The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi

The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi (2003) may be what amounts to a B-level Japanese action film. It’s directed by Takeshi Kitano, who also plays the lead role. The basic premise centers on a blind masseur who wanders the countryside. He also happens to be an extraordinary swordsman, and at occasional moments (say, every 3 or 4 moments) he battles evildoers of one sort or the other, often in protection of the weak or vulnerable. There are plenty of evildoers around.

Two subplots involve a independent ronin warrior, Hattori, who is seeking to regain his standing after losing it in some unspecified incident, and two geishas who overheard the slaughter of their family by a gang and vowed to avenge the crime. Oh, yeah, one of the geishas is really a man. He never appears out of costume.

Comedy, action, pathos, surrealism and madness all intermix in this film. One scene seems borrowed straight from Bollywood cinema. The film is a kind of character study of the characters at the center of the three main plots, which is not to say that it goes very far in explaining them, especially the blind swordsman. We know more about the past of the geishas than we do about Zatoichi or Hattori. Zatoichi in particular remains inscrutable to the end. We know little of his past. He is self-effacing, quiet, almost elderly in his demeanor, until confronted with the necessity to fight. He seems to suffer over having killed the people he kills, but if he does suffer he does not hesitate to bring out the sword again when necessity requires it. The film often switches to scenes from the past of these characters—past battles of Zatoichi, the geishas struggling to survive on the road after their parents’ murders, Hattori in battle or with his dying wife. These scenes provide an explanation for the events of the film’s present time—explaining how the past and the present link up in a consequential way governing the actions of the characters. But we never know enough about Zatoichi to do more than speculate about the events or forces that govern him.

Violent swordplay abounds in this films, with blood splashing everywhere during the battle scenes – digital blood as well as blatantly obvious fake blood, though it’s not particularly gory. You see the blood, but no open wounds or severed heads and only a few severed limbs, caterwauling through the air in slow motion. The speed and ruthlessness with which the gang members and evildoers are dispatched is astounding and brutal.

The best analogy I can think of for this film is the American western—many others have drawn the same analogy with Japanese samurai and swordplay films. Zatoichi involves rival gangs trying to take over a town and trying to destroy each other. It is set in a non-descript time from the past, in the Japanese countryside. The small Japanese village where it is set has much in common with the towns in High Noon and Gunsmoke. The vanquishing of the rival gangs and their members is seen as a major step towards bringing order and law to the surrounding areas. The characters at the center of the three interwoven subplots occasionally interact or encounter one another, and there is a final battle between the ronin and Zatoichi, to which the film spends some time building.

There are moments of whimsy in the film—an overly large man in his teens or 20s, dressed in a sumo loin cloth, occasionally runs through a scene, screaming and waving a sword. We are told that he is a crazy boy who wants to be a samurai. He has no link to anything else in the film. At several moments the sounds of people working in a field or building a bridge take on a distinctive rhythm that must be associated with the themes and the pace of the film.

Ignorant of the traditions and conventions of this film, I watched it through my own American lens. Even without knowing much about the context, I enjoyed and admired it.