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Transcending Form

  • Writer: Landon Walsh
    Landon Walsh
  • Mar 27, 2019
  • 2 min read

How the Zatoichi film series evolved in form and aesthetic over the years


The Blind Swordsman - an abundance of sequels

Its quite a feat by any standard to have a film series reach more than the traditional trilogy in its number of sequels. Zatoichi on the other hand boasts an impressive 25+ iterations of the famed character as well as a TV series. What this says about how the aspects of his character resonates with people speaks volumes in its own right, but what could this mean for how the series has changed as a whole?



The first Zatoichi film, simply titled The Tale of Zatoichi, is a somewhat serious black and white story of a man being caught between two rival yakuza gangs and simply trying to make his way. The deliberate camera movements and slow pace of the dialogue are far from any pre-conceived notions that may come with later more 'over the top' samurai films such as the Lone Wolf and Cub series. The character of Zatoichi himself seems to be universally liked and the soul constant with the series that people stay with. As Alain Silver says on the subject, "he retains certain scruples and a sense of justice, and judges his own behavior in relation to those."


True Sight - How the times change

With this basic concept of his personality in mind, we then turn to the later forms of his character such as in the TV show. What we get in the intro of the first episode, A Challenge of Chance, is essentially a very boiled down version of the first established character. Now yelling exposition about his stance on killing people to the wind, we see this Zatoichi as almost a caricature of the previous versions. This can perhaps even be seen in the later films such as Zatoichi and the Chess Expert. This film contains a re-iteration of a scene from the first film in which Zatoichi swindles a group of gamblers out of their money. While the first film showed Zatoichi joining them in a more passive approach, the ladder film sees him taking a more active role in seeking the group out and joining them.



What this starts to show is a transition from a critique on the action of justice such as in the first film, to the act of attempting to seek out doing the right thing. Just in these small examples, it seems Zatoichi transitions from taking a 'backseat' approach to his morals (only acting when needed), to seeking out doing what he believes is the right path of action. However, with so many examples of films in the series to analyze, it becomes difficult to truly discern what the true definition of his character is. Does he begin to transcend form as the sequels mount, or does his archetype become more condensed and less of a critique on societal norms? The answer deserves better research and analyzation, but as it stands just from a broad sense, Zatoichi is a main stay in the realm of the samurai.

 
 
 

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