Shinta: The Beginning
One can barely find a more humble beginning in manga than that of Himura Kenshin's. Considering the heights that he reached as a fighter and as a man, it may be hard to believe that Kenshin had merely been a peasant child who went through a series of strange, fortunate, and unfortunate circumstances.
The boy named Shinta started life as the only son of peasants. We can assume that his family was neither rich, well-known, or connected from his fate. At the age of 8, he lost his parents to cholera and was shortly picked up by slavers. Traveling with them in the countryside, they were set upon by bandits, and all the slavers and their slaves were slain, but for Shinta. Perhaps he, too, would have died, had it not been for the timely intervention of a certain mysterious man in a white cape and wielding a katana, who came to his rescue and killed the bandits all by himself. The man, Hiko Seijuurou, told Shinta to pick up what was left and start a new life, to leave the dead behind and do what the living do: live.
But Shinta did not leave the dead behind. At least, not right away, without tending to the bodies first. He set to work and buried everyone who had died in that field that day, marking all of their graves with wooden crosses - except for three he marked with round stones. The three were young girls who had been sold to slavery, and whom Shinta had wanted to protect. When Hiko returned to the scene, worried that the boy had killed himself because of his grief, he was shocked to find the makeshift cemetery, and Shinta's hands wounded and dirtied from his efforts. Shinta explained that all the dead were alike, so he buried everyone. Hiko was struck by the boy's character. He took the boy under his wing, and decided to teach him the unequaled kenjutsu of the Hiten Mitsurugi School. He changed Shinta's name into Kenshin on the spot and, in so naming him, changed his life forever.
Himura Kenshin was nine years old.