 In season one's Tales of Zatoichi 8: An Unforgettable Flower, Ichi stops the young prostitute Okiku (Yukiyo Toake) from committing suicide by hanging herself with her obi belt from a tree's branch.
When she saw a blind masseur approaching, she solicited his help, & at first he tried to help her, being slow to catch on to what she was up to. After he stopped her, she was recaptured by gangsters, so Ichi tossed rocks at them making them attack attack him.
But Okiku is indentured to the bordello, & to free her, Ichi wants to buy her papers to burn them. He gives the gangster boss a choice between accepting a bag of rocks as payment, or experiencing more of blind swordsman quick-draw action. The oyabun wisely decides to sell Okiku to Ichi for a bag of rocks.
 She & Ichi end up in a rather idyllic situation housekeeping together, Ichi plying his trade as masseur, Okiku as a wandering shamisen player. Their happy condition is shattered by the arrival of Sakichi, her old boyfriend.
Okiku retains a soft spot for Sakichi & he has all sorts of whiny excuses for having previously sold her to a bordello. She hasn't learned to mistrust him, but he's definitely up to his old ways as she should have expected. He will betray both Okiku & Ichi if he thinks he can gain by it.
An Unforgettable Flower is a curious episode because it's pretty clear that Ichi really intended to stay with Okiku. His usual method of coping with the girls who fall in love with him, or whom he loves, is to evade them & move on, for he well knows his wandering ways & love of gambling & his constant exposure to violence is no life for a good woman.
He should perhaps have adhered to those very habits, since things don't work out for Okiku during the climactic one-against-all swordplay when Ichi tries, less successfully than usual, to repair all injustices by means of his lightning draw.
 Tales of Zatoichi 9: The Two Zatoichis opens with a scene featuring a woman dicer. Her companion is an imposter Zatoichi, a foolish & comedic blind man who has been instructed by the woman dicer on how to pass as the famous blind swordsman.
With the alleged Ichi as her companion, she is able to finagle jobs with gambler bosses, herself as dicer & her blind friend as bodyguard/yojimbo. For as long as everyone is too afraid of her fake Zatoichi to actually test his abilities or lack thereof, she can make quite a bit of money selling his services, then skipping town before any action is necessary.
The actual Zatoichi is passing by the same post town & is befriended by the very fraud, a man actually named Kobuichi who our Ichi had known during their mutual youth. The fraud has no idea his friend from youth has grown up to be a famous swordsman, but he enjoys the chance to be a big shot in front of Ichi who was the cooler dude when they were young.
 The fake Ichi is doing so well he has retired from the humble job of masseur & lives like a yojimbo. He misses the companionship of fellows of his blind profession, so takes Ichi into the yakuza household as his personal guest.
The fellow is so awkward that he always has bumps on his head. Our authentic Zatoichi is moved by this foolish man's ineptitude as well as his innocent sweetness, & says to him, "I wonder if a kind man like you can kill any body."
Though the false Ichi likes the perks of his impersonation, it was never his idea. He was seduced by Okei who never lets him sleep with her but always promises they will do it someday. Okei the dicer is played with a strange combination of sweetness & venom & it takes a while to realize she would gladly sacrifice her blind clown's life if she could gain by it. The authentic Ichi, however, understands her from the start, & knows his old friend has put himself in the way of danger.
Okei's first gambit is to try to convince our hero to take her companion's place, because she perceives in him a better actor if it came to pretending to be a tough guy. When he tattles on her to his foolish friend, the poor guy becomes angry & upset. He cannot possibly give up his impersonation & stop believing in Okei, for love also is blind.
When the fraud becomes known, it's up to the real Zatoichi to save the day by his usual method, which is violence. And as usual it's an exciting climax. But the real strength of this episode is in the amusing performance by the fake Zatoichi, as played by well known comic Hitoshi Ueki, & his tragic love for the beautiful manipulative very cruel woman dicer. For pure storytelling strength, this is among of the best mini-movies within the large body of Zatoichi television episodes.
copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl
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