Yojimbo is a 1961 Japanese samurai 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.
Plot
In 1860, during the final years of the Edo period and the demise of
the Tokugawa shogunate, a rōnin
(masterless samurai) wanders through a desolate Japanese
countryside. While stopping at a farmhouse, he
overhears an elderly couple lamenting that 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 Gonji, 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. Ushitora was
the right-hand man of Seibei but rebelled
when Seibei decided to hand over the reins to his son Yoichiro, a
useless youth. The town's mayor and its silk
merchant, Tazaemon, had long been in Seibei's pocket, and Ushitora
aligned himself with the sake brewer,
Tokuemon, proclaiming him the new mayor. 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
Kuwabatake Sanjuro, where
Kuwabatake = "mulberry field" and where Sanjuro ("thirty-years-old")
is implied to be a reference to his
age, as he slyly quips: "Though I'm closer to forty, actually".
Seibei decides that with the ronin's swordsmanship, the time is
right to fight Ushitora. However, 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 large fee. Sanjuro leads the attack on the other faction,
but then "resigns", leaving Seibei to his
fate. Before the two sides clash, the unexpected arrival of a bugyō
(an Edo-period government official) forces
both sides to make a bloodless retreat.
Eventually the bugyō is called away because a government official
has been murdered in another town. Sanjuro
soon learns two assassins hired by Ushitora committed the murder to
get the official to leave. With this
knowledge, Sanjuro captures the pair of killers and sells them to
Seibei, but then tells Ushitora that it was
Seibei's men who caught them. An alarmed Ushitora rewards him for
his help. Ushitora then orders the kidnapping
of Seibei's son, whom 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. Anticipating this, Seibei kidnapped
Ushitora's woman. The next morning, she is exchanged for Seibei's
son.
Sanjuro learns that the woman, Nui, is the wife of a local farmer
who lost her to Ushitora over a gambling debt,
who then gave her away as chattel to Tokuemon in order to gain his
support. Sanjuro tricks Ushitora into
revealing the place where Nui is hidden, then kills the guards and
reunites the woman with her husband and son
and tells them to leave town immediately. Pretending to be on
Ushitora's side, Sanjuro is able to convince
Ushitora that the woman was kidnapped by Seibei's men. The gang war
escalates. Ushitora burns down Tazaemon's
silk warehouse, and Seibi retaliates by trashing Tokuemon's brewery.
After some time, Unosuke becomes suspicious
of Sanjuro and the circumstances surrounding Nui's escape.
Eventually Sanjuro is severely beaten and imprisoned
by Ushitora's thugs after Unosuke discovers evidence of his double
cross.
Sanjuro manages to escape when Ushitora decides to eliminate Seibei
once and for all. As he is being smuggled
out of town in a coffin by Gonji, he witnesses the brutal end of
Seibei, his family and his clan. Sanjuro
recuperates in a small temple near a cemetery. However, when he
learns that Gonji has been taken by Ushitora, he
returns to town. Sanjuro kills Ushitora, his men, and Unosuke. He
spares only one terrified young man he
encountered on his way into town. As Sanjuro surveys the damage,
Tazaemon comes out of his home, in a samurai
outfit and beating a prayer drum. Tazaemon circles around town and
then goes after and kills Tokuemon. Sanjuro
frees Gonji and then departs.
Influence: A Fistful of Dollars (1964)
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 A Fistful of Dollars, 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.
