Yojimbo (film)

Yojimbo

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Produced by Ryuzo Kikushima
Akira Kurosawa
Tomoyuki Tanaka
Written by Ryuzo Kikushima
Akira Kurosawa
Starring Toshiro Mifune
Tatsuya Nakadai
Yoko Tsukasa
Isuzu Yamada
Music by Masaru Sato
Cinematography Kazuo Miyagawa
Takao Saito
Edited by Akira Kurosawa
Production
company
Distributed by Toho
Release dates
 April 25, 1961 (1961-04-25)
Running time
 110 minutes
Country Japan
Language Japanese

Yojimbo (用心棒 Yōjinbō) is a 1961 jidaigeki film directed by Akira Kurosawa. It tells the story of a rōnin, portrayed by Toshiro Mifune, who arrives in a small town where competing crime lords vie for supremacy. The two bosses each try to hire the newcomer as a bodyguard.

Based on the success of Yojimbo, Kurosawa's next film, Sanjuro (1962), was altered to incorporate the lead character of this film.[1][2] In both films, the character wears a rather dilapidated dark kimono bearing the same family mon (likely the emblem of his former samurai clan, before he became a rōnin).

Plot

In 1860, during the final years of the Tokugawa shogunate, [lower-alpha 1] a masterless samurai wanders through a desolate Japanese countryside. While stopping at a farmhouse, he overhears an elderly couple lamenting their only son has given up farm labouring in order to run off and join the rogues who have descended on a nearby town that has become divided by a gang war. The stranger heads to the town where he meets the owner of a small Izakaya who advises him to leave. He tells the rōnin that the two warring clans are led by Ushitora and Seibei. The silk merchant and mayor back Seibei while the sake brewer is allied with Ushitora. But after sizing up the situation, the stranger says he intends to stay as the town would be better off with both sides dead.

He first convinces the weaker Seibei to hire him as a swordsman by effortlessly killing three of Ushitora's men. When asked his name, he sees a mulberry field and states his name is 桑畑三十郎 (Kuwabatake Sanjuro) (桑畑 (mulberry bush). Although 三十郎 Sanjuro is a proper given name (and therefore could very well be the rōnin's true name), when spoken out loud it can also be interpreted as 三十老 Sanjuro (note the different last kanji 老), which means "thirty years old" (三十 sanju = thirty, 老 ro = years-old)). Aware of this double meaning (and that those he's speaking to know that he used Kuwabatake as a pseudo-surname), he slyly quips: "Though I'm closer to forty, actually".

Seibei decides that with the ronin's swordsmanship (a service acquired with a large payment in Ryō) the time is right to fight Ushitora. But Sanjuro eavesdrops on Seibei's wife who orders her son to kill him after the upcoming raid so that they will not have to pay his fee. Sanjuro leads his faction to attack the other but then "resigns" leaving Seibei to his fate. But before the two side clash, the untimely arrival of a Bugyō (an Edo official) forces both sides to make a bloodless retreat.

Eventually the Bugyō is called away because a government official was murdered in another town. Sanjuro soon learns it was two assassins hired by Ushitora who committed the killing in order to get the official to leave. With this knowledge, Sanjuro captures the pair of killers and sells them to Seibei. But he then tells Ushitora that it was Seibei's men have caught them. An alarmed Ushitora rewards him for his help. Ushitora then orders the kidnaping of Seibei's son who he offers in exchange for the two prisoners. However, Ushitora double crosses Seibei at the swap when his brother, Unosuke, shoots the assassins with a pistol. But Seibei anticipated this so he kidnapped Ushitora's woman. The next morning she is swapped with Seibei's son.

Sanjuro learns that the woman is the wife of a local farmer who lost her to Ushitora over a gambling debt, who then gave her away as chattel to the town's powerful residents in order to gain their support. Sanjuro tells Ushitora that Seibei is on the way to kidnap her from her secret hideaway. While Ushitora rallies his men, Sanjuro kills all six guards. He then reunites the woman with her husband and young son and tells them to leave town. However, Unosuke becomes suspicious of Sanjuro and the ransacked building. Eventually Sanjuro is severely beaten after Unosuke discovers evidence of his double cross.

But Sanjuro manages to escape when Ushitora decides to eliminate Seibei once and for all. As he is being carried out of town in a coffin by the izakaya owner, he witnesses the brutal end to Seibei, his family and his clan. Sanjuro recuperates in a cemetery. However, when he learns that the man who helped him has been taken by Ushitora, he returns to the town. Sanjuro manages to kill Ushitora and his men as well as Unosuke who fires wildly with his pistol. He only spares one terrified young man who he encountered on his way into town. Sanjuro then departs knowing that his task has been accomplished.

Cast

Production

Writing

Kurosawa stated that a major source for the plot was the 1942 film noir classic The Glass Key, an adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's 1931 novel The Glass Key. It has been noted that the overall plot of Yojimbo is closer to that of another Hammett novel, Red Harvest (1929).[3] Kurosawa scholar David Desser, and film critic Manny Farber claim that Red Harvest was the inspiration for the film; however, Donald Richie and other scholars believe the similarities are coincidental.[4]

When asked his name, the samurai calls himself "Kuwabatake Sanjuro" (meaning "mulberry field thirty-year-old"), which he seems to make up while looking at a mulberry field by the town. Thus, the character can be viewed as an early example of the "Man with No Name" (other examples of which appear in a number of earlier novels, including Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest).[5]

Casting

Many of the actors in Yojimbo worked with Kurosawa before and after, especially Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura and Tatsuya Nakadai.

Filming

After Kurosawa scolded Mifune for arriving late to the set one morning, Mifune made it a point to be ready on set at 6:00 AM every day in full makeup and costume for the rest of the film's shooting schedule.[6]

This was the second film where director Akira Kurosawa worked with cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa.

The sword instruction and choreography for the film were done by Yoshio Sugino of the Tenshin Shōden Katori Shintō-ryū and Ryū Kuze.

Reception

Yojimbo ranked at #95 in Empire magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Films of All Time.[7] A 1968 screening in the planned community of Columbia, Maryland was considered too violent for viewers causing the hosts to hide in the bathroom to avoid the audience.[8] The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Costume Design at the 34th Academy Awards.

Sequel

In 1962, Kurosawa directed Sanjuro, in which Mifune returns as the ronin Sanjuro, but takes a different "surname". In both films, he takes his surname from the plants he happens to be looking at when asked his name.

Legacy

Western-influencing cinematography; Toshiro Mifune as a lone hero in wide framing

Both in Japan and the West, Yojimbo has had a considerable influence on various forms of entertainment.

In 1964, Yojimbo was remade as A Fistful of Dollars, a Spaghetti Western directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood in his first appearance as the Man with No Name. Leone and his production company failed to secure the remake rights to Kurosawa's film, resulting in a lawsuit that delayed Fistful's release in North America for three years. It would be settled out of court for an undisclosed agreement before the U.S. release. In Yojimbo, the protagonist defeats a man who carries a gun, while he carries only a knife and a sword; in the equivalent scene in Fistful, Eastwood's pistol-wielding character survives being shot by a rifle by hiding an iron plate under his clothes to serve as a shield against bullets.

A second, looser Spaghetti Western adaptation, Django, was directed by Sergio Corbucci in 1966 and featured Franco Nero in the title role. Known for its high level (at the time of its release) of graphic violence, the film's character and title were referenced in over thirty unofficial "sequels".[9][10][11]

The 1970 film Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo features Mifune as a somewhat similar character. It is the twentieth of a series of movies featuring the blind swordsman Zatoichi. Although Mifune is clearly not playing the same man as he did in the two Kurosawa films (his name is 佐々大作 Sasa Daisaku, and his personality and background are different in many key respects), the movie's title and some of its content do intend to suggest the image of the two iconic jidaigeki characters confronting each other.

Incident at Blood Pass, also made in 1970, also stars Mifune in a role even more similar to that of Sanjuro. Although never spoken aloud in the film, the character's name is 鎬刀三郎 Shinogi Tosaburō. As was the case with Sanjuro, this character's surname of 鎬 Shinogi is not an actual proper family name, but rather a term that means "ridges on a blade".

Mifune's character became the model for John Belushi's Samurai Futaba character on Saturday Night Live.[12]

In The Warrior and the Sorceress (1984), the mercenary warrior Kain (David Carradine) sets rival warlords Zeg and Balcaz against each other in a battle over a town's only well. The action is set on Ura, a desert planet with two suns.

Last Man Standing (1996) is a Prohibition-era gangster thriller directed by Walter Hill and starring Bruce Willis. Both Kikushima and Kurosawa are specifically listed in this movie's credits as having provided the original story.

At the closing of Episode XXIII of the animated series Samurai Jack, a triumphant Jack walks off alone in a scene (and accompanied by music) influenced by the closing scene and music of Yojimbo. In Episode XXVI, Jack confronts a gang who destroyed his sandals, using Clint Eastwood's lines from A Fistful of Dollars, but substituting "footwear" for "mule". The influence of Yojimbo in particular (and Kurosawa films in general) on the animated series has been noted by Matthew Millheiser at DVDtalk.[13]

References

Notes
  1. ↑ On screen text at about 0:2:15
Citations
  1. ↑ Richie, Donald. The films of Akira Kurosawa. p. 156.
  2. ↑ Yoshinari Okamoto (director) (2002). Kurosawa Akira: Tsukuru to iu koto wa subarashii [Akira Kurosawa: It is Wonderful to Create] (in Japanese).
  3. ↑ Desser, David (1983). "Towards a Structural Analysis of the Postwar Samurai Film". Quarterly Review of Film Studies (Print) (Redgrave Publishing Company) 8.1: 33. ISSN 0146-0013.
  4. ↑ Barra, Allen (2005). "From Red Harvest to Deadwood". Salon.
  5. ↑ Dashiell Hammett. Red Harvest. ISBN 0-679-72261-0.
  6. ↑ Peary, Gerald (June 6, 1986). "Toshiro Mifune". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 2013-04-30. One day Kurosawa said, 'I won't mention names, but the actors are late.' I said. 'What are you talking about? I'm the actor.' Every day after that, when Kurosawa arrived, I would be there already, in costume and makeup from 6 a.m. I showed him.
  7. ↑ "The 500 Greatest Movies Of All Time". Empire. Bauer Media Group. Archived from the original on August 17, 2011. Retrieved August 17, 2011.
  8. ↑ Joseph Rocco Mitchell, David L. Stebenne. New City Upon a Hill. p. 116.
  9. ↑ Marco Giusti, Dizionario del western all'italiana, 1st ed. Milan, Mondadori, August 2007. ISBN 978-88-04-57277-0.
  10. ↑ Django (Django: The One and Only) (DVD). Los Angeles, California: Blue Underground. 1966.
  11. ↑ Alex Cox, 10,000 Ways to Die: A Director's Take on the Spaghetti Western, Oldcastle Books, September 1, 2009. ISBN 978-1842433041.
  12. ↑ Barra, Allen (17 August 2010). "That Nameless Stranger, Half a Century Later". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 10 January 2012.
  13. ↑ "Samurai Jack: Season 1 : DVD Talk Review of the DVD Video". Dvdtalk.com. Retrieved 2014-04-08.

External links

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