By Yohei Okabori

In 2003, the movie Zatoichi, directed by Takeshi Kitano, was awarded Best Director Award at the 60th Venetia International Film Festival. That was his second award after an interval of six years from the Grand Prix of HANA-BI. Eventually, Zatoichi was awarded a total of four awardsﾑﾑBest Director Award, Open 2003 Award, Audience Award and Future Film Festival Digital Award. This film impressed many people the world over. What is Zatoichi like?

Until now Kitano has rarely hired famous actors or scarcely coached any performances at all in his movies. But this time, there were good actors and his active direction of the performances astonished the crew and actors. Such a change was a sign of his determination to shoot this movie for entertainment. The devastating feeling of speed, rhythm and reality transcends all common sense of a period piece. The swordplay is in Kitano's own unique style. This time he himself contrived and directed it. The swordplay instructor and all the crew were said to be astonished at his knowledge and skill of swordplay. According to Kitano, he mastered the know-how of period pieces and of sword fighting when he was a performer in Asakusa. When it comes to Kitano's film, there is a hardness and reality in the action scenes. In this movie, he created a new style of gunplay, challenged the action of typical swordplay, and created one of the most breathtaking swordplay scenes in modern movie history.

Although Director Kitano plays Zatoichi in this movie, Zatoichi was formally played by Shintaro Katsu. There were 26 films from Zatoichi Story (1962) to Zatoichi (1989). I watched Zatoichi, which was the last film directed by and starring Shintaro Katsu. In this film, Zatoichi and his old friend remembered that they were the same age when they met again, and a considerable time was spent in the film on their sympathy for a masterless samurai who would ended up fighting against Zatoichi. But I felt that the relationship between Zatoichi and his old friend was pretty cool in Kitano's own unique version of Zatoichi.

Watching this movie, I got interested in a lot of scenes. In the original story, Zatoichi was blind, and it became a kind of unspoken rule. Not only was the character of Zatoichi blind, but he was also abnormally strong. But Kitano broke this rule in his interpretation. Also, the scene where the sister of an itinerant shamisen (a three-stringed Japanese instrument) player strangled a bad man with one of the shamisen strings was amazing. I could not close my mouth from shock. There were a lot of interesting scenes, such as Kitano's gags, the Kitano style of swordplay and the Edo era's version of tap dance. You should see these for yourself with your own eyes by going to the movies or watching it on video or DVD.

As expected, this film impressed many people the world over, and is a wonderful film which is worth appreciating with your own eyes. It's tempting to want to see this movie over and over again. Kitanoﾕs world, which the audience never tires of, is spreading. This film wasn't made out of complacency because Zatoichi is a complete movie which is proven by the deep emotion of the movie lovers from around the world who were assembled in Venetia. The films directed by Kitano will continue to fascinate people all over the world in the future, just like the films directed by Kurosawa.