The was a term given to four

samurai The samurai () were members of the warrior class in Japan. They were originally provincial warriors who came from wealthy landowning families who could afford to train their men to be mounted archers. In the 8th century AD, the imperial court d ...

during the

Bakumatsu were the final years of the Edo period when the Tokugawa shogunate Meiji Restoration, ended. Between 1853 and 1867, under foreign diplomatic and military pressure, Japan ended its isolationist foreign policy known as and changed from a Feudali ...

era in Japanese history. The four men were Kawakami Gensai, Kirino Toshiaki (also known as Nakamura Hanjirō), Tanaka Shinbei, and

Okada Izō was a Japanese samurai of the late Edo period, feared as one of the four most notable assassins of the Bakumatsu period. He was a member of (Tosa Imperialism party, a loyalist clique of Tosa) in his hometown, Tosa Domain. Izō and Tanaka Sh ...

. They opposed the

Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. The Tokugawa shogunate was established by Tokugawa Ieyasu after victory at the Battle of Sekigahara, ending the civil wars ...

(and later, supported the Meiji Emperor). These four samurai were warrior elite and widely considered undefeatable by normal people. The word ''hitokiri'' literally means "manslayer" or "man cutter," as the kanji 人 means person, while 斬 can alternatively mean slay or cut.

In fiction

* '' Hitokiri'' is a 1969 film directed by Hideo Gosha and starring Shintaro Katsu as Okada Izo and

Yukio Mishima Kimitake Hiraoka ( , ''Hiraoka Kimitake''; 14 January 192525 November 1970), known by his pen name Yukio Mishima ( , ''Mishima Yukio''), was a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, model, Shintoist, Ultranationalism (Japan), ultranationalis ...

as Tanaka Shinbei. * The

manga are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long history in earlier Japanese art. The term is used in Japan to refer to both comics ...

and

anime is a Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, , in Japan and in Ja ...

series ''

Rurouni Kenshin is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Nobuhiro Watsuki. The story begins in 1878, the 11th year of the Meiji era in Japan, and follows a former assassin of the Bakumatsu, known as Hitokiri Battosai. After his work against ...

'' is about a former hitokiri named Himura Kenshin, who is based loosely on Kawakami Gensai. Kenshin is also known as Hitokiri Battosai (人斬り抜刀斎), or "Sword-drawing Manslayer". * Hideaki Sorachi's manga '' Gintama'' involves fictionalized versions of two of the four ''hitokiri'' (particularly Okada and Kawakami), set in an alternate version of

-era Japan. * The Hitokiri is a playable character in the video game '' For Honor'', serving as a heavy hero of the Samurai faction and fighting with a two-handed axe. * The 2014 video game '' Ryū ga Gotoku Ishin!'' features Okada Izo as one of the main antagonists. The 2023 remake version, ''Like a Dragon: Ishin!'', also features Kawakami Gensai, Tanaka Shinbei and Nakamura Hanjiro as minor antagonists appearing in side missions.

References

Japanese historical terms Samurai Quartets {{samurai-stub