 Neither the worst nor best director to handle a Zatoichi tale, Kimiyosha Yasuda's Adventures of a Blind Man (Zatoichi sekisho yaburi, 1964) is a workmanlike but satisfying episode.
Shintaro Katsu as Zatoichi is supported by a skilled cast. The story opens, before the credits, with a lighthearted vignette of Ichi standing in a terrible windstorm, smiling as though he doesn't care how rough the weather is, saying, "A lot of dust. I'm lucky I'm blind."
Such opening vignettes were used in several Ichi episodes, as counterpoints to episodes which open on a scene of violence.
This calmer method iof introducing Ichi s pleasant, though the pleasantness will be given an opposite meaning at the end with Ichi faces a young insistent ronin in a storm.
The plot as is usually case is simple: The new year festival is about to occur & yakuza are demanding forty percent of procedes. Ichi has come "to see the sunrise on Mount Myogi" despite that he's blind.
 He's not at first inclined to interfer in local troubles, for when he does things tend to get increasingly violent & he ends up making still more enemies, of which he already has plenty. But as always, his eventual involvement must occur.
Much of the tale is structured more for comedy effect than bloodshed, with comediens credited as "Racket Nakada" & "Daimaru" providing slapstick relief during an already humorous script. Well, humorous until the violent conclusion at least.
In an early scene, Ichi enters a gambling hall rattling a large purse. He is invited to play the house dicer face to face, one on one. Ichi acts honored by the gracious welcome & opportunity, pretending to be a naif who hasn't a clue they intend to cheat him of his purse, thinking a blind man an easy mark.
 Ichi draws his sword & replaces it so swiftly that no one even noticed his iai draw as the dice are thrown into the cup then plopped onto the mat.
When the cup is lifted from the dice, they turn out each to have been cut in half. Ichi then draws his sword again, cuts off the dicer's top-knot, & finds the unloaded dice hidden therein.
A little gambling, a little joshing about, getting to know a few nice people whose lives are negatively impacted by bad people -- it's a successful formula within which a devotee can expect interesting variations but not much that is new.
Until Ichi becomes the menacing, brooding, gruesome avenger, a lot will happen that amuses. Ichi will have met several interesting characters, including two adorable "lion dance boys" who make their living doing acrobats in the street. They become embroiled in Ichi's adventure, his little spies.
 Ichi is given the gift of a blind Daruma doll, one of those red, rolly pollies. He says to the doll, "A blind man with a blind dharma. Let's be friends!"
He ends up giving it to the maid Osen (Eiko Taki) who is looking for her father. Blind dharmas are given eyes one at a time for propitious occasions. Osen & Ichi agree that the dharma will receive one eye from each them, one when Osen finds her father, the other eye when Ichi finds his.
We know from previous episodes that Ichi's mother died when he was a toddler. Now we learn that he was separated from his father when a child of five. I was intrigued by what kind of man his father would turn out to be, but prepared to be disappointed in case there was no such person found.
Unfortunately for Osen, her father turns out to have been murdered, apparently by the brother of Osaki (Miwa Takada), another woman Ichi had hoped to help. Osaki's brother has been tricked into attacking the corrupt Jinbei (Kichijiro Ueda), a situation that leads to close scrapes for Ichi & his new friends, forcing Ichi to heights of machismo.
 There is still a chance Ichi can find his dad, as it seems the man may be living in this very town.
A pitiful old drunkard, Giji (Yuzaburo II, who by this name I assume was a kabuki actor more than he was a film actor), tells the story of how he lost his little boy many years before. The circumstances sound familiar to Ichi.
Befriending the old man but not letting on that they might be kin, Ichi trusts Giji even with Osen's life, only to discover that Giji is a weak, bad man. Life is full of disappointments & perhaps it's just as well if Giji is no relation of Ichi's.
Other elements of the tale seem all familiar by the ninth episode, but are at least well done. A young yojimbo bodyguard, Gounosuke (Mikijiro Hira), is working for the bad yakuza boss Jubei. His needs are small ones, but he has one great desire in life: "I want to meet a swordsman stronger than me."
 In Zatoichi he perceives the chance at achieving his desire. This makes Ichi exceedingly sorrowful, for Gounosuke is at base a decent man, not someone Ichi could ever be happy to have killed.
Their encounter inevitably occurs, with grand posturing in a storm. "I lost," is all Gounosuke says with understated simplicity, then falls. Ichi covers the body of ronin with his own jacket.
 Ichi expresses no such sentiment when cutting down the gangster boss's numerous minions.
With weird agility & overwhelming presence, no gangster who points a sword Ichi's direction has a chance in hell. They might as well be tin ducks in a shooting gallery.
Another yojimbo, an older fellow (Akitake Kono), has bamboozled his way into employment with the bad oyabun in order to have drinking funds & a warm place to sleep.
He's either a coward or much more likely just a very smart man. He never does manage to fight Ichi, & we never do find out if he even had any skill. The two yojimbo characters, starkly contrasted in attitude, are beautifully portrayed.
After the expected bloody climax packed with wholesale slaughter, our emotionally tormented blind hero says, discouraged & angry, "I came to see the sunrise on Mount Myogi. It was to be a peaceful trip."
He abandons not only the place of corpses he has made, but also Osen, the lion dance boys, everyone & everything, & is last seen on Mount Myogi praying as the sun sets.
This tortured hero thing might be an awful cliche, but I completely buy into it. And the effectiveness of Zatoichi's character is not to be underestimated or denied.
copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl
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