 In the twenty-first feature film about the blind swordsman, Zatoichi's Festival of Fire (Zatoichi abre himatsuri, 1970), Shintaro Katsu's co-star is the great Tatsuya Nakadai. He plays a jealously psychotic samurai who has murdered his beloved but faithless wife (Kazuko Yoshiyuki) & has set out on a mission of killing every man he believes to have slept with her.
The only man left alive who had ever been involved with her is Zatoichi, who merely assisted her in a moment of need, but the insane samurai will believe no excuses.
Their first encounter reveals that the always-indestructible Ichi may well have met someone stronger. When the samurai withdraws, it is not because Ichi was winning, but because the insane killer fears he will have nothing to live for once the last man who knew his wife is dead. He follows Ichi & watches as several yakuza attack him, & are swiftly cut down, not only the yakuza collapsing on the ground, but also a tree that was in the way of Ichi's swift blade.
 Nakadai's character saunters through a story unrelated to his presence, a threat in the background, providing the promise of a one-on-one duel at the very end. As he follows Ichi, he'll actually assist him if need be, since he won't permit anyone but himself to experience the pleasure of killing the him.
Yakuza are after Ichi's life but quickly figure out he's not going to be overcome with swords. A woman named Okiyo (Reiko Ohara) whom Ichi met in a gambling hall impressed him hugely. He acquired a gushing shy crush on her.
She's the daughter of a local gang lieutenant, & though she can smile most winningly with apparent sweetness & gentleness, she's a yakuza at heart & not at all reluctant when it becomes her job to assassinate Ichi.
She's callously two-faced for a while, pretending to such arch sweetness while intending death to Ichi. But Ichi is so undemanding & affectionate toward her, that she does eventually really fall for him -- as beautiful young women are inclined to do throughout the series, & who can blame them.
 By the time Ichi discovers she's his enemy, she is no longer a threat. Still, taking a lesson from the samurai whose excessive love for drove him to insanity insanity, Ichi vows never again to fall in love, & will not forgive Okiyo.
Another figure out for Ichi's life is a beautiful wakashu or homosexual youth. Umeji is as pretty as a girl, but admires the yakuza world, & wants to achieve something that will "make me a real man." In his imature world view, seducing Ichi in order to get close enough to kill him will prove his manhood.
The attempted seduction is wonderfully orchestrated, & we can't be sure Ichi wouldn't've had sex with the beautiful young man, but since he drew a knife & tried to kill Ichi, Ichi certainly lost interest. When he chastises the youth, he does not criticize him for being effeminate & homosexual, but for being dishonest, for "A real man has no secrets under heaven!"
 The wakashu is played by a pop celebrity who usually goes by the name "Peter," after Peter Pan, otherwise Shinnosuke Ikehata. He's a television variety show regular, & can be seen in a handful of other films including Hinotori (Phoenix, 1978) wherein in plays a court lady, & in Kurosawa's Ran (1985) in which he plays the great lord's jester.
His character type was a commonplace of the Tokugawa period & "comrade love" between samurai was not stigmatized. But this intriguing aspect of Japanese culture & history is only rarely explored in samurai films as overtly as it is in this episode of Zatoichi. It's a subliminal component of the majority of classic yakuza films but only occasionally the overt subject of a samurai movie. So this plot thread lends both originality & authenticity to this episode.
Ichi also meets along the way a comedy relief couple running a roadside inn, trying to assist customers politely while continuously kicking & shoving each other & cursing one another out. This whimsically dysfunctional pair are played by Reiji Shoji & Utae Shoji of a well known family of comedians.
 Set in the Kanto region, the boss of bosses is Yamikubo (Masayuki Mori), a blind man who carries himself with regality & demands to be treated like a daimyo (lord) instead of "walking in shadow" as the yakuza code requires. He's known as "the dark imperior lord" or "the underworld shogun."
There's a great scene in which both blind characters play a "noisy" game of Go together memorizing by sound each others' moves on the gameboard.
They recognize preternatural skills in the other. They have many similarities, but they certainly do not share the same sense of justice & yakuza propriety.
Yamikubo may pretend to have a capacity for chivalry, but Ichi sees through him. As the story progresses this Boss of Bosses seems increasingly psychotic, willing even to kill a helpless child. He knows Ichi's strength, & he doesn't like that Ichi disapproves of him, so he sets the various assassination plots in motion not caring how many die, so long as in the end Ichi is led into a fiery trap wherein he can be roasted alive.
 As the climactic one-against-all battle approaches, Ichi promises Yamikubo, "I will bring down heaven's judgement on you," standing broad-shouldered & menacing in the dark. But Okiyo, who by now Ichi knows to be duplicitious, is held captive for refusing to kill Ichi.
She will be killed if Ichi refuses to disarm himself. He throws down his sword, but after twenty-one films, we already know this delay tactic won't last long. And that final battle makes of Ichi truly monstrous, a ghost-like figure appearing then vanishing in the dark once he starts reaving.
With a fine chambara director like Kenji Misumi at the helm, & Kurosawa, Mizoguchi & Shinoda's cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa behind the lens, it is no surprise that Zatoichi's Festival of Fire is visually one of the finest episodes in the series. It provides everything one expects of a Zatoichi feature. Plus it has a few novel ingredients (like the wakashu or the unusual nude duelling sequence in a bathhouse) to prove the series had not run out of anything fresh. Plus it has characters more deeply drawn than usual.
copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl
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