When Kitano was asked to make another ”Zatoichi” film, he instantly turned it down, because, as he later said, “Zatoichi and Shintaro Katsu are pronounced in the same breath. If I had attempted to imitate Katsu, the audience would have rebelled, so I decided, that I had to do something completely new.”

Having been given complete control and freedom, Kitano began to reinvent Zatoichi: “Just like in soccer, which basically is one ball and 22 men chasing it, so is Zatoichi basically Zatoichi and a bunch of bad guys.”

The first thing he changed was the character of Zatoichi himself. Originally black bushy hair and with a beard, Kitano made him clean shaven and blond. Even his sword cane was both redesigned and changed in color from wood to bright red. Then he made the “evil swordsman” sympathetic, added a caring and moral nature, promoted him to lead-ish man and cast the hottest actor in Japan, Tadanobu Asano, for the part. So going thru the characters, altering each and everyone of them – even adding a few news ones, like the traveling geishas.

While changing just about every element of Zatoichi, the biggest and boldest change was the ending. Normal for jidei-geki is that the peasants will celebrate their freedom at the end. Kitano took this and made it into an almost ten minutes tap dance sequence, where not only the peasants dance, but the cast joins them. The dance itself is a contemporized version of Takatsuki, a classical Kabuki tap form, where the dancers originally wore Japanese wood clogs. Not only of incredible emotional force, this ending is also a wonderful homage to both jidei-geki and Kabuki theatre. A stroke of genius, this shows why Kitano is amongst the greatest living filmmakers.

The story itself is as straight forward as any Zatoichi, as any chambara, as any jidei-geki. Stealing from here and there, Zatoichi is as usual wandering the country side, when he comes to a small town, where the peasants are caught between two rival gangs. When the Ginzo gang hires a Ronin, he soon takes control of the town. Zatoichi has to clean up.

Far from being just simple chambara, Kitano explores the motif of pretending: duality by wearing a “mask”. Just like the film itself, nothing is what it seems. For instance, the Hattori, the “evil swordsman”, is a Ronin, who is forced to become a hit man for Ginzo in order to buy medicine for his sick wife. This dimension of the story not only adds complexity, but makes additional viewings even more enjoyable, as the more we get to know a character, the more we see of the real character.

Winning the Silver Lion for best director in Venice and going around the world, leaving nothing but rave reviews and praise in its wake, “Zatoichi” is nothing less than an experience, with great (and extremely bloody) swordfights and an ending, that will put a huge smile on your face.

In retrospect, one of Kitanos most accomplished films as auteur.

Henrik Sylow of Kitanotakeshi.com

 

---

Captures resized to 800px width from 1016px original