Unfortunately, Zatoichi’s internal pain mirrors Katsu’s own and the latter part of his life was plagued with substance abuse, personal tragedy, and an early death in 1997. One of the extras in ...

more melancholy Zatoichi, but production was marred by the death of a stuntman at the hands of Katsu's son in a sword fight scene that went horribly wrong. Katsu never played Zatoichi again ...

It's not that "The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi" lacks gory scenes. When a sightless masseur chops off a gambler's hand, the amputated limb spouts a geyser of blood on par with anything in "Kill Bill." ...

Movie geeks may have a few of his Yakuza movies (in 2nd or 3rd hand dubs) in their VHS collection but until the release of Zatoichi amidst high critical acclaim, American audiences have had little ...

Zatoichi comes upon a dying man who asks him to give a bag of money to "Taichi". Zatoichi has no idea who this is but when he comes upon a small town harassed by gangsters, he finds that "Taichi ...

For all their considerable charms, the Zatoichi films are the epitome of genre filmmaking at its most formulaic. By contrast, since branching out from TV, director-editor-writer-actor Takeshi ...