One of Ito’s most important and influential films, this trenchant “tendency film” (keiko-eiga) braved the tightening censorship of the early Showa Period in its portrayal of a ronin who sides with the proletariat during a peasants’ uprising. Critic Akira Iwasaki remarked on the influence of French silent classics La Roue (Abel Gance, 1921) and Kean (Alexandre Volkoff, 1924), and noted that Ito was aware of Soviet film theory, even though Soviet films had not yet been distributed in Japan. When Storm Over Asia (Vsevolod Pudovkin, 1928) was shown in Japan the following year, audiences detected striking similarities.
Tadashi Iijima praised Ito for “conquering the period film with his modern speed”, and admired the film’s psychological penetration and ideological richness. The film was apparently an influence on the class consciousness of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954).
Like many Japanese silent films, Zanjin zanbaken sadly survives only in incomplete form; the extant print is a condensation blown up from a 9.5mm print produced for home distribution. The surviving footage nevertheless illustrates Ito’s flair for choreographing onscreen action and executing frenetic camera movements, even while it hints poignantly at lost glories.