 Japan's Robin Hood, the famed Chuji of Kunisada, puts in a brief appearance in Zatoichi the Fugitive (Zatoichi Kyojo-tabi, 1963). Waiting for him to become part of the plot, however, will be frustrating for Chuji fans, so don't do it.
After an annoying spaghetti western soundtrack in episode 3, this fourth entry into the series returns to the emotive most familiar Zatoichi theme by the great film composer Akira Ifukube, who defined the sound of the best jidai-geki of the era.
Ichi (the incomparable Shintaro Katsu) volunteered from the summer festival audience at Shimonita Village, to participate in a sumo wrestling match. He defeates several sighted opponents, becomes champion of the day, but angers the local yakuza who arranged the betting on all sports.
 When later Ichi rests by a riverside with a small lunch, Kisuke tries to kill him for the ten ryo on his head.
Our blind swordsman-masseur is sorry to have been forced to kill someone so obviously without fighting talent.
So he seeks out Kisuke's elderly mother to apologize & to give her the ten ryo himself, pretending it was from her son.
The old gal, Maki (Sachiko Murase), is herself yakuza, & just wants to know her son died bravely in a fair fight. Others, however, will use the excuse of revenge to try for Ichi's life.
 Yagiri Tokyuro (Toru Abe) is a bad gamblers' banker & boss who had put the ten ryo on Ichi's head, & now ups it to twenty-four ryo. "Wherever I go," observes Ichi, "I am the God of Calamity."
He will assist young lovers kept apart by a family rivalry: Sakichi (Junichiro Narita) the reluctant inheritor of a gambling territory, & Onobu (Miwa Takada) the daughter of an imbittered old innkeeper who had formerly had charge of that territory until displaced by Sakichi's late father.
The first hour of the film has enough action & plot complication to never flag, but is mostly about the characters, especially Ichi's character, but also the people he meets, good people & very bad people. The final act will of course be very, very violent.
 In a display of alpha male bravado with Tanakura the ronin (Toshitaro Kitashiro), Ichi cuts a sake bottle in two while the evil gambling boss holds it. Tanakura is duly impressed.
When he & Ichi get round to testing each other, Tanakura manages to clip Ichi & draw blood, so Ichi knows that a duel with this guy could mean trouble.
The ronin's girlfriend is Otane (Masayo Banri) is a woman from Ichi's past (from two previous Zatoichi feature films), whom he cares for a great deal.
 She is used as a pawn to bring Tanakura & Ichi together for a duel to the death, from which Tanakura expects to earn a great sum of money, the bounty having swollen to 300 ryo.
Otane has misplaced love for Tanakura & tries to stop the ronin from such rotten behavior. And for Otane's sake, Ichi is inclined to forgive the ronin's ill-intentions.
But when Tanakura kills her, Ichi cannot forgive him after all. Ichi loses all control as he goes on a bloody rampage, gruesomely slaying many more yakuza than could possibly be justified.
The eventual duel with Tanakura follows the fast-action one-against-all encounter with the yakuza gang. When it finally comes down to Ichi & Tanakura, the tone while not calm drops into a place of darkness
 It is gloriously staged & choreographed. Ichi scrabbles in the dust like a bug with a stinger. Tanakura stands tall with an overwhelming presence. This is one of Ichi's great one-on-one duels, & he has truly met his match.
In the wake of so much violence, peasants who will benefit from the deaths of so many bullies attempt to show their appreciation of the indestructible blind swordsman.
Ichi, deploring the ease by which he kills so many, gloomily states, "I am nothing but a blind yakuza criminal."
By this, the fourth feature in the series, the formula is definitely in place, & will be repeated time & again with variations. It's a fine & reasonable film with Katsushin's performance marvelous as always, whether he's chuckling, glowering, gambling, or swinging his canesword.
copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl
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