He cuts a lone, pathetic figure, in his scruffy clothes and straw sandals, feeling his way along country roads with the help of a wooden cane. But inside the cane is a sword, and inside the man an uncanny talent for survival. In the last decades of the Tokugawa, blind masseurs were at the bottom of the caste system, the frequent object of derision from peasant and samurai alike. In the second half of the twentieth century, however, Zatoichi, the blind masseur, is the most popular character in any Japanese action serial. Faced with the contempt of men, Zatoichi answers with a dazzling, ruthless display of swordsmanship. Surprised by the love of some shy young woman, he demurs but for a moment. Zatoichi Monogatari, the first Zatoichi adventure, with its gang bosses, straying samurai and downtrodden innocents, introduces the mood of corruption that draws the basically peaceloving Zatoichi into action in some thirty films. Shintaro Katsu portrays Zatoichi with shaved head and hollow eyes, and a gut feeling for the pathos and the irony embedded in his humble hero. The humility, like the wooden cane, is a sheath for a profound detachment.