As the title implies, Zatoichi and the Chess Expert isn't the most action packed or visually innovative entry in the long saga of Japan's forever wandering blind masseur and master swordsman. In the third installment of the Zatoichi series released in 1965 alone (and 12th overall), the emphasis is much more on character development and an understandable search for some kind of a substantive wrinkle to toss into what had by then become a fairly standardized formula. The stories at this stage of development follow a predictable and satisfying sequence, wherein Zatoichi makes his way down a lightly populated road, discovers some kind of trouble brewing in the nearby village, finds himself aggressively accosted by a small but (for him) manageable pack of sword-wielding thug assassins and proceeds to once again take up with valiant humility the cause of some unfairly aggrieved poor folks who find themselves oppressed by greedy, unscrupulous villains - typically men of some privilege and power whose greed compels them to extract every last advantage they can, rather than take satisfaction in the wealth and influence they've already accrued. Along the way, our beloved Ichi will use some kind of trickery to finagle exorbitant winnings at the local gambling hub, cultivate a short but sweet friendship with a cute child or two, and dabble in a bit of humorous flirtation with a comely young woman (though always remaining disciplined and chaste since carnal indulgence for its own sake would be as completely out of character for him as it would have been for James Bond to adopt a shaggy hairdo, a nonviolent ethos and monkish asceticism in his movies around the same time.)
Among the unique features that may cause this film to stand out from among those that surround it in the series are a nautical sequence toward the beginning of the film, with the camera slowly tilting and shifting to simulate rolling ocean waves. I can't recall any other Zatoichi movies so far where he's been off land for an extended stretch. There are also a couple of rather surprising scenes where his uncanny, almost supernatural skills let him down. He actually loses a big bet while wielding the dice cup, and there's also a poignant moment where his blindness gets the best of him. It's a curiously effective touch of humanization, well-timed to remind us of Zatoichi's vulnerability and suffering, since by this point, we've become so used to him routinely achieving the impossible without hardly breaking a sweat. That balance of crippling emotional loss and underlying sadness is an important character trait to preserve in Zatoichi. If not for it, everything else would come too easily for the guy, though it feels weird typing it out like that.
With no reasonable motivation to switch up too radically on a template that was clearly serving them well, the creative forces behind Zatoichi were faced with the challenge of staying within the proven guidelines without making each episode too indistinguishable from its predecessor. This time around, the hero functions more like a detective looking to solve a baffling mystery, piecing together clues that at first glance don't really seem to fit together in any apparently obvious way. The opening scene, of Zatoichi stumbling along a dark road late at night when he's abruptly surrounded and assaulted for no apparent reason, feels at first almost like a generic throwaway scene - something we've seen so often in the series that we take it for granted that he'll survive and easily dispatch of his foes, which indeed he does. But there are a few clues dropped in, if we pay attention to the facial wounds sustained by the survivors, that will link the scene to subsequent developments.
That foreshadowing tactic, of scattering subtle pieces of the puzzle that only a supremely perceptive and intuitive mind could connect. is used repeatedly throughout Zatoichi and the Chess Expert, making a second watch of the film a bit more satisfying than usual as we get to enjoy the clever brilliance of how a few assorted subplots all come together at the end. The narrative threads involve a couple traveling with their servant on a mysterious mission of vengeance, a woman escorting a young girl who suffers an accidental wound in one of Zatoichi's battles, thus requiring our hero's assistance to get the badly needed medicine before it's too late, the vicious gangsters out to get their own revenge for the gambling losses Zatoichi inflicted on them and of course the shrewd master of the chessboard who initially befriends the blind swordsman but inevitably becomes his adversary as the two men size each other up through rapid-fire duels on the chessboard and subtle probing of their respective back stories, and discover the fundamental rivalry that puts them on opposite sides in the game of life as well.
Next: Samurai Spy