Please enlighten me. What is the this procession about that shows up in the beginning, carrying a straw effigy. Later toward the end Zatoichi finds the straw man on the street and takes it?
Oh btw. I loved this one, all Kitano is great but this one was such a delicacy. Tapdance!
TBH I'm curious too
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Segmentation fault. Core dumped.
Shameless bump
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Segmentation fault. Core dumped.
Yet another bump, I'd really apreciate if there's any japanese visitor reading this, would spend 10 seconds answering to this.
Thanks a lot.
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Segmentation fault. Core dumped.
I haven't watched anything but the first classic movie yet, so I thought it could have been something from the older movies.
Anyway, I'll just post my hypothesis that the strawman is actually a symbol for the God(s) that people invent. The whole idea is basically a Buddhist or atheist interpretation of religion.
First, there is this procession of the 'downtrodden' who are out work, hungry and now put their hopes into their movement that follows a 'peoplefisher' who's holding up the straw puppet.
In another scene, the straw man is shown as a scarecrow, the reversed function. A religion can be villified and become repellent..
Even later, the puppet has done its work and kids kick and pull it through the streets. An old religion becomes the mockery of the new generation.
Zatoichi picking the thing up from the street. It can be interpreted as a Buddhist gesture of compassion towards even a discredited god. Buddhists are actually required to respect all other world views, even if they disagree with them.
So there you have it. It's bascially my gut feeling about this whole thing, especially after seeing "Takeshis'" and how he's weaving the story there and in the other movies. I could be totally wrong too