Zatoichi's Revenge is the 10th film in the Zatoichi series and it came out April 3 1965. As usual it stars Shintaro Katsu as the blind masseur Zatoichi. It's written by Minoru Inuzuka and directed by Akira Inoue. The music is by Akira Ifukubi whom Toho fans would recognize from all the films he scored there.
Zatoichi nears the village that his old masseur Master lives in. He arrives to find out Master Hikonoichi had been killed on the road just two weeks ago. The man's daughter has already been sold to a whore house in payment of a debt to local scumbag businessman Tatsugoro. He's screwed over many people in the village, many of their daughters were forced into prostitution. Zatoichi thinks he should be putting a stop to that.
Zatoichi sees Master Hikonoichi's daughter Osayo and she gives him a clue to the killer's identity. Zatoichi attempts to smoke him out. He meets Tsuru the cute young daughter of Denroku, a dice dealer, and spends a little time with them. Next day the man tries to cheat Zatoichi at dice but he fails. He tells Zatoichi that it was Tatsugoro who forced him into cheating. Some of Tatsugoro's thugs try to get the winnings back but that fails and 5 of them meet death from the edge of Ichi's sword.
Tatsugoro isn't happy and like all the boss's who confront Zatoichi he thinks he can just have him killed and his troubles will be over. That's a bad idea as it is a lot harder to kill the blind masseur than it seems. The local Tax Inspector's visit complicates everything for Tatsugoro. Koheita Kadokura, Tatsugoro's chief enforcer, plans to kill the Tax Inspector, blame it on Zatoichi, then kill him in the arrest. He gets the first part done but making the blame stick to Zatoichi is something else that's pretty hard to accomplish.
Tatsugoro orders Denroku to pay him the 100 Taels that Zatoichi took as winnings. He will keep Denroku's daughter prisoner as insurance. Zatoichi battles Kadokura to the death. Tsuru tries to help her dad by stealing Zatoichi's cane sword. That only keeps Zatoichi under cover for a little bit. He pops out of hiding and enlists Denroku for some payback.
Even though they pop several of these films out each year they manage to keep the level of writing, acting and production fairly high. They have a nice style and the sets and locations are all nice to look at. Even after seeing the films 2-3 times I still find I like watching them. Zatoichi is a compelling character and one I plan to visit with in the future. The Criterion set is a nice addition to anyone's film library.
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