This Month’s Zatoichi: Zatoichi’s Cane Sword (Kimiyoshi Yasuda, 1967)

As regular readers will no doubt have noticed, I’ve fallen off the wagon somewhat with my monthly Zatoichi reviews this year; partly a result of unavoidable busy-ness, but to be honest, the last few uninspiring installments in the series have not really inspired me to get a move on either. If I’d kept to schedule, we should really be finishing up this series in about February or March 2016, but as it stands at the moment, we’ve still got ten movies to go. So, buckle up – it’s time once again to hit the dusty streets of some beatific Edo Period backwater, and I promise that this time, I won’t keep you long.

Film # 15, Zatoichi Tekka Tabi (‘Zatoichi’s Cane Sword’), released in Japanese cinemas in January 1967, marks an important sea-change in the Zatoichi series, being the last installment directly produced by Daiei studios. One of the biggest players in Japan’s post-war studio system, Daiei did at least continue to distribute the next few Zatoichi films after Shintaro Katsu took the series under the wing of his newly established Katsu Productions, but one assumes that the gradual loss of revenue from their biggest cash-cow inevitably took its toll on the struggling studio, whose slate of period melodramas and traditional/folk entertainments must have been looking increasingly old-fashioned by the late ‘60s, contributing to Daiei’s declaration of bankruptcy in 1971.

As the last blind swordsman adventure before this (arguably quite timely) changing of the guards, one might well expect ‘Zatoichi’s Cane Sword’ to be a rather underwhelming affair, but, happily, it’s actually a rather energetic and enjoyable entry – perhaps even a slightly great one.

Having said that though, I confess I watched it without taking notes, and couldn’t really come up with a great deal to say about it, so we’ll keep this review short.

Basically: there is little about ‘Zaotichi’s Cane Sword’ to really set it apart from the rest of the series. All the the things we have come to expect by this point are present and correct, and all are run through with a fair amount of good natured gusto. Once again, there is a picturesque small town under the heel of a craven yakuza boss and corrupt politician. There are sympathetic local characters in need of help, hospitable local inns and wilful young ladies in beautiful kimonos, along with assorted thugs, goons and moody wondering ronin. There are inventive set-ups for altercations at gambling houses, sword tricks, duels and chaotic battles, and plenty of intrigue and eccentricity along the way.

Director Yasuda proves deft at wrangling these familiar elements into a movie that is colourful, fast-moving and about as ‘upbeat’ as can reasonably be asked of a story that features a large number of people getting slaughtered in sword-fights. There is even a bit in which Ichi inexplicably performs a strange musical comedy routine about duck hunting to a small crowd of other characters; a diversion that will perhaps make more sense to those familiar with obscurer traditions of Japanese folk entertainment than it did to us.

What the film lacks though, at least for those of us who have made it through the preceding Zatoichi adventures, is a sense of anything remotely innovative, challenging or note-worthy - but it’s all such fun that it’s hard to hold that against it really.

Probably the most memorable story element this time around involves Ichi’s encounter with a master swordsmith (played by Eijirô Tono, a familiar face to anyone who recalls Kurosawa’s ‘Yojimbo’). Now effectively retired (reduced to crafting the occasional hoe or pick-axe, by his own admission), this chap is actually the son and protégé of the legendary smith who forged Zaotichi’s own blade no less, and, when he asks if he can have a look at this singular example of his father’s workmanship, he has bad news for our hero.

After years spent dispensing a quantity of carnage equivalent to that of a small army, Ichi’s blade is in a perilous state. The swordsmith identifies a hairline crack within the metal, meaning it will be good for only one or two more strikes before it shears in two. Disheartened, Ichi temporarily leaves his sword at his new friend’s workshop, only later returning to reclaim it when his tussles with the local goons begin to get hairy. Meanwhile however, the film’s bad guys have also been putting pressure on the noble swordsmith, forcing him against his will to secretly complete work on a pristine new masterpiece blade for their villainous boss…. and if you can’t immediately figure out how this plot line is going to resolve itself in the final showdown, well, maybe you’ll enjoy ‘Zatoichi’s Cane Sword’ even more than I did.

I hope readers won’t think I’ve done this particular installment an injustice by turning in such a brief review. As I say, I enjoyed it a great deal. In fact it is a nigh-on perfect example of the finely tuned mass entertainments at which Japan’s creative industries excelled through the mid 20th century – exquisitely crafted, visually enthralling, effortlessly entertaining, and entirely disposable to the extent that there is basically very little to say about it to an audience already familiar with the general pattern of such stories.

Perhaps the whole ‘new blade’ storyline could be read as a coded reference to the new production regime that was on the verge of taking over the by now venerable series, but possibly that’s just overthinking things. Either way, ‘..Cane Sword’ certainly makes the grade as a worthy and affirmative farewell to Zatoichi’s Daiei years, and I look forward to discovering what new twists were added to the formula once Katsu himself took the helm from Film # 16 onwards.

This Month’s Zatoichi: Adventures of Zatoichi (Kimiyoshi Yasuda, 1964)

Arriving at a remote market town a few days before New Year’s Eve with the intention of watching the first dawn of the new year from the summit of a nearby mountain, Zatoichi regrettably finds his social skills stretched to breaking point as he attempts to deal with a disorganized rabble of supporting characters who between them seem to represent all of the various archetypes we’ve seen in the series thus far.

In no particular order, we have a sister pining for her brother (an exiled village leader who has just escaped imprisonment), another woman searching for her long lost father, a corrupt magistrate and his toadying local gang boss who are busy exploiting the local market traders with unfair taxes, a pair of lovable orphan acrobat kids, an obligatory surly lone wolf sword-master out for Ichi’s blood, another somewhat shabbier low rent ronin who’d prefer to keep out of his way if possible, an irascible drunk who may or may not be Ichi’s own long-lost father, and even a few guest-spots for a traditional comedy double-act whom one assumes must have been quite popular in Japan at this point.

Perhaps annoyed by the fact that none of this lot seem able to pull together much in the way of a compelling central storyline between them, Ichi patiently waits it out for eighty minutes then hits the bad guys’ HQ and arbitrarily kills a bunch of people before finally getting to enjoy his bloody sunrise in peace.

By this point, it would seem surplus to requirements to write a great deal about this rather middling entry in the Zatoichi series, whose Japanese title literally translates as the slightly more exciting-sounding “Zatoichi Storms the Government Checkpoint”. Basically I think, the problem here lies with scriptwriter Shozaburo Asai’s “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” approach to plotting, and director Yasuda’s corresponding failure to really get to grips with the resultant dangling plot threads, or to figure out where to best concentrate his efforts, resulting in a sense of inertia and vague pointlessness that permeates the whole movie.

There seems to be some sort of vague theme of parental responsibility and the search for absent fathers running through the various storylines, but the film fails to really develop this is any satisfactory manner, and the sub-plot about Ichi finding echoes of his own father in the town drunk seems like a slightly cynical tug at the audience’s heart-strings, even if strong performances from the players concerned ensure that it plays out fairly well.

On the plus side, production values here are, as ever, top notch, with a bold new orchestral score from Taichirô Kosugi standing out, and intermittent examples of some of the most vivid photography yet seen in the series (which is saying something). Crowd scenes are rich with detail and incident, and the film gives us a nice glimpse into the traditions and good cheer that surround New Year’s celebrations in Japan, even if the set-bound nature of much of the action is regrettably obvious in places.

Shintaro Katsu is on fine form as usual, even if he does seem to be more or less treading water here, failing to really push the limits of his character the way he did in the last few films, and elsewhere, highlights come in the form of some superbly choreographed, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it sword exchanges between Ichi and the wolfish ronin, with some classic Zatoichi visual gags incorporated into the fight scenes. Real laugh-out-loud stuff, even if the “Ichi cuts stuff in half and nobody notices” trope has just about been milked for all its worth by this point.

At the end of the day, even lesser Zatoichi installments still make for fine entertainment, so I don’t want to rag on this one too harshly. At best, it has a kind of cheery “comforting communal viewing” feel to it, making it the sort of thing I can imagine going down very well on festive TV schedules over in Japan, but, well – as far as the wider series goes, it ain’t a stand-out, let’s just leave it at that.

Functioning as a kind of “new year’s special”, presumably planned to cash in on that season’s big movie market in Japan (damn, I should have reviewed it next month), ‘Adventures..’ (I really want to call it “Zatoichi Storms the Government Checkpoint”) marked the end of a phenomenally busy year for the franchise. Next month, we’ll be striding boldly on into a bright new 1965, with Akira Inoue’s ‘Zatoichi’s Revenge’, which debuted in April of that year.

This Month’s Zatoichi: Zatoichi on the Road (Kimiyoshi Yasuda, 1963)

A brief pre-credit sequence in this fifth Zatoichi instalment has Ichi performing a bit of a ‘greatest hits’ set – using his hearing to identify the sound of a crooked dice, splitting candles in two and effortlessly slaughtering a bunch of random guys. “Help, it’s Zatoichi!” shouts one of them, signalling the start of the first entry in the series in which our hero seems to have become a widely known (and widely feared) celebrity within the films’ world.

As the story proper begins, Ichi is already being courted by the emissary of a nearby gang boss who wants a word with the famous swordsman. “I won’t fight or perform sword tricks… but I do appreciate fancy meals”, he says, apparently enjoying the attention.

Not everyone is yet aware of his unbeatable rep though, and Z is soon involved in a skirmish with a gang of sword-for-hire samurai goons who have been hired to kill him for a rival gang. When the bodies have fallen to earth a few seconds later, the emissary Ichi was accompanying is dead, and he is instead left facing Ohisa (Reiko Fujiwara) - the wife of one of the slain men, and an independent and cynical woman who appears suspiciously unmoved by the death of her husband. Allowed to depart unharmed by the ever-courteous Zatoichi, she is soon in cahoots with the lower level fixer who hired the Samurai, intent on getting one over on Ichi and making some cash in the process.

Meanwhile, our hero soon has his sword out yet again, after his path is blocked by a dying elderly man who begs him to find and protect a young girl entrusted to his care. Discovering the girl in question (Shiho Fujimura) cowering in a shack in the woods, Ichi is incensed when he learns that she has incurred the wrath of a local daimyo by stabbing him with a hairpin when he tried to rape her. “There’s no one worse than a samurai”, spits our favourite mass-murdering yakuza, before he commences cutting a path through numerous of the lord’s retainers on his way to deliver the girl – who is the daughter of a wealthy Edo merchant, it transpires - to safety.

By now, the patterns that will presumably define future Zatoichi films are beginning to solidify, and this one is the first that feels like a mere routine genre caper, rather than functioning as an independently compelling drama. Rather than managing to become an engaging character in her own right (as previous female leads have, however conservative the role of women in these stories may be), the fugitive girl never amounts to much more than a pure macguffin, being passed back forth between the squabbling factions like a bag of gold.

And, rather than the conflicted and anguished character we’ve encountered in previous instalments, Zatoichi here spends most of his screen time as the confident, invincible good guy, wading into a mess of contrived potboiler plotlines and efficiently sorting them all out in a satisfactory and morally upright manner. A simpler vision of the archetypal pulp hero, with his moments of rage and weakness emerging more from Shintaro Katsu’s characteristically intense performance than from any prompting in the script.

Much as Kenji Misumi’s original Tale of Zatoichi riffed heavily on ‘Yojimbo’, so ‘Zatoichi on the Road’ seems to return to Kurosawa for inspiration, as scenes in which Ichi traverses hostile territory with the girl in tow can’t help but recall similar moments in ‘Hidden Fortress’, whilst the conclusion offers another fairly obvious variation on that of ‘Yojimbo’, with Ichi playing back-and-forth games with two rival gangs on the long, narrow main street of a seemingly empty town.

For the first time since ‘Tale..’, Ichi can also be seen here bargaining for his martial services (his price is 30 gold coins in case you were wondering – perhaps another nod to Kurosawa’s Sanjuro?), and at times here he seems to be actively enjoying the yakuza conflicts he is embroiled in – a contrast to the disdain and disinterest his character usually expresses for such fussing and feuding.

More interestingly, ‘..on the Road’ also gives us the first instance in the series of a female villain, with an enjoyably ballsy performance from Fujiwara, whose scheming and acquisitive Ohisa offers a refreshing contrast to the gentle paragons of virtue who have made up the female cast in previous instalments. (I also found it amusing that Ichi doesn’t seem quite sure how to deal with this turns of events; his self-imposed code of honour forbids him from killing a woman, so instead he has to content himself with just shouting at her and shoving her around a bit in the hope she’ll go away.)

The visuals here tend to fall back a bit on the gloomy, slightly unconvincing sets of film #3, and the production generally lacks the vibrant colours of film #4, but nonetheless, these Zatoichi films are always nice to look at, and Akira Ifukube again raises our spirits with some excellent music, using themes that are perhaps more dissonant and shamisen-heavy than his earlier Zatoichi scores. The supporting cast is extremely likeable in this one too, with a fine array of craggy faces and cackling cronies livening up the ranks of yakuza, and the simpler, more stream-lined action movie plotting rattles along nicely, providing a welcome break from the more convoluted digressions that occasionally bogged down the preceding films.

Unfortunately though, a chambara film lives or dies by the quality of its final battle, and the one here proves a bit of a damp squib, especially in comparison to the spectacular climax of ‘Zatoichi the Fugitive’, which immediately preceded it. I mean…. it’s still an *ok* samurai showdown, with Ichi indulging in almost as much mass slaughter as in the previous film, but it just feels a bit static and unexceptional. Despite aping ‘Yojimbo’, Kimiyoshi Yasuda’s functional direction never really rises to the challenge, and the backlot ‘main street’ set looks conspicuously clean and artificial, lending a bit of a hokey “b-western” feel to proceedings - a world away from the mud, blood and dust of the Kurosawa set-pieces that so obviously inspired it, or indeed the rich and detailed production design seen in ‘Tale of Zatoichi’s concluding gang war.*

Whilst ‘..on the Road’ may be the weakest Zatoichi we’ve encountered thus far though, it should be stressed that it’s the loser in an extremely strong field, and that it still stands tall as an effortlessly entertaining genre movie with verve and character to spare, even if, unlike its predecessors, nothing in it really lingers long in the mind after viewing.

Looking forward to films #6, #7, #8 and beyond, I find myself wondering to what extent the series will tend to follow the pattern set by this one, drifting into a rut of formula pictures, and if so, how long it will take before some more enterprising writer or director steps up to kick things back into gear. Well, if you’ve bothered reading these reviews up to this point, I’ll assume you’re in for the ride along with me, and, given that even a comparatively minor entry like this one still provides a thoroughly satisfying evening’s viewing, I don’t anticipate *too many* bumps on the road ahead. ‘Zatoichi and the Chest of Gold’ hit screens in March 1964; it will hit my eyes soon, and should hit this blog sometime in July, gods willing.

---

* A pretty ubiquitous director at Daiei through the ‘60s up to the studio’s bankruptcy in 1971, Yasuda helmed, amongst other things, both sequels to Yoshiyuki Kuroda’s The Great Yokai War, the studio’s historical kaiju movie ‘Daimajin’ (1966), four more Zatoichi films, two ‘Sleepy Eyes of Death’ pictures, and another Katsu vehicle, ‘Hoodlum Priest’ (1969). As such, I think it’s probably safe to say we’ll be meeting him again on this blog before too long.