With ‘Zatoichi’, writer/director/actor Kitano, probably most famous over here for ‘Battle Royale’ pays loving homage to the masters of Japanese cinema – Kurosawa, Ozu, Kinugasa – but what results is more than just a celebration of technique for the film transcends its generic and formative influences in its sheer efflorescence and celebration of life in all its vitality. Juxtaposing the body count (there are five men down within the first few seconds of the film) with a painterly appreciation of the effect of colour and some perfectly judged moments of slapstick and irony (at one point, the elderly lady offering Zatoichi shelter maintains that she “couldn’t ask a sight-impaired man to chop wood” when we already know that despite being unable to see, Zatoichi is lethal with a blade), Kitano suggests that in the semi-feudal Japan that provides the backdrop for the film, violence was the agent of change and could effect great happiness when employed in the service of good. We are left in no doubt of this when the final scenes are taken up with a joyous tap dance which unites the villagers finally freed from the tyranny of the gangs by whom they’d been tyrannized.

The agent of this change is Kitano’s eponymous hero, a blind itinerant masseur more adept with his sword than he is with the massage oils. Over the course of successive spectacularly realised showdowns, Zatoichi whittles away at the oppressive gangs’ resources to uncover the shadowy tyrant controlling the criminal operations. He is helped in this task by a number of amiable figures stoutly resisting the pernicious reach of the clans and their lords. That he is a masseur and is blind is really of symbolic importance only: a man so gentle and unassuming as Zatoichi shouldn’t be capable of the preternaturally skilful swordplay he unleashes, but Kitano plays the character perfectly, the odd tic and twitch suggesting the explosive abilities contained within. Whilst Kitano deliberately draws attention to the artifice of the violence by having the blood spatter like rain and computer generated limbs spin from swords in sweeping parabolas, he has said that he resisted the wire-action acrobatics made popular by films such as ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ in order to remain faithful to the realities of the Edo era in which the film is set.

And it is this tension between reality and unreality that makes ‘Zatoichi’ such an interesting film; sure it suffers from slow periods but whilst the troughs are deep, the peaks are high, very high; certainly some of the mannered acting was irritating to me, but ultimately one can’t help but admire the creative energy of those involved in the film’s making, even down to the percussive soundtrack and editing. ‘Zatoichi’ may not really have much to say about Japan, but in its aesthetic and the tradition from which it springs, it is distinctly Japanese where other derivative films are not, and it will only compound our interest in the country as a result.