Lost in Criterion

It's week 2 of the Zatoichi boxset and we get our first taste of what will become a favorite aspect of the films moving forward: Zatoichi versus a corrupt government. That doesn't show up until movie six though, and we've got two others to talk about, too. First up is Zatoichi the Fugitive (Tokuzo Tanaka, 1963) which kicks off with some comedy sumo and sees the return of Otane from the first two films. Then we have Zatoichi on the Road (Kimiyoshi Yasuda, 1963) where Zatoichi decides that nearly everyone involved in the plot is bad and deserves to die. And we finish up with Zatoichi and the Chest of Gold (Kazuo Ikehiro, 1964) which not only brings us that aforementioned bad magistrate but is the most artistically interesting of the series so far, no doubt in part due to the cinematography of Kazuo Miyagawa who also shot Rashomon, Ugetsu, Yojimbo, and Floating Weeds across a vast career that also spans five more Zatoichi films that we won't touch for a few more weeks.