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 ...

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 ...

For all their considerable charms, the Zatoichi films are the epitome of genre filmmaking at its most formulaic. By contrast, since branching out from TV, director-editor-writer-actor Takeshi Kitano ...

Japanese characters were usually portrayed as cruel and dishonourable in the Hong Kong martial arts films of the 1960s and 1970s. But such on-screen animosity did not stop Hong Kong production ...

What separates “Zatoichi” from other swordfight movies is that the eponymous hero, played, of course, by Kitano himself, is blind. Like the many other directors of films featuring this well-known ...

Zatoichi comes upon the town of Tonda, overrun by gangsters. Using one of his favorite techniques, Zatoichi proceeds to win 8 ryo in a rigged gambling game. Of course, the local gangsters attempt to ...

The great Bruce Lee twirled his limbs around with such fearsome speed and control that he seemed to be slicing through time itself. His whirling, precision chop kills weren’t just fast — they were ...