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 ...

How does one perpetuate the longest-running samurai action series—which yielded 26 films and over a hundred TV episodes starring the late Shintaro Katsu as a blind, sword-wielding masseur—without ...

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 ...

Star Shintaro Katsu sits in the director's chair for this psychedelic and unremittingly bleak entry in the Zatoichi series, which is unlike any other in its grind-house grimness. A tale of innocence ...