One of the most popular heroes in Japanese cinema, Zatoichi the blind swordsman inspired 26 feature films, more than 100 TV episodes, and countless comics and collectibles. But for a matinee idol, he ...

This article comes from Den of Geek UK. In the 1978 US documentary The Blind Swordsman, Shintaro Katsu is asked how he’d like to present himself to American viewers. “I have zero interest in promoting ...

The hundred episodes of the TV series followed 1970s TV dynamics: Zatoichi was (mostly) unchanging from one episode to the next, and the 45-minute episodes (allowing for 15 minutes of advertisement ...

Jeremy has more than 2100 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly ...

“The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi,” the latest entertainment from Japanese filmmaker Takeshi Kitano, isn’t your average blind masseur-gambler-swordsman movie. Based on a series of popular genre standards ...

A do-gooder blind masseur with a penchant for gambling and steel blades might appear an unlikely cinematic hero. But after he first appeared in the 1962 Japanese film "Zatoichi Monogatari" ("The Tale ...

Zatoichi is reluctant to get involved, because he knows how often such involvement has led to trouble in the past. But events conspire to thrust him repeatedly into involvement, and gradually he comes ...

Depending on who you ask, the name Takeshi "Beat" Kitano will evoke different responses. There are those who grew up on Japanese television and know him for his slapstick humor, painted-on mustaches, ...

Old timers like me want to revisit old loves and past guilty pleasures. It so happened that during the long lockdown, as I was rummaging through my old DVDs, I was able to dig out my collection of ...

The colossally popular Zatoichi films make up the longest-running action series in Japanese history and created one of the screen’s great heroes: an itinerant blind masseur who also happens to be a ...