Tsubaki

Tsubaki is responsible, protective and more assertive than Anji. As the oldest child living at the temple, she takes an active role in looking after Tasuke, Mikan, Yohei and Gorou.

She can appear stern when dealing with Anji, but the sternness comes from affection rather than hostility. She wants him to be more decisive and is comfortable enough around him to criticize his excessively gentle behavior.

The 1996 anime expands the emotional implications of their relationship, presenting Tsubaki as having particularly deep affection for Anji and imagining remaining at his side as she grows older.

Tsubaki has no established martial arts training or supernatural abilities. She lives an ordinary rural life and helps with work around the temple and fields.

Her practical strengths are domestic and interpersonal. She assists Anji in caring for the younger children and provides the firmness that his exceptionally gentle temperament sometimes lacks.

Tsubaki appears in the history explaining how Anji changed from a compassionate Buddhist monk into a militant member of Makoto Shishio's Juppongatana. Her father, the former village chief, had supported the shogunate, leaving the family politically vulnerable after the Restoration.

When the new village chief orders Anji and the children to leave, Anji agrees rather than expose them to further conflict. Before they can depart, the temple is deliberately burned. Tsubaki and the four younger children are killed in the fire, an atrocity that destroys Anji's former pacifism and leads him to kill the village chief years later.

[During Anji's battle with Sanosuke Sagara, memories of Tsubaki and the other children confront the hatred that has driven him. Their memory helps Anji recognize how far his revenge has taken him from the compassion he once taught them.](#spoiler)

Anji Yuukyuuzan cares for Tsubaki after she is left without parental support. She becomes his closest helper at the temple and treats him with a mixture of affection and gentle exasperation.

Tasuke, Mikan, Yohei and Gorou are the younger children living with Tsubaki and Anji. As the eldest, she helps care for and protect them.

Sanosuke Sagara never develops a conventional personal relationship with Tsubaki, but his confrontation with Anji forces the monk to face what Tsubaki and the other children actually represented to him rather than using their deaths solely to justify vengeance.