Zatoichi and the One-Armed Swordsman (1971)

Not rated, but there's actually a fair deal of blood with this one.  Some of the Zatoichi movies downplay the blood. Some of them go blood galore.  This one is on the higher side.  It has that effect where a guy gets stabbed with a sword and blood actively sprays everywhere a second after being stabbed.  It's a lot of that.  Also, some parents get murdered right at the beginning, forcing the story into play.  Coupled with that, you have some language and potty humor, but nothing too bad.

DIRECTOR: Kimiyoshi Yasuda

Oh my goodness, I am so glad that I read the Wikipedia article before starting to write this.  See, I had a theory when watching this one.  Considering that you have one protagonist who is known for his handicap (blindness), it's weird that you have the other guy who is known for his handicap fight him and no one really addressed what happened to that guy's arm.  In my head, for most of the film, I thought that "The One-Armed Swordsman" had to be from another franchise or something, like they did with Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo.  But when that ending came up, where (SPOILER ALERT) Zatoichi straight up kills the one-armed swordsman, I thought that I had to be wrong.

Guess what?  I was right! 

"The One-Armed Swordsman" came from a series of movies in China.  How did a crossover movie kill a character who had his own line of movies?  In the Chinese version, it's Zatoichi who loses.  What?  I can't even wrap my head around this.  What kind of mania was going on in 1971 where they could just make multiple versions of the movie to please different audiences?  Don't get me wrong.  I am entirely here for it.  I kind of love that canon was so fast and loose that you could just say, "The Japanese people want the Japanese guy to win.  The Chinese people want the Chinese guy to win.  Let's do both."  That's fantastic.

I've been up and down on the Zatoichi train.  For the few people who have been following along (which, at this point, I don't think that would even be me), I've been frustrated more than I've been pleased with Zatoichi as a franchise. They tend to hide the fact that there is no plot under complex relationships that ultimately don't matter.  But this is a movie that embraces a straightforward plot.  I love that so much.  It becomes more about character than it does around story.  And considering that it is a crossover film, which we saw kind of fizzle out with Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo, the story is great.  It's one of those stories that's easy to summarize.  A Chinese child's parents are murdered in front of him because he stepped out of line during a procession.  The One-Armed Swordsman witnesses this and tries to save the child.  While the One-Armed Swordsman fights off bad guys who want to cover up their crime --which really isn't a crime but that's some good shorthand here --the boy runs into Zatoichi who helps the One-Armed Swordsman defend the boy when he smells that something isn't right with the claim that the Swordsman is the bad guy in this situation.  Because the two don't speak the same language, they're manipulated into fighting each other, eventually leading to the death of the Swordsman against the best attempts by Zatoichi.

That's a fun story!  How is that not a fun story?  It's simple.  It's interesting.  It has the promise of two juggernauts of violence fighting each other?  On top of that, it's done well.  The fight scenes are great.  You get some fun wire fu in a samurai film.  That's really cool.  But the best part of the movie is the fact that you have these two guys developing this fast friendship when they don't understand each other.  Say what you will about how fan servicey that this movie could potentially be, the core of the film is that these two are ultimately good people who are hampered not by their handicaps, but by the fact that they can't understand one another. When that final fight happens, it's not because one person is being a bad person and the other isn't.  Admittedly, I feel like the One-Armed Swordsman is far more easily duped than Zatoichi is, but that's part of suspension of disbelief.  We can lie to ourselves that someone can convince themselves that the guy they thought was a good guy was a bad guy the whole time.

It is weird, though, that I'm so forgiving of the One-Armed Swordsman (whom I should refer to as "Wang Kong" because that's his name) but not of Yone.  Yone is the one who really lets this thing get out of hand.  I have to give her some credit.  Her father is murdered because of her generosity when Zatoichi and Wang Kong are looking for shelter.  She's angry and wants revenge on someone, so when the bad guys blame Zatoichi, it makes sense for her to distrust him.  But it also seems plum silly.  Zatoichi is the one who frees her.  He treats her well after freeing her.  But it's one of those scenarios that you only really see in movies where a basic discussion would probably solve all of the problems.  When she accuses him of being a traitor, I don't know why he isn't vehement that he had nothing to do with the death of her father.  She's the one who eventually comes around too late to the idea that the bad guy --the guy who caused the death of her father --might have been lying about Zatoichi. 

Still, I find myself more mad at her than I do at Wang Kong.  Is it because he's male?  Golly, I hope I'm not that chauvinistic.  Is it because he can't speak the language?  Maybe.  Maybe it's because he's put in this situation that questions his own heroism.  It is weird, though, that the second that Wang Kong finds himself dying at the blade of Zatoichi, he knows that Zatoichi was innocent in the whole affair.  I don't quite understand that beyond the fact that the film wants to end in a happier place, considering that it just killed the star of another franchise who just wanted to do good.  To return to an idea that I had before, I'm floored that they didn't just find a happy ending where Zatoichi disarms (no pun intended) the One-Armed Swordsman and through his continual lack of fatal blows, convinces the Swordsman that they're both on the side of angels. 

Still, I'll argue that a simple, well-told story will always be better than relying on formula and covering up a vapid story with unnecessary complexity.  Considering that this should have been a throwaway crossover movie, Zatoichi and the One-Armed Swordsman is one of my favorite in the bunch.  This movie was rad.