Name: Saitou Hajime    Alias:  Fujita Gorou   Age:  35      Birthday:  1/01/1844
 Height: 183cm         Weight: 71kg         Blood Type: O      First Appearance: Vol.7(manga) Ep. 28 (anime)

Watsuki-sama's: The Makings of the Characters -- Saitou Hajime (Fujita Gorou)

 There was no model; Saitou Hajime was a real person. But unlike Sagara Souzou and Yamagata Aritomo, he has a deep influence on the story,

so I adapted him quite a bit. I adapted him so much that I received protesting letters from fans of the Shinsengumi. (I’ve received protest letters before but now most of them are about Saitou.) But Saitou justs seems to get more and more popular, so I’m really happy. The character Saitou is still in progress, so I’ll keep quiet about the historical facts and the details about the plot, but I like the way he’s drawn as an aloof "dirty hero" who carries out his ideal of "Kill. Evil. Instantly," never a simple good guy and always antagonistic to Kenshin and the others. 

 Other than the above I had no design. Since he was introduced in the beginning as a bad guy, I gave him a villain’s face, but I got protest letters about this too. It seems the fans of the Shinsengumi think of him as a gentle handsome man, even though there isn’t a single photograph left of him, so . . . (There is a portrait, though. It’s there, but those who want to think of Saitou as handsome probably shouldn’t look at it.) I also got letters saying, "What’s Saitou doing selling the Hijikata family’s Ishida Sanyaku?!" To put it simply, that was just a joke. And to those who protested that Akamatsu seemed like a practical joke, I am very repentant. But getting so many letters about such little things actually makes me very sad. I’m a manga artist and only human. Shinsengumi fans, can’t you read this manga a little more forgivingly . . . 

 *The Gatotsu isn’t a real technique. Saitou Hajime’s special technique was the left-handed one-sword stab, but I changed it around for a boy’s magazine to be the Gatotsu. But the Shinsengumi’s specialty, the Hiratsuki, is real.