 Zatoichi Meets the One-armed Swordsman (Shin Zatoichi: Yabure! Tonjin ken!, 1971) was the last Zatoichi film that Daiei Studios would make, as the company shortly after went bankrupt. Series star Shintaro Katsu would pick up the rights to the character to produce under his own Katsu Productions, with a distribution agreement with Toho.
Guest star Yu Wang (aka Jimmy Wang Yu) was star of his own Hong Kong series that began with The One Armed Swordsman (Dubei dao, 1967), perhaps the single most successful kung fu series hero in Chinese cinematic history.
 Blind swordsman Zatoichi often had a sympathetic duelist for his best one-on-one scenes (as opposed to the one-against-all duels against totally unsympathetic villains or miscellaneous nobodies). But having long been established as undefeatable, Ichi never failed to kill his opponent, even when sympathetic.
But as a fellow series character, the One Armed Swordsman presented a minor problem. He, too, was established as an undefeatable swordsman & would remain so for several Hong Kong films to come, & the Chinese franchise was not about to go along with the Japanese franchise if it made their hero second-best.
So Ichi & the Chinese swordsman become best friends & Ichi has no desire to fight him. A face-off of Chinese & Japanese swordfighting styles is a great come-on attraction for advertising the film, but the fact that the men are friends & not willing to duel to the death does not place their duel in the category of intensity, robbing this installment in the Zatoichi franchise less dramatic.
They join forces for most of the film but then through a misunderstanding, due to their not speaking one another's language, the inevitable clash finally occurs, hero vs hero.
 The film is entertaining but for my tastes one of the weaker ones in the series. Fans who prefer Hong Kong cinema over samurai films will feel otherwise.
Ichi & Wang Kang have a shared mission to protect a child whose family has been murdered by bad samurai; it's not the most compelling storyline. Despite an attempt to keep the two heros "equal" Ichi ends up being the chief rescuer, diminishing Wang Kang's character (there is a different edit released in Hong Kong that favors the One-armed Swordsman).
There's a moment when Ichi becomes angry when the One-Armed swordsman is betrayed, but in general he is a bit too chipper throughout the tale. Without Ichi's signature gloominess & sense of himself as a worthless gambler who belongs in shadow, he comes off maliciously bloodthirsty in the one-against-all scenes. The Buddhist sense of mono-no-aware or the sadness of things is undermined.
Plus it all feels like more of a children's movie than do most episodes about Ichi, whose combination of humor & severity, gentleness & savagery, usually makes him equally appealing to young & old.
copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl
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