Sara

沙羅

A beautiful but blind woman who meets the trio near the end of their journey. She is a goze, a blind traveling performer who plays sad songs for money. She joins Mugen, Jin, and Fuu, and together they enjoy themselves for a while.

Spoiler

Sara is in reality a Shogunate assassin, sent to expunge both Mugen and Jin. She unfolds the blades on her walking staff and wounds Jin in a matter of moments. Out of desperation, Jin cuts the ropes holding up the bridge they are on and they both go plunging into the river below. While searching for their friends, Mugen and Fuu locate an unconscious Sara washed up on the bank. Mugen finds Sara's staff by the river and becomes suspicious of her motives when he finds that the planks of the bridge were sliced. Most likely, he discovers the blades on it and deduces what happened to Jin.
When she has recovered, he uncharacteristically confronts her about it in a quiet and subtle manner. Sara and Mugen fight by the river and he is seriously injured when she cuts him across the stomach. He goes down, but when she moves in for the kill, Fuu throws herself across Mugen and begs Sara not to kill him. She relents, perhaps because she does not want to kill Mugen in front of Fuu. Earlier Sara had said to Mugen that he was like her in that no one had ever loved him, but when Fuu shielded Mugen, Sara saw that she loved him. A Shogunate contact disguised as a pinwheel merchant urges Sara to finish the job, especially if she wants to see her son again. One of his many pinwheels stop, abruptly, and it hints that her son is already dead, and she realizes it. In their second battle, Sara allows Mugen to kill her even though she had the opportunity to kill him, because she no longer has any reason to live. Her death marks the only time we actually see Mugen regret killing someone.
Sara's fighting ability is one of the strongest in the "Champloo Universe", being able to noticeably sunder rocks with her Yari in her fight against Mugen and sense opponents' attacks despite her blindness. Unlike previous and future confrontations that Jin and Mugen will face, she is the only one who has been and would be able to best them so completely and utterly in single combat without the use of tactics or trickery, easily surpassing Jin's fluid sword techniques and out-maneuvering Mugen's wild and erratic style on open ground. Her skill is so considerable that after Kariya Kagetoki learns that she has been killed by Fuu's bodyguards, he deems them worthy enough to be defeated by himself personally. Sara's concealed yari weapon and blindness may be references to Zatoichi.