Zatoichi (was They All Look Alike)

[Aaron Gerow]

William Gardner wrote:

> Kitano's own experience of the hybrid entertainments of Asakusa and TV
> (including his own tap dancing experience) are clearly important to his
> vision for Zatoichi. However, it's interesting that if Zatoichi is 
> indeed a
> move away from "authenticity," then he is tacking away from some of his
> previous film work such as Hana-bi, which, as Aaron and others have 
> argued,
> is invested in an auteur sensibility linked to icons of Japaneseness.

Yes, but Kitano is slippery in his ability to play both sides. While 
the film flaunts its hybridity and transnationality, it also has Ichi 
saving the totemic figure in the field. As I have said before, this 
clearly places Ichi on the side of the folk, the Japanese people in an 
anthropological sense. One sees this interest in the folk as far back 
as Kikujiro (Abe Kasho has written a bit about it), but it aligns with 
a strong sense of class and hierarchy in Zatoichi. In the same way as 
with the hybridity, the film likes to play with reversals of this 
hierarchy and class (and gender) identity (the lowest man is in fact 
the highest), but the question is whether Kitano really abandons 
essential identity (the folk) for the hybrid. Kitano can be ambivalent 
on this. Zatoichi is in many ways a celebration of the mass culture 
from which Kitano emerged--a reassertion that he is a man of the 
masses, not a film festival auteur--but Kitano did emerge in part by 
rejecting that tradition. In the end, I don't think Kitano really does 
abandon essential identity, which is perhaps one reason the film, while 
interesting in the ways it plays with these hybridities, ultimately 
falls short.

Aaron Gerow
Assistant Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University
53 Wall Street, Room 316
PO Box 208363
New Haven, CT 06520-8363
USA
Phone: 1-203-432-7082
Fax: 1-203-432-6764
e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu