The hundred episodes of the TV series followed 1970s TV dynamics: Zatoichi was (mostly) unchanging from one episode to the next, and the 45-minute episodes (allowing for 15 minutes of advertisement ...

Those in the mood for a bit of authentic swordplay (sans Tom Cruise, that is) would do well to catch Zatoichi #4: The Fugitive this Saturday night. In this 1963 episode of the renowned Japanese film ...

Embed <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/3807446/3807447" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"> A ...

How does one perpetuate the longest-running samurai action series—which yielded 26 films and over a hundred TV episodes starring the late Shintaro Katsu as a blind, sword-wielding masseur—without ...

Cowritten by star Shintaro Katsu, this adventure pits Zatoichi against one of his most diabolical foes: a blind yakuza boss whose reign of terror and exploitation has ...

The final scene of Takeshi Kitano’s 2003 Samurai masterpiece, Zatoichi, ends with the hero singing, ‘Even with my eyes open/I ...