Okoma the shamisen player in Tales of Zatoichi: The Kannon Statue that was Tied had been in a prison on Miyaki Island in Sado for three years. She has lost track of kindly Old Kisuke (Kamatari Fujiwara), a prison guard who who was caring for her child. He had retired & returned to his home village, so Okoma is on the road hoping to find him, & thereby her daughter.
Ichi the blind swordsman first encounters Okomo as she is tying a rope around a statue of Kannon, the Goddess of Mercy. As he has never encountered this regional custom before, he kind of wonders if the woman is a little nutty.
Okoma & Zatoichi end up in the same town, where a corrupt officer decides which yakuza gang gets to have the periodically moved Jizo statue & an attendent festival in their gambling territory, taking bribes from both sides while plotting their collective downfall.
Rival gangs & corrupt officials afflict the majority of villages Ichi visits, & those of us who've seen at least a couple Zatoichi episodes already know how he's apt to take care of that.
The more original part of the present episode regards Okoma, who Ichi helps find her daughter, & who will begin to forge a new family such as Ichi will never personally have.
Hobbling her chances of a better future is the fact that she has a government prison tattoo that is illegal to tamper with, & which will mark her for the rest of her life as an ex-convict. The scene wherein Ichi removes the tattoo with his rapid sword is grotesque, & Okoma's gratitude no less so.
Meanwhile the two gangs are being stirred up by the corrupt official, who sends a yojimbo bodyguard to visit both gangs, to attack them from behind.
Ichi interacts with a young con artist who has a potentially good streak in him. When Ichi entrusts funds to him for Okoma, he is overcome with emotion. "This is the first time anyone has trusted me," he says, weeping, & can certainly be relied upon to find a new path in life from that moment on. It's a small subplot, but it reveals that Ichi does achieve some good from time to time without recourse to violence.
But those of us who are Ichi fans like that he is violent, & we're ready to see him do in the minions of the corrupt official & finally the official himself. Then lest Ichi's capacity for mass slaying lead us to forget he's just such a sensitive reflective guy, there's a coda to the episode where we see him duplicating the "nutty" custom, tying up the roadside Kannon statue on the chance that Her mercy will one day give him sight.
Zatoichi's theme song "The Sun" is not invariably placed at the opening credits but sometimes is on the sound track later in a story. It's a beautiful song & Shintaro Katsu sings it with his deep gorgeous mature voice like an authentic enka folksong, as he really was a superb enka singer among his other many talents.
The soundtracks on these shows, the cinematography & set design & the scripts, are across the board worthy of feature film, standing well above most episodic television. Each tale is 44 minutes plus a teaser for the next episode & credits bringing them to 47 minutes; when first aired they were an hour with commercials. Despite the short length, somehow the stories rarely seem rushed, & do impact the viewer as little movies rather than tv shows.
 In the fifth episode of Tales of Zatoichi: The Heartless Man Touched by Compassion, a ronin named Murakami protects his blind sister. He seems an imperturbable unemotional & even callous man, but where his sister is concerned, he's a softy. He has found out about a medical procedure that might restore her sight, but it is costly. As a masterless samurai, they live an impoverished existence. To raise the funds, he takes assassination commissions from yakuza gangs.
Zatoichi arrives in the post town where, as is often the case in the places he arrives, two yakuza gangs are at odds with one another. Since Ichi's famously strong arm seems not to be available to assist either gang, & refuses to be taken in & lodged by either side, they decide he has to be everyone's foe, & make the bad decision to have him killed.
It's the usual set-up except for one thing. If our ronin comes after Ichi to earn money to save his sister's sight, how can it be a good thing if our hero proves to be as invincible as ever? Ichi has rather liked both the ronin & his sister, & the possibility of a sight-restoring procedure fills him with hope for himself too, though his condition is not an operable kind.
In another thread of the plot, Ichi is befriended by a child who has been forced by circumstances to be more of an adult than his drunken father. Ichi ends up assisting the father, whose gambling debts & general incompetence as a provider could end up forcing him to cave to a yakuza boss's that the drunkard's beautiful daughter be sold into prostitution. Ichi uses his gambling prowess to avert this tragedy.
This episode is a bit workmanlike in staying too close to the most often repeated storyline for Zatoichi stories. Even so, The Heartless Man Touched by Compassion is an emotionally rich & action-packed mini-film of merit.
copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl
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