Lost in Criterion

It is week five of the Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman, which means we are now halfway through! Fittingly for the halfway point, though how could the filmmakers have known, we get three films in which Zatoichi must refrain from violence (but doesn't). Kazuo Miyagawa is once again behind the camera in the beautifully shot Zatoichi's Vengeance (Tokuzō Tanaka, 1966), in which Ichi meets a blind priest who tells him he's a bad guy what because of all the killing. The great Kaneto Shindo pens the script for Zatoichi's Pilgrimage (Kazuo Ikehiro, 1966) in which Ichi takes a sabbatical from killing to go on a pilgrimage of repentance, then immediately kills a man and is stalked by a horse, leading to a fight with some sort of metaphor for imperialism. And lastly Zatoichi's Cane Sword (Kimiyoshi Yasuda, 1967) is an origin story for Ichi's sword, in which the apprentice of its maker tells Ichi the sword will shatter if it is used to kill any more people (or presumably cut any more Go boards in half), so Ichi gets a real job and tries harder not to kill anyone than in either of the previous two films.