Katsuhiro Tsukioka

Katsuhiro is intelligent, reserved and intensely bitter about the fate of the Sekihoutai. Where Sanosuke expresses his resentment through fighting and open contempt for the Meiji establishment, Katsuhiro spends years methodically preparing the means to retaliate.

His anger is tied to sincere loyalty rather than simple destructiveness. He continues to revere Souzou Sagara and believes the Meiji government must answer for branding the Sekihoutai a false army after using it to advance the imperial cause.

Katsuhiro is nevertheless capable of reconsidering his path. His artistic ability and later interest in journalism provide ways to challenge authority without reducing the Sekihoutai's ideals to indiscriminate violence.

Katsuhiro is an expert bomb maker. He secretly manufactures a large stockpile of explosives powerful enough to cause extensive destruction and uses special rings that create sparks, allowing him to ignite his bombs rapidly.

He is also physically capable, having grown up amid the Sekihoutai. Although not comparable to the series' elite martial artists, he can fight and possesses enough strength to exchange blows with Sanosuke.

His most constructive talent is art. As Tsunan, he becomes a popular nishiki-e artist whose prints depict historical and cultural subjects. After abandoning his bombing campaign, he turns toward journalism as another means of exposing wrongdoing by the government.

Katsuhiro and Sanosuke were children attached to the Sekihoutai under Captain Sagara during the Bakumatsu. After the unit was branded a false army and destroyed, the two were separated and survived into the Meiji era by different paths.

Their reunion reveals that Katsuhiro has spent years manufacturing explosives for an attack on the government. Sanosuke initially agrees to participate, sharing his old friend's hatred of the authorities responsible for the Sekihoutai's destruction.

Kenshin intervenes before the planned bombing of the Department of Internal Affairs can succeed. Sanosuke ultimately recognizes that murdering people in the Sekihoutai's name would turn them into the very "false army" the government falsely accused them of being. Katsuhiro abandons the attack.

Katsuhiro subsequently gives up his career as a nishiki-e artist and begins publishing a newspaper through which he can expose government corruption. He still manufactures explosives, and the grenades he later gives Sanosuke are used to destroy Shishio's battleship Rengoku.

Sanosuke Sagara is Katsuhiro's childhood friend and fellow Sekihoutai survivor. Their shared history creates an immediate bond when they reunite, although Sanosuke eventually rejects Katsuhiro's plan to avenge their unit through terrorism.

Souzou Sagara was Katsuhiro's commander and mentor in the Sekihoutai. Katsuhiro's devotion to his memory drives much of his hatred toward the Meiji government.

Kenshin Himura opposes Katsuhiro's planned bombing and forces both former Sekihoutai members to reconsider what carrying on their commander's ideals actually means.