the manga, the final way of Tomoe's body is not quite clear. She does, however, have a grave and wasn't burned.

WAY OUT OF THE ABYSS

Kenshin fought and killed for the rest of the revolution, after that, he let his sword stick in the last battle field, got himself his sakabatou and wandered around for 10 years, helping others, without killing anyone.

Kenshin did not get over the fact that he had killed Tomoe. Enishi, Tomoe's revenge-lusty brother, didn't understand Kenshin's sorrow in his own madness. He wanted to punish Kenshin for what he had done - without realizing that the knowledge that he had ended Tomoe's life was already enough punishment for Kenshin, Kenshin's real punishment for all he had done. It's quite like in a satire, it's letting something pop into your eyes with "overdoing" it. For me, Tomoe represents all the people Kenshin murdered. With showing how he killed a loved one, it seems to me Tomoe was there to show Kenshin's real self-destruction and hate against himself. So besides being a kick ass character, Tomoe is also a symbol.