Ichi movie, The female blind samurai (Haruka Ayase)

"Beware... I can't see anything"

Ichi is a sole goze (blind woman singer) carrying only a shamisen (Japanese stringed instrument) and a walking stick, traveling on her own to find the man who has brought her up and cared for her as a child. People try to take advantage of the fact that she is blind, but Ichi fights back with her unusual skill with swords, using the sword hidden inside her walking stick.

An incident brings her to meet Toma, who tries to save Ichi from the Banki-to gang, but ends up showing his awful skills in swordplay and is saved by Ichi in return. Ichi unwillingly starts traveling together with Toma, and comes upon the village, where the Banki-to gang, led by the inhuman heartless Banki, is taking charge. They also run into Toraji, who is the successor of the Shirakawa yakuza family trying to keep order of the village apart from Banki. Toma offers to help, but Ichi is uninterested, until she finds that Banki might know the man she was looking for.

Now the deadly battle is about to begin!

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• ICHI is directed by Fumihiko Sori who helmed cult live action hit Ping Pong, which won Best Director Award at the Japanese Academy Awards in 2002, and splashy CGI sci-fi-themed animation Vexille.


• The screenwriter is Taeko Asano, who worked on screenplay for popular live-action movie NANA.


• Swordplay action is choreographed by veteran Hiroshi Kuze, who worked with Akira Kurosawa on Ran and with Shintaro Katsu on some of his series of Zatoichi. His credits also include Heaven and Earth, The Twilight Samurai, and a PBS documentary entitled Japan: Memoirs of a Secret Empire.

Haruka Ayase (born on March 24 1985, Hiroshima, Japan) successfully passed the Horipro Talent Scout Caravan audition in 2000.

She first achieved widespread recognition for her starring roles in 2004 in the TV series Crying Out Love, In the Center of the World and Journey Under a Midnight Sun, for which she won Best Supporting Actress Award of Television Drama Academy Awards.

Recently she starred in Jae-young Kwak's third installment from his My Sassy Girl series - My girlfriend is a Cyborg.