Hang on, am I summarising The Dark Knight again? No, it’s Zatoichi The Outlaw, the sixteenth in that venerable series. And it’s fascinating, not merely for how similar in many ways it is that that billion dollar blockbuster, but also how much more effective and interesting it is. The Dark Knight toys with moral ambivalence, but takes plenty of care to let its hero off the hook for the havoc he unwittingly unleashes, as well as fumbling its filmmaking. Zatoichi has no such release or lapses in this particularly dark, gruesome entry, and achieves an emotional and moral intensity the current blockbuster cannot touch.
On his eternal wanderings, Zatoichi (Shintarô Katsu, as always) enters the fiefdom of Kiyotaki, where the local officials are attempting to stamp out gambling, which saps the earnings of the peasantry and encourages all forms of licence. But nothing’s ever that simple. Sir Suga (Kô Nishimura), the local bailiff, really wants to tap the gangsters for revenue. Two rival yakuza factions struggle to control the territory, one of which, run by Tomizo (Tatsuo Endo) and his clan, uses rigged games and kidnapping to achieve its ends. The other is run by the seemingly conscientious Asagoro (Rentaro Mikuni), with whom Zatoichi feels deep kinship, as Asagoro professes himself a man like Ichi, who tries to do good for people. Another conscientious man is Sensei Ohara Shusui, a retired samurai who has rejected the corrupt Tokogawa state and dedicated himself to teaching the peasants a better way of life, starting with improved rice-growing techniques. He pointedly refuses to wear a sword, and berates Ichi for attempting to solve the world’s problems with one. 
The locals are chewed up by greed and clan warfare. Peasants are imprisoned, abused and extorted. Young sweethearts Nisuburo (Toshiyuki Hosokawa) and O-Shino (Yuko Hamada) become victims of this, and of Ichi’s itchy sword-hand. Nisuburo sells himself as hired muscle to Tomizo, and he, O-Shino’s brother Sada, and others are sent by Tomizo to attack Ichi when he seems to be siding with Asagoro. Ichi kills Sada and cuts off Nisaburo’s arm, earning O-Shino’s distraught berating. Ashamed, Ichi promptly wipes out Tomizo and his henchmen, before leaving Kiyotaki. A wanted criminal, Ichi attempts to hide out, pursuing a normal career as a masseur, but he soon finds his past will always catch up with him, first when his employer discovers his identity and tries to force him to become a yakuza bodyguard, and then when he is attacked by Nisaburo, who has become impoverished and drunken. Nisaburo informs a disbelieving Ichi that Asagoro has become the biggest gambler in Kiyotaki, been given an official job as cover by the corrupt Kyushiro, and now runs things far more cruelly and decadently than Tomizo ever did. He has even taken O-Shino as his concubine, and tortures her before selling her to a whorehouse.
The subplot of Nisaburo and O-Shino ends bleakly, as O-Shino throws herself off a cliff and Nisaburo has his throat cut by Asagoro when he attacks him in revenge. Having established the truth of Nisaburo’s accusations, Ichi also discovers Suga’s corruption and the impossibility of official punishment for Asagoro. Suga is more interested in sniffing out suspected anti-Tokugawa sentiment, and has arrested Shusui on trumped-up charges of treason, thus threatening to spark a peasant revolt. Asagoro tries to assassinate Ichi, thus sparking his final riot of revenge, hacking and slashing his way through Asagoro’s entourage in the rain, striking the villain dead after he wounds him in the leg. The peasants then carry him across land to save Shusui from Suga’s men.
Outlaw suffers from a plot that piles too many elements on top of each-other, something which also afflicts the Nolan Batman films. Unlike them, it keeps its mind clear enough to make its point cogently whilst still not neglecting entertaining with solid characters and amusing melodrama. Ichi is contrasted constantly with shaded apposite versions of himself. Shusui is Ichi as pacifist, and refuses violence, but then he has the luxury of his sight and ideals. Ichi professes himself, on the other hand, to only be driven by a loathing of people who don’t make the world a better place, and learnt how to fight for rage of being taken advantage of as a blind man. His violence both stokes and solves the quandaries in the film. Ichi nonetheless is properly ashamed of it all, and finally walks away from Shusui, having fought for Shusui’s right to follow his conscience, not to wash clean his own. Asagoro professes himself a man like Ichi, working in a grotty, dangerous profession but holding to principals of justice and humanity, but is in fact a self-justifying, self-deluding monster. He reflects Ichi’s own personal uncertainty over his violent way, where, for all the good he achieves in freeing people from the yoke of thugs and criminals, he also leaves mangled bodies and families everywhere. Other blind masseurs he works with, men he ought to be like, are idiotic, bumbling, childish cripples.
Outlaw presents its hero as attempting to walk a fine line, which he can’t always keep to – he tries to be just, but often takes innocent lives. He tries to be peaceful, but know he won’t last a day if he lives passively like Shusui. He’s at ease in a world of gamblers, gangsters, and hookers, but follows a moral code. He is aware of his faults, an awareness without which he would become Asagoro. The finale both proves Ichi’s worst suspicions about the world he lives in, and yet he’s not rendered so much triumphant as sadly confirmed – he limps away from Shusui, ashamed, bleeding, and hurting within and without, some part of him permanently darkened. It’s also interesting to compare the sequence in which O-Shino, confronting Ichi over her brother and lover’s mangled forms, repeatedly, forcefully beats him in anguish, and its similarity to another moment in a ’67 film, in Point Blank, where Angie Dickinson pummels Lee Marvin – in both films, the males do not twitch as they are hit. Where Marvin’s Walker has been emptied of feeling, or at least, only feels like a dinosaur, in fragmented, delayed fashion, Ichi knows he deserves what he’s getting, but also knows he had no alternative. With both characters, their absorption into violence is so complete that they barely feel the hurt. Moreover, the film’s bent is unabashedly leftist, portraying the cynical forces of corruption, crime, and authoritarianism as being entwined, feeding off each-other, working to wipe out or warp people who try to make a difference.
