Yojimbo (1961)

Since its release in 1961, YOJIMBO has rightly earned its place as a celebrated masterpiece in world cinema, one of many for its director and co-writer Akira Kurosawa. It is the second of only four films Kurosawa made that could be considered jidai geki, period films set during the Tokugawa Shogunate. The latter part of this era, in the mid-1800s, was the most turbulent and saw the emergence of the merchant class, yakuza gangs, foreign influence, governmental corruption, and firearms. All of these factors contributed to the dissolution of the samurai and their way of life, thus providing endless inspiration for filmmakers of the 20th century to romanticize Japan’s sword-slingers, much as Hollywood glamorized the gunslingers of America’s Old West.

Of the many critically acclaimed works directed by Kurosawa, YOJIMBO stands apart, not only as one of his most famous and influential films, but also as uniquely brazen in its morbidly comical presentation. Well known for his reliance on Western influences, Kurosawa took familiar chambara and kabuki motifs and seamlessly melded them with elements of America’s stylized, hardboiled detective stories and Hollywood Westerns. With the unmatched charisma and presence of Toshiro Mifune in the role of a lifetime, outstanding cinematography from Kazuo Miyagawa and a brilliantly subversive, jazz-inspired soundtrack from Masaru Sato, Kurosawa ushered in a whole new breed of larger-than-life film heroes who would sweep world cinema into a frenzy.

In the story of YOJIMBO, Mifune is a wandering ronin using the nonsensical name of Sanjuro Kuwabatake, a reference to a “30-year-old Mulberry field.” After hearing about an opportunity well-suited for a freelance bodyguard, he enters a poor rural village oppressed by feuding crime bosses.

Seibei Manome (Seizaburo Kawazu) runs a brothel with his domineering wife, while his rival Ushitora Shinden runs an inn with his two younger brothers, a barbarous halfwit with a uni-brow named Inokichi (Daisuke Kato) and the cunning, pistol-packing Unosuke Shinden (Tatsuya Nakadai) wearing a distinctive plaid scarf around his neck.

Sanjuro befriends an aged innkeeper named Gonji (Eijiro Tono) who is fed up with the turmoil, but initially only sees Sanjuro as another opportunistic sword-for-hire sure to only add to the problem. Gonji gradually learns otherwise as Sanjuro’s initial attempt to play both yakuza bosses against each other by stoking open conflict, becomes a mission to rescue the wife of a peasant forced to serve Ushitora as a sex slave.

This concern and shift in goals proves to be Sanjuro’s weakness and he pays a heavy price at the hands of a brutish giant of a thug. As the town descends into chaos when war breaks out between the two gangs, a beaten and bloody Sanjuro struggles to make his escape with the aid of Gonji. After recovering while in hiding, Sanjuro learns that Gonji has been taken as a hostage by Ushitora and strides into town for a showdown with his gang, led by Unosuke.

With this film, Kurosawa effectively rewrote the book on making chambara movies and in the process created one of the most important films in the history of martial arts cinema, although it is highly unlikely he had that in mind.

While the finely-choreographed fight scenes are minimal compared to more action-oriented chambara and Hong Kong’s wuxia and kung fu output, Kurosawa’s film infuses the genre with an irreverent attitude and style that fit the emerging counterculture movement of the 1960s and ’70s like a glove. The film offers up a gritty, yet exaggerated reality of severed limbs, blood spurts, and a fantasy warrior with an Achilles’ heel, whose sole purpose on Earth is to be the karmic executioner, a merciless angel of death sent to punish unrepentant villainy.

This clearly struck a chord with audiences as it became a prevalent theme in many of the popular martial arts films of the 1960s and ’70s, from Tatsuya Nakadai’s surreal rampage in THE SWORD OF DOOM to Jimmy Wang Yu’s bloody purge of the martial world in GOLDEN SWALLOW.

YOJIMBO’s influence on martial arts cinema actually started with Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone, who gave birth to Spaghetti Westerns with his Western-themed YOJIMBO remake, A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS. This and subsequent Italian westerns gradually influenced kung fu moviemakers and distributors in Hong Kong and Taiwan, notably independent talents like Lee Tso-nam, Cheung San-yee and Jimmy Wang Yu who favored style over authenticity and copied various Spaghetti Western and chambara elements. The re-dubbed soundtracks of many international versions of kung fu movies even “borrowed” snippets from Spaghetti Western scores.

Yet it was the direct chambara influences on master martial arts filmmaker Chang Cheh that has had the greatest impact on martial arts cinema, most evident in his early wuxia films including THE ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN and HAVE SWORD, WILL TRAVEL. Classical Chinese sword heroes became scarred and tormented harbingers of death contending with seemingly overwhelming odds, much as Mifune’s weakened character in YOJIMBO vowed to strike down his enemies.

This is without a doubt Toshiro Mifune’s most iconic film performance and provided one of the more memorable roles for his co-star Tatsuya Nakadai. Both stars returned for Kurosawa’s sequel SANJURO and went on to appear in numerous chambara movies afterwards, sometimes together as in SAMURAI REBELLION. Often, their roles were similar to their YOJIMBO characters. Once Shintaro Katsu became a sensation as Zatoichi, he was paired with Mifune twice. In AMBUSH AT BLOOD PASS and ZATOICHI MEETS YOJIMBO, Mifune essentially reprised his famous role.

YOJIMBO is more than just a great movie from a great filmmaker. It clearly defines a unique action film language dominated by tone and gargantuan personalities that serves to accentuate violence within common surroundings and propel it to mythical levels. Although generally removed from the core values of martial arts promoted in film by key figures such as Lau Kar-leung and actor Jet Li, this language has been a lightning rod for the genre, especially in Japan where stylized martial violence in chambara and especially anime is continually reinvented with each generation, from ZATOICHI to AZUMI, NINJA SCROLL to SAMURAI CHAMPLOO.