"Peasants are made to suffer like hell," a peasant observes in Tales of Zatoichi 6: Pouring Rain.
 Osei meets the whoremonger Matazo who indentured her to a bordello ten years before. She has since bought herself out of that contract, but by then had become hardened in her ways. Matazo is still at his old game, going from village to village, buying a daughter from some impoverished family, & delivering her to a yakuza brothel. Osei, a skilled pickpocket in addition to her work as a harlot, attempts to buy the girl from Matazo to set her free, because she sees herself ten years earlier.
Matazo refuses, though he is weighted down by the years of his evil profession, & reveals a desire to get out of the racket, if only his yakuza employers would let him retire. How Matazo's guilty emotions induces him to attempt to do the right thing is a secondary story that unfolds within the larger tale of our hero Zatoichi the blind swordsman.
Ichi was in the roadside station where Osei & Matazo's accidental reunion occurred. Hearing their conversation, he is moved. But when Osei finds out who the blind masseur is, she reveals her grudge, for she believes it was Ichi who killed her brother. He's killed so many, he's can never be certain he didn't do it. That her brother was no one to him deepens her grudge.
He tries to explain to her the yakuza way of things & how it happens that he occasionally kills men who are not really bad. A man who is bound by obligation for a night's lodging has no choice but to try to kill Ichi if some yakuza boss demands it. Ichi lives in terror of every sound, every crushed leaf, every breeze, & when he is attacked, he lashes out from his dark blind world & kills everyone who tries to kill him.
Osei will hear no excuses, & attempts to drink herself into oblivion. ichi tries to convince Osei to stop being such a drunk, but she cares nothing for her life & doesn't want his advice. He makes a bargain with her, that he will throw away his canesword if she will stop drinking. She likes this bargain because it seems more likely she can get revenge if Ichi goes unarmed.
An expensive killer, Karakaze, beautifully played by screen star Mikio Narita, has been hired to kill Zatoichi, besides all the regular sorts who're always trying to get him, so it's not a good idea to give up his canesword. But Ichi makes the bargain with Osei even so, giving her his sword.
When Osei observes Ichi's terror as he goes into the world unarmed & an eternally marked man, she finally takes pity, & admits, "My hard feelings toward him have dispelled." During the climactic scenes of carnage, it is she who saves Ichi by getting his sword to him in the nick of time.
A fine episode, one of the few in which Ichi confesses to that aspect of his inner life that is skittish & terrified, however monstrously invulnerable he seems to his enemies.
 The sixth & seventh episodes were both directed by Tokuzo Tanaka, who also directed the third & fourth Zatoichi feature films in 1963, so was instrumental in establishing the style of the series.
In Tales of Zatoichi 7: A Bird Lands on Ichi, Ichi has managed to get himself stuck with "obligation for a night's lodging" & is going along with a small band of annoying gangsters to help their oyabun (boss) against a rival gang. With Ichi at their side, it's pretty much guaranteed that the rivals will soon be dead, unless they run away. Ichi hates to be used in this manner, but he is a stickler for the yakuza code, & he did accept food & lodging, so he has no choice.
A samurai who takes care of gamebirds of the field for a the local lord to hunt, & who tames songbirds to amuse himself, stops the battle before it is engaged, complaining their fighting each other will bother the meadow's birds. The rival gang seeing Zatoichi would be happy to back off, but those who have Ichi on their side want to fight right then & there, & become threatening to the samurai.
Ichi steps forward apologizing to Hanpei Misawa the bird trainer, played by Yujiro Ishihara. Through their gentlemanly exchange of words, the battle is stopped for that day, to the annoyance of the gang Ichi almost had to fight for, & relief of the gang Ichi nearly had to carve into. Ichi decides not to return to the gang's headquarters, so his obligation will expire. Without him, they may well not have the nerve to set another date for their battle.
Hearing song birds coming to the samurai & resting on his hand or shoulder, Ichi wants birds to land on him too, but they're afraid of him because birds know when a man has murder in him. Ichi is a sweet man, but also murderous. He's sad about the sad things of life, but he has ended many lives in maelstroms of violence. He has a poetic heart, but is swift to anger & revenge if the lives of folks more decent than himself are threatened. It's disconcerting to him that he is feared even by birds he would never harm.
A big action climax is expected of all these episodes, but to some degree, the real climax of this one is when a bird lands on Ichi & he can feel that the best part of his humanity is finally acknowledged by nature, or that he is capable of finding peaceful moments when his darker side is no longer seeping out of him. Before this, however, he will become increasingly entangled in the machinations of local gangs as well as of corrupt officials who have a dislike for the honest bird trainer.
Ichi's followed about by young naive Gosuke who wants to be Ichi's disciple & become a big gambler, a desire Ichi must squelch, telling the young man, "Yakuza are scum" & counseling him to remain a farmer. A truth he'll have to learn the hard way. In all, anice little story with pleasant characters as well as appalling ones.
copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl
|
