The following review is an extract from the book ""Lone Wolf and Cub": ...and other samurai stories from cinema and TV", which includes commentaries on this excellent "The Mute Samurai" series and is now available on Amazon. Highly recommended for all Chambara fans!
""Oshi samurai" (...) recalls in its approach the memorable Italo-Western "The Great Silence" by Sergio Corbucci. Kiichi Hogan, the mute ronin bounty hunter, is not only a skilled swordsman, but he also is very fast using his revolver. In fact, there are many similarities between the chambara and the Italian-style western. The two genres are quite similar, often telling extrapolated stories (which would work just as well in Tokugawa Japan as in the Wild West). And by the way, both genres are usually set in the same period (1860s and 1870s).
After the success of the Zatoichi saga (the blind masseur and expert swordsman who travels around 19th century Japan), actor Shintaro Katsu launched in 1973 a 26-episode TV series that would star his brother Tomisaburo Wakayama. This time, the main character would no longer be a blind vigilante... but a mute one: "Oshi Samurai".
Kiichi Hogan ("Demon Magistrate") is the name by which the ever-silent ronin is known. His father (Yanagida Toemon) was a shogunal official, an honest and incorruptible magistrate who opposed unscrupulous merchants and mercantile influence from abroad. For his tenacious fight against illegal and speculative transactions he was murdered by a Spanish merchant; a certain González. He raped Yanagida Kennosuke's girlfriend before his eyes, and then slit his throat, leaving him for dead. But Kennosuke (a.k.a. Kiichi Hogan) survived, although when his vocal cords were damaged he lost his ability to speak forever... Thus becoming the Oshi Samurai - the Mute Samurai, thirsty for revenge.
Since then, Kiichi wanders around Dai Nippon tirelessly looking for González, and meanwhile confronting all the thugs and corrupt people who cross his path. For just as the blind Zatoichi earned his living as a masseur, the mute Kiichi is a ruthless shokin kasegi - a bounty hunter. What they both have in common (besides suffering from a physical handicap) is the prodigious handling of the sword, which in the hands of both of them is drawn, struck and re-sheathed with the precision and speed of lightning.
"Oshi Samurai" is set (like Zatoichi) in the last years of the Shogunate, when Japan was shyly opening up to the world again. The story of Kiichi Hogan unfolds throughout the 1840's. (In later episodes, firearms appear frequently, and from about chapter 15 onwards Kiichi possesses a Western style revolver, which he uses with the same skill as his katana).
"Oshi Samurai", broadcasted on Japanese television between 1973 and 1974, was produced by Shintaro Katsu (interpreter of the unforgettable Zatoichi and "Hanzo the Razor"), who also directed the first chapter. Katsu also participates as an actor in the secondary role of the mysterious Manji, who follows Kiichi from the first chapter for a reason that will gradually become clearer.
In addition, Shintaro Katsu is the interpreter of the song that accompanies the credits (with music composed by Isao Tomita).
Tomisaburo Wakayama (who plays Ogami Itto in Kozure Okami and the quarrelsome Buddhist priest Shinkai in Gokuaku Bozu) gives life to the hieratic and imperturbable Kiichi Hogan, the shaven mute samurai. Like his brother Shintaro Katsu, a regular face in the jidaigekis of the 1960s and 1970s, Wakayama practiced martial arts to get into the roles he played. He trained in the disciplines of kendo and iaido, learning the handling of the katana, and was also a black belt in judo. He never used doubles in action scenes, nor during the shooting of fights and sword fighting.
The idea of making a chanbara television series about a mute samurai comes from Hideo Gosha (probably inspired by the Corbuccian "Il Grande Silenzio"). Gosha was a great director of the jidaigeki genre that has in his filmography excellent films such as "Sanbiki no samurai" a.k.a. "Three outlaw samurai" (1964), "Hitokiri" (1969) or the yakuza epos "Sussho Iwai" a.k.a. "The Wolves" (1971). In Hitokiri, Shintaro Katsu appears on screen with Yukio Mishima, the famous writer who a year later would practice seppuku and who participates in that film playing samurai Tanaka Shinbei.
Oshi Samurai's excellent soundtrack was composed by the famous Isao Tomita, a pioneer of electronic music with synthesizers and the ambient genre (especially space music, which evokes space travel and the reconditedness of the cosmos - so his compositions were often used for science fiction films). Tomita also created the music for the second part of the Goyokiba trilogy ("Hanzo the Razor: The Snare").
The atmosphere in Oshi samurai is as dark, violent and melancholic as in Sergio Leone's best westerns. The 26 chapters of the series (of an approximate duration of 45 minutes each) are related to each other (the main theme is the search for González), so it is not recommended to see them in a skipped way (as it is possible, for example in the case of Zatoichi).
In "Oshi Samurai", Tomisaburo Wakayama looks quite different as his other character Ogami Itto in "Lone Wolf and Cub". Ogami has long hair, gathered in the traditional samurai style, has very thick eyebrows and does not have a moustache. Kiichi, on the other hand, has very short hair (at first he has a shaved head), has a thin moustache, and almost always wears a big hat as a protection against the sun. It is very curious that a rear-view mirror has been installed in his hat, so that without turning around he can see the enemies behind him.
In addition to the huge hat, the bounty hunter's characteristic attire also includes a poncho and leather gloves, as well as a malas (Buddhist rosary) rolled up on the left wrist and a scarf on the neck that serves to hide the large scar. Two faithful animals often accompany the mute vigilante (and even play a vital role in more than one chapter): his black horse and his white dog.
A European series that is somewhat reminiscent of "Oshi Samurai" in style is the French-British "Crossbow" (about William Tell), shot from 1987 and first broadcast in Spain around 1993. In the TV version about the medieval adventures of the legendary Swiss crossbowman (played by Will Lyman), he also lives a different adventure in each chapter, facing the villain Gessler (Jeremy Clyde). The episodes of "William Tell", however, are much shorter, but the series is much longer than "Oshi Samurai", reaching several seasons. Just as the adventures of the mute bounty hunter have the fantastic soundtrack of Isao Tomita, the William Tell series also has great (and rather 80s) music, composed by Polish Stanislas Syrewicz.
