December 19 movie: Zaotichi Enters Again. The third Zatoichi movie has Zatoichi returning to his old village and meeting up with his sensei, who is a bad, bad man. This shocked me. I've never before seen a Japanese movie in which the hero's sensei turns out to be a villain. Zatoichi and the sensei's little sister want to marry, but the sensei refuses because he wants her to marry someone who will bring him prestige. We thought the sister was a goner as soon as Zatoichi admitted that he wanted to marry her. Lucky for her Zatoichi promises to give up his violent life, and then has to abandon her when he fights again at the end. "I guess I am that kind of man," he says, which literally translates as "I'm a loner, Dottie, a rebel." Zatoichi also admits the prostitutes as a shameful thing, so maybe it wasn't as socially acceptable in a historical Japanese film as I thought. I got the impression in the second movie that there was nothing untoward about it.
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