Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo
After a two-year absence from screens, the blind swordsman returns in one of his best adventures. Zatoichi treks to a village that has always been a favorite spot of his, only to discover that it’s become a living hell, plagued by feuding father and son yakuza as well as the younger crime boss’s bodyguard—Toshiro Mifune’s scruffy, smart-mouthed, cash-hungry Yojimbo of legend. This is the sole Zatoichi effort from celebrated director Kihachi Okamoto, who supplies satirical vision and stylistic panache worthy of the two iconic characters at the film’s center.
- The Criterion Collection
I’ve seen most of the Zatoichi films now, but had avoided this one, despite recommendations from friends. I don’t care for the [charname] meets [charname] formula, which generally gives good box office, but bad movies. Before seeing this film, my best experience with the genre had been the surprisingly entertaining Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. It’s funny, but played just straight enough to make the jokes work. Think ok Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo as the mirror image: a very dark film, its message sharpened by gallows humor.
Director Okamoto grew up loving John Ford films like Stagecoach, and was known for the thoughtful and subversively satirical quality of his work. Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo has all of these elements. It is, roughly, one part Zatoichi installment, one part postmodern western, and one part satirical meditation on the destructiveness of greed. The result, as noted by Howard Thompson In his 1971 New York Times review, is “the most unrelenting slaughterfest from Japan we have ever seen, and we have seen most of them.” He’s not wrong.
As always, Zatoichi enters alone. After a particularly traumatic opening scene, he resolves to return to the nice, friendly village he came from. But when he returns, something is off. As he enters town we can see something he cannot: a peculiar forest of idols. A graveyard? A memorial? A temple?
The village gate
The film progresses along normal Zatoichi lines, with nothing much happening while Zatoichi meets the other characters (later everything will happen). The town is controlled by gangsters now. The village elder occupies himself making religious idols to atone for sins committed during a recent famine. The pretty girl Zatoichi used to walk with is now the village prostitute.
Things are a little different now
The ruined woman Umeno is played by Ayako Wakao, a big star that audiences would recognize from past roles as geishas, war nurses, and women of ill-repute. Still beautiful In her late 30s, she has no trouble keeping up with Shintaro Katsu as Zatoichi, and Toshirô Mifune as Sassa (a yojimbo, bodyguard to a local mob boss):
Toshirô Mifune of course requires no introduction. He was the lead in in Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, and this character is similar, but not the same. This man is 10 years older, and clearly in decline. He brags about being tough, but drinks too much; Zatoichi mocks him for it.
Duty places them on opposite sides of the impending gang war, but Umeno brings them together. Both men have lived their lives without a loving relationship with a woman. As in Once Upon a Time in the West, the ruined woman becomes an object of appreciation, and both men are protective of her, but neither knows how to go beyond that. Sassa wants her, but struggles to connect emotionally. Zatoichi seems glad such a woman is in the world, but also knows he can never attain her.
Okamoto wrote the script, and gives Zatoichi and Sassa many opportunities to react to one another. Zatoichi calls the drunken and murderous Sassa a “beast”. In return, Sassa calls Zatoichi - the affable slaughter machine - a “monster”. It’s true: Zatoichi really is more like Frankenstein’s monster than a normal man. Friendly, enjoys his sake and dice games…but when he gets mad you’re dealing with Baba Yaga. An accomplished murderer himself, Sassa need not fear him - but he alone understands exactly what Zatoichi is.
Still, he cannot understand Zatoichi’s motivation. Sassa fights for pay, but “that monster risks his life for nothing. Why would he do that?”
When the time comes, Sassa does his duty and cuts down his boss’ enemies like stalks of wheat in a field.
A day at the office
For his part, Zatoichi has tracked down the gold that precipitated the gang war. Fathers and sons converge on the spot, fighting and killing one another as the winds come up. Sassa finds Zatoichi and they duel for honor in a whirlwind of gold dust.
Rock on gold dust ronin
Of course they can’t kill one another. They’re both bemused spectators in this sick farce, and they both have something to live for. Sassa probably has the harder path, embarking on a new life with with someone who loves him, and for whom he bears responsibility.
Zatoichi’s path is easier, if only because it is the one he always follows. He exits alone, accompanied only by the sounds and smells of the world, his genius for killing, and his guilt.