Shintaro Katsu is a model for quality control and consistency in filmmaking. After having now seen all 26 of his Zatoichi feature films, I can say he never steered wrong. It’s not difficult to see how he achieved this. Katsu always stuck firmly to the series’ winning formula of a charismatic traveling masseuse and blind yakuza with a lightning-fast sword stroke coming to the aid of the downtrodden. He’d pull this off by pitting his gambling and sword skills, heightened by his remaining senses, against corrupt officials and murderous yakuza. This would always be filled out by a colorful supporting cast of cads, clowns and casualties.
Zatoichi’s Conspiracy is the 25th and last in a string of films that began with The Tale of Zatoichi eleven years prior. Having no doubt tapped out Japan’s downward-spiraling film industry, Katsu and his beloved franchise thereafter moved to television, although another feature film appeared in 1989, mostly as a final bow. Despite it’s adherence to the series’ formula, I can’t help but feel a little let down with this entry. While it’s a decent chanbara movie on its own, it just feels like I’ve “been there and done that” once too often.
After twenty-three years on the road, Ichi returns to the village of Kagata where he lived as a child before losing his sight in hopes of revisiting fond memories of his past. He meets Omiyo (Yukiyo Toake), a kind young woman living with her grandfather (Takashi Shimura). He immediately bonds with her when its discovered that as children they were both breastfed by the same woman, now deceased. But of course, there’s trouble to be found here, as everywhere Ichi goes, when another former resident of Kagata returns home for a darker purpose. Shinbei (Eiji Okada) is a successful wholesale rice merchant intent on using his wealth and influence to exploit the village by cheating them out of a potentially profitable rock quarry that the villagers have held for generations. Ichi and Shinbei were once childhood playmates, but as adults there is no love between them as they move closer to an inevitable confrontation over the issue. Ichi is drawn to act when Shinbei kidnaps Omiyo, kills her grandfather and hires yakuza thugs to drive the villagers into forced labor. If that isn’t enough, he also uncovers a plot by a local magistrate (Kei Sato) aligned with Shinbei to steal a percentage of rice from local farmers. The wild card of the story is a gang of unruly, thieving youngsters, who find themselves in over their heads when they agree to kill Ichi for money, but don’t have the heart or the skills to see it through.
Kimiyoshi Yasuda’s direction seems more routinely mechanical than in his five previous Zatoichi films, which is a shame considering that these titles were some of the best of the series. As Ichi, Katsu goes through all of the typical motions of making casual acquaintances, toying with the leading lady’s affections, allowing himself to be humiliated, and rising up in the end with a cool fury to dish out his own brand of vigilante justice. But there’s less heart and emotion involved. More blame may need to go with writer Yoshio Hattori for falling back on tired convention and failing to give the supporting characters any depth. What we’re presented with are stale stereotypes. There’s the cold-hearted villain motivated by greed and lust, the good-hearted woman willing to follow Ichi to the ends of the earth, and the gang of delinquent street kids who must choose right or wrong and live with the consequences. To be fair, stereotypes appear throughout the series, particularly with regard to the yakuza depictions. But more attention could have been paid to developing the characters, if for no other reason than to enhance Ichi.
Takashi Shimura is one of Japan’s great screen actors, but is criminally wasted as Omiya’s grandfather. He had a better role in Zatoichi and the Fugitives, although even that pales to his work in the films of Akira Kurosawa. As the leading lady, Yukiyo Toake is nothing but another Ichi groupie. The only character of potential interest is Yuri, the single female member of the gang as played by Rie Yokoyama, who is better known for her sexed roles in avant-garde “pink” films like Diary of a Shinjuku Thief and Ecstasy of the Angels. She takes an undefined interest in Ichi that could be motivated by sexual desire, longing for a father figure or both. She plays an important role in bringing the rest of the gang to their senses. Unfortunately, the film barely scratches the surface of her character or relationship with Ichi before pushing her aside.
Humor is sporadic, but crops up with some fun moments such as when Ichi mistakenly thinks he’s the village’s guest of honor after receiving a warm welcome. In a gross out moment you’ll luckily be hard-pressed to find anywhere else, Ichi uses his honed senses to fling nose dirt with the precision of a laser-guided bomb.
Swordplay action is limited in the first hour, with much of Ichi’s violent tendencies reserved for the final act. The level of violence is higher than usual in what was probably an attempt to stay competitive with prevailing grind house-style trends of the early ’70s. A hand is graphically chopped off and bright red blood gushes from multiple sword cuts and stabbings. As the villainous Magistrate who is in cahoots with Shinbei, Kei Sato suffers a cringe-worthy sword cut to the neck. Katsu is as good as always with his rapid cane sword maneuvers, which are enhanced by smooth editing and camera work from Jishi Makiura. A fine example is when Katsu unsheathes his sword from its scabbard that is being held by someone leading him along and performs a quick, spinning swipe to an attacker behind him before sheathing the sword once again in a blink of an eye. Katsu pulls out all sorts of parlor tricks, most of them familiar, such as splitting hidden dice during a round of gambling and putting a lit candle tip onto his sword with a single swipe. His abilities get to be a little too effective in a couple of scenes. One has him splitting a wooden cart length-wise down the middle in a single stroke. Another, unbelievably has him emerging, sword first, from a small, bound sack of rice that appears too small for an adult body to fit in without considerable discomfort, if at all. What’s missing is a competent opponent. A generic ronin working for the yakuza appears briefly and is dispatched by Ichi with little fanfare. That leaves nothing but a bunch of scared and foolish hired thugs to be killed ingloriously by a blind man.
My gut feeling is to give Zatoichi’s Conspiracy, the series’ first and only three-star score, due to my disappointment with the weak script. Without the benefit of having yet dipped into the subsequent television series, it appears that the franchise was beginning to show chinks in its armor. Yet I feel my perception of the movie is colored by the high standards of previous entries and by the sheer volume of them where the same themes, characters and situations are revisited often. On its own, the movie is still quite enjoyable. It may not make any gains, but thanks to Shintaro Katsu’s consistency, the film at least holds the front without losing any ground.
by Mark PollardRelated Topics:
chambara • jidai geki • Shintaro Katsu • swordplay • Zatoichi
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