This is the twenty-first of 26 films to star Shintaro Katsu as Zatoichi.
Zatoichi's katana is a shikomizue. This is a sword which is concealed within a wooden cane, thus the cane itself is both handle and scabbard.
This is the first Zatoichi film to make use of a non-diegetic narrator and prologue text.
This is the first Zatoichi film to feature more explicitly sexualised content. While there is no full frontal nudity, for a Zatoichi film the content was new ground - such as female nudity (the first partially obscured on-screen nipple in a Zatoichi film), characters referring to 'sucking', a shot of two lovers in a naked embrace, offers of women laying with Zatoichi, and most notably of all - a fight scene in which all participants are nude, including Zatoichi himself.
The tattoos seen upon the first mistress at the auction are a traditional Japanese irezumi.