----- Original Message -----
> From: <Animanda@aol.com>
To: <tenchi@ml.usagi.org>
Sent: Friday, January 04, 2002 4:12 PM
Subject: Re: Samurai Movie Reminder


> How can you fight if you're blind?

Blind martial artists are actually a common part of the genre. They fight by
using their other senses to get a picture of the world aroiund them and
attuning them to an extraordinary degree.

A blind-fighting master, for example, can hear a  leaf fall clarly enough to
strike it.

In Stan Sakai's comic Usagi Yojimbo, the blind pig Zato-Ino (Sakai used a
lot of puns and takes on famous manga and chambara characters) used his
extraoridanry sense of smell to guide his blade. Usagi "blinded" him by
cutting off his nose (snout?), but he soon got a woonden one made that
allowed him to smell as well as the original.

Michael Hopcroft