After Yukishiro Tomoe's death, Himura Kenshin worked as a roaming swordsman protecting members of the Ishin Shishi. Shishio Makoto eventually took over his role as the government's shadow assassin, handling jobs like eliminating Izuka, who'd betrayed the movement.
The Meiji government kept much tighter control over information about Shishio than they did about Kenshin—most of the Chōshū and Satsuma clan members who made up the new regime knew very little about him. Worried he'd grow too powerful, they decided to kill him during the Boshin War. They shot him unconscious, doused him in oil, and burned him alive.
He lived through it, though he was left severely scarred and disfigured. Rather than accept defeat, Shishio gathered the strongest fighters in Japan and formed the Juppongatana—the Ten Swords—with the explicit goal of toppling the Meiji government.
His vision was a Japan run on pure survival of the fittest. Shishio believed the weak should submit to the strong, and he felt the current government was too soft to lead effectively. He found an ideological match in Seta Sōjirō, who became his trusted lieutenant and the most formidable member of the Ten Swords. Once in power, Shishio planned to modernize Japan's economy through petroleum development—a way to make his new regime economically competitive as well as politically dominant.
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
