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“He is blind and he is a swordsman. He is a man of deep compassion and he is a killing machine. He is a man of the people who delights in the most ordinary pleasures and he is a man of exceptional, indeed miraculous, accomplishments. He is a common gambler and sometime con man and he is a righter of wrongs. He is capable of almost mystical serenity and he is racked by remorse for offenses he has committed. He jokes and he suffers. He is a superhero who also has to take time out to wash his dirty laundry. He is pure of heart and he consorts with whores and thieves. He takes childlike delight in the world and he nurses wily and murderous schemes of vengeance.”

Such is Zatoichi, the protean hero of twenty-six feature films and a hundred television episodes, in which he was incarnated by the great Shintaro Katsu (1931–97)
Geoffrey O’Brien, “On the Road With Zatoichi”

The above is the opening salvo of the opening essay “On the Road With Zatoichi” by Geoffrey O’Brien in the gorgeous book included in the Criterion Collection’s boxed set of the first 25 Zatoichi films starring Shintaro Katsu as the blind swordsman.

As the proud owner of that box set, I was happy to see the TV series that followed the films pop up recently on Prime. The series also stars Katsu as the blind masseur with lightning-fast sword skills and a hero’s sense of justice who wanders the corrupt and dangerous human landscape of early 19th century Japan.

After starring in 25 Zatoichi films between 1962 and 1973 (as well as starring in 16 movies in a yakuza series called Akumyo and nine films in the Hoodlum Soldiers series), Katsu went on to do 100 TV episodes of Zatoichi between 1974-79.

How in the world did he do 25 demanding Zatoichi films in 11 years, and then 100 equally demanding episodes for TV? Katsu must have been as superhuman as his best-known character.

Often a big screen transfer to the small screen means reduction in quality, but not so with Zatoichi. The series can stand right next to the films. They are beautifully shot, well-told stories.

Of course I should have known Katsu wouldn’t let TV drag down the great character he created. Somehow, we seem to get to know Ichi even better in these condensed versions of his troubled travels through Japan.

Zatoichi’s extreme empathy has him fighting others’ battles and righting wrongs wherever he travels. That may sound like a recipe for repetition, but the intrigues always bring some new wrinkle to the situation, always posing physical and moral dilemmas that Zatoichi must navigate.

He’s sort of the Japanese version of Tod and Buz in the 1960s American TV series Route 66, but he’s always in danger and is able to respond with killer moves and a mighty cane sword. Oh, and he walks instead of driving a Corvette.

I found the first episode laugh-out-loud funny because of the wacky dubbed voices – totally wacky voices. About halfway through the first season, the dubbing ends and I had to turn captions on. I don’t mind subtitles and I like listening to Japanese.

I was curious about the dubbed episodes and wondered who was behind it. Turns out an American by the name of Ted Thomas ran a Hong Kong dubbing company called Axis International, and gave an interview years ago about dubbing Zatoichi.

“We all liked doing the swordsman, the Zatoichi films. I thought they were very original. They were very imaginative movies. And I think the character, although in a way preposterous, in another way was quite plausible,” he said in that interview.

The preposterousness Thomas mentions probably refers to Zatoichi’s infallability in combat. I watch for flaws in the fight scenes and each time am left amazed at Katsu’s amazing choreography as his sword takes down all enemies.

Katsu was born into a family of entertainers, and is a multi-talented performer. He wrote and sang the melancholy Zatoichi theme song “Otento-san” that opens and/or closes each episode It’s hauntingly beautiful.

His creation of the character began in 1962 with The Tale of Zatoichi, which was based on a 1948 short story by Japanese writer Kan Shimozwa. The tale takes place near the end of the Edo shogunate (Shimozawa sets the time at 1830-44), where a strict hierarchy was observed. Blind masseurs were at the very bottom of class rankings.

In the very short short story, which is included in a beautiful book in Criterion’s Zatoichi collection, the course is set for Katsu’s portrayal.

“He was a big, stout fellow, getting along in years,”  Shimozawa writes. “No one who saw him walking along with his shaved head and his long-handled sword at his side would ever have guessed he was blind. The man had an uncanny sixth sense. When he went to a gambling den, he would sit perfectly still and then grin, which meant he had read the pips on the dice inside their holder. Not once in a hundred throws was he ever wrong.”

He also has a mysterious backstory.

“Where he was from or who his family was no one knew, but he was a masseur who had traveled all around the Kanto region. ‘Zato’ was a title given to the blind; whether ‘Ichi’ was short for Ichitaro or Ichigoro, or whether it was just made up, nobody knows.”

In the fifth episode of the first season of the TV show, an episode titled “The Samurai Who Refused to Die,” Zatoichi runs into a group of fellow blind masseurs, all of whom are named Ichi.

They were  members of Todoza, a government-sanctioned guild of blind professionals who wandered Japan plying their trade. They were masseurs, acupuncturists and healers in general.

In addition to being a master swordsman and wrestler, Zatoichi loves to gamble, and he’s good at it, when people are not trying to cheat him, and people are always trying to cheat, belittle, humiliate and generally take advantage of the blind traveler. But they do so at their own peril.

Zatoichi finds injustice and marginalized people wherever he roams, and, being a marginalized person himself, he always comes to their aid.

In a Japan populated by the arrogance and indifference of the wealthy and their corruption of others, Zatoichi walks a humble path but brooks no nonsense.

He also likes his sake and his pipe and tobacco. He admires beautiful women – he senses their beauty through movement and voice.

In one episode, Zatoichi tells a friend “My eyes may not work, but I can read people’s hearts.”

But he is not perfect. He can be a disgusting slob when he eats, but that’s because sometimes he is down on his luck and goes hungry. And since he is always in the same shabby garb, you might imagine he has a pong to him.

And in several episodes he asks a higher power to give him sight, even a little glimpse of the world.

Zatoichi is a complex character who has learned to live with both his physical and moral imperfections. He is able to mostly go his own way, operating outside the strictures of the strict society, because of the reputation he has built as a swordsman.

Ultimately, he is a good man in a country filled with morally ambiguous connivers.

I would love to see a new episode called Zatoichi vs. Trump and His MAGA Cronies. Zatoichi never loses.

Off with their heads!