Agent Shiranui

Name: Shiranui kengyô
Genre: Drama
Released: 1960-09-01
Duration: 1 h 31 min
Rating: 7
Cast: Shintarô Katsu, Tamao Nakamura, Mieko Kondô

Original title: Shiranui kengyô

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1h 31m

IMDb RATING

7.0/10

190

YOUR RATING

Drama

Before he portrayed the legendary blind swordsman, Zatoichi, Shintaro Katsu played Suganoichi, a blind court masseur with a dark side. An outcast since birth, he learned from a young age tha... Read allBefore he portrayed the legendary blind swordsman, Zatoichi, Shintaro Katsu played Suganoichi, a blind court masseur with a dark side. An outcast since birth, he learned from a young age that the only way to get ahead was to take advantage of others. Now an expert con-artist with... Read allBefore he portrayed the legendary blind swordsman, Zatoichi, Shintaro Katsu played Suganoichi, a blind court masseur with a dark side. An outcast since birth, he learned from a young age that the only way to get ahead was to take advantage of others. Now an expert con-artist with a heart of coal, Suganoichi is on a vile quest for power, and everyone else will suffer a... Read all

IMDb RATING

7.0/10

190

YOUR RATING

Director
- Kazuo Mori
Writers
- Minoru Inuzuka(screenplay)
- Nobuo Uno(novel)
Stars

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Trivia
"Kengyô" was the highest of the four official ranks (kan'i) within the Tôdô-za - the Kyôto-based guild for the blind established early in the Muromachi Period (1392-1573), and abolished in 1871 (the fourth year of the Meiji Restoration). The three other ranks, in descending order, were "bettô", "kôtô", and "zatô" - as in The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi (2003). The head of the Tôdô-za was the sô-kengyô (a.k.a. shoku-kengyô); the guild's headquarters was the Shoku-yashiki in Kyôto.

Connections
Featured in Best in Action: 1962 (2018)

User reviews9

Review

Featured review

6/10

Evil blind masseur cheats, rapes and kills - No, it's not Zatoichi!

Quite surprised to find out that Shintaro Katsu had already played a blind masseur before he started the Zatoichi series, I was eager to see this film. Yikes, what I got was very unexpected.

The film starts out with a few scenes of the main character, Suga-no-ichi, as a blind child. The sightless scamp is already concocting schemes to swindle people out of money. Cut forward to Suga as an adult, now a priest working under the also blind head priest who is Secretary of Religious Affairs for the Shogun. Curiously all the other priests in this temple are blind, it's not explained in the film why this is. Suga gets sent out on errands by the head priest and he uses this as a chance to rob, swindle, rape and murder while wandering around Japan. Suga joins a band of thieves while running his own schemes independently. But foremost in Suga's mind is the position of Secretary of Religious Affairs and he hatches a plan to get it.

Shintaro Katsu is excellent in the role. A number of Zatoichi mannerisms are already present in his portrayal of the blind masseur. The film is well directed and photographed in black and white. Unfortunately, the character of Suga is so despicable that the film is tough to follow, only Katsu's performance makes it tolerable. There is nothing of the noble Zatoichi here. Also there's no sword work, this is not a chambara film at all. The film might have worked better if it was played with more humor and less rape, but it's rather serious about the whole story. The ending is a cop-out. Interestingly, Katsu's brother, Tomisaburo Wakayama, played a similar, though much less despicable, character in the "Wicked Priest" series a few years later.

Recommended for Katsu fans, others might want to rent a Zatoichi film instead.

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