Akira Kurosawa's YOJIMBO (1961)

Today I decided I wanted a little more samurai in my life. The easiest way to accomplish that was to watch Akira Kurosawa'a Yojimbo. I didn't know much about the film, but I'm familiar with the word "yojimbo" which translates to "bodyguard". I figured it would be about a samurai protecting someone, and probably there would be some sword slashing action scenes. I'm also well aware how famous and popular this particular film is, so that's also why I chose to watch it. It was also Akira Kurosawa who directed Seven Samuri which I quite enjoyed back in May. I had some high hopes for this one, and I was confident that it would hold up, since Seven Samurai did just fine, and it is even older. More after the jump.


We start our tale following a lone ronin (masterless samurai) wandering the country roads. We find out through text that the year is 1860 and the rise of the middle class has lead to the fall of the Tokugawa Dynasty, and many samurai no longer have anyone to work for. The only skills they have are for killing. Because of this, many become assassins or yojimbo to make ends meet.

Our hero goes nameless for a long while, but when eventually pressed, he looks out the window, and sees a mulberry field. He then says his name is Kuwabatake (mulberry field) Sanjuro. They know he's just made it up, but they also don't care. This is because there is a bitter war going on in the town he's wandered into between two rival gangs. Sanjuro can tell that this dusty town can't survive with this criminal element crippling it, and so the best way to proceed is to play the two off of each other. As they both vie for his services as the strongest swordsman in the town, he hopes to trick them and have them destroy each other in the process.

Sanjuro watches a gang fight from a safe perch

When I first started watching the story, I thought it seemed awfully familiar. I had a sneaking suspicion, but I wasn't entirely positive about it. It wasn't until a small side plot about a beautiful woman being held hostage and away from her husband and child that it confirmed it in my mind. It turns out that Fistful of Dollars, the famous Clint Eastwood western, and the start of the "Man with no Name" trilogy, is a remake of this film! It's funny because before the story even started, there were plenty of scenes of the wind blowing the dust and leaves through the abandoned looking town, and I thought to myself "this looks an awful lot like a Western."

Toshiro Mifune stars as Sanjuro, the samurai with no name

Besides the fact that this was remade into a western just like Seven Samurai was, and that I'd seen the remake first, making this feel like the remake in a way, I really liked it. What stood out the most is that Sanjuro, played by Toshiro Mifune, is awesome and always has a level head in any situation. I couldn't even tell, but when I looked him up on IMDB, I found out that Toshiro Mifune was also in Seven Samurai as well, but as the wild and crazy Kikuchiyo, who was probably my favorite character in that movie. I can see it in pictures of the two characters, but I'm still almost in disbelief that the same man played them both. The characters are almost complete opposites, and just reinforces how great of an actor Toshiro Mifune is.

Sanjuro slaughtering some loud mouth punks

Yojimbo turned out to be a really good film, and even though I had seen the story before in Fistful of Dollars, I think this one pulled off the story far better. In Fistful of Dollars, it kinda dragged on for a while, and the motivations weren't always clear to me, but that could have also been due to my attention falling away in some of the long slow parts. This film felt much tighter and very clear. I also liked that Sanjuro's ultimate goal was to clean up the town of the scum from both factions, and not just to get as much money as he could by playing them off each other, which was the driving force behind Clint Eastwood's character.

This is an easy film to recommend if you've never seen it. If you like samurai movies and don't mind subtitles, this is a winner for sure. I think there are other Akira Kurosawa movies that star the Sanjuro character, and I'd like to check those out too. I doubt I'll have time for those before the year is out, but so far Akira Kurosawa is batting 1000 for me with this and Seven Samurai. I had no idea what I've been missing out on.