Description
Book SynopsisThe Paths of Zatoichi charts the history and influence of the Japanese film and television franchise about Zatoichi the blind swordsman. The franchise is comprised of 29 films and 100 TV episodes (starring the famous Shintaro Katsu, who starred in 26 of the 29 feature films). They all follow the adventures of a blind masseur in medieval Japan, who wanders from village to village and often has to defend himself with his deadly sword skills. The first film was released in 1962 and the most recent in 2010. These dates demonstrate how the franchise can be used as a means of charting Japanese cinema history, via the shifts in production practices and audience preferences which affected the Zatoichi series and numerous other film and TV texts. Zatoichi signifies a huge area of Japanese film history which has largely been ignored in much existing scholarly research, and yet it can reveal much about the appeal of long-running characters, franchises, and their constant adaptation and influence within global popular culture.
Trade ReviewThe blind swordsman is one of the most iconic and significant tropes in global popular cinema, and this new volume is the most comprehensive account to date of the transnational influence of Zatoichi on these representations. Jonathan Wroot’s book expertly charts the impact of the character within US genre films like Blind Fury (1989), across the exploitation cycles of blind swordsman films produced in Taiwan and Indonesia, and even demonstrates the continued memetic influence of the character in blockbuster franchises like Daredevil (2015-) and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016). Highly recommended.
-- Iain Smith, King’s College London
Jonathan Wroot offers a rich and compelling history of the Zatoichi phenomenon from the early 1960s to the twenty-first century—a phenomenon that includes not only hundreds of films, TV episodes, spin-offs, and remakes in Japan, but also a host of imitations, appropriations, and crossovers from Taiwan, Indonesia, and even Hollywood studios. Painstakingly researched and written in plain, lucid language, this excellent study is an important contribution to scholarship on the action genre as well as on transnational flows of popular film and culture.
-- Man-Fung Yip, University of Oklahoma
This important and expansive work shows how a film franchise like the immensely popular Zatoichi series of films and TV programs should not be understood as simply structurally contained in itself, representing a single culture or ideology, but like the wandering and sightless Zatoichi himself, as taking a myriad of paths in both time and space, changing as Japan transforms, while also flowing beyond borders to affect filmmaking from East and Southeast Asia to Hollywood. Here is where the significance of Zatoichi—and any franchise–lies.
-- Aaron Gerow, Yale University
Table of ContentsChapter One – Zatoichi’s Path Begins
Chapter Two – Zatoichi’s Path on the Silver Screen
Chapter Three – Zatoichi’s Path on the Small Screen
Chapter Four – The Global Paths of Zatoichi
Chapter Five – Zatoichi’s Remade Global Paths and Their Impact
