Yojimbo

Yojimbo (用心棒, Yōjinbō, "Bodyguard") is a 1961 Japanese samurai film directed by Akira Kurosawa, who produced the film with Tomoyuki Tanaka and Ryūzō Kikushima. Kurosawa wrote the screenplay with Kikushima and Hideo Oguni based on Kurosawa's story. Kurosawa also edited the film and 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.

For other uses, see Yojimbo (disambiguation).
Yojimbo
Theatrical release poster
Directed byAkira Kurosawa
Produced by
Screenplay by
Story byAkira Kurosawa
Starring
Music byMasaru Sato[1]
CinematographyKazuo Miyagawa[1]
Edited byAkira Kurosawa[1]
Production
company
  • Kurosawa Production
  • Toho
Distributed byToho[1]
Release date
  • 25 April 1961 (1961-04-25) (Japan)
Running time
110 minutes[1]
CountryJapan
LanguageJapanese
Box office$2.5 million (est.)

Based on the success of Yojimbo, Kurosawa's next film, Sanjuro (1962), was altered to incorporate the lead character of this film.[2][3] In both films, the character wears a rather dilapidated dark kimono bearing the same family mon.

The film was released and produced by Toho on April 25, 1961. Yojimbo received highly positive reviews, and, over the years, became widely regarded as one of the best films by Kurosawa and one of the greatest films ever made. The film grossed an estimated $2.5 million worldwide, equivalent to more than $130 million adjusted for inflation. It was unofficially remade by Sergio Leone as the Spaghetti Western film A Fistful of Dollars (1964),[4] leading to a lawsuit by Toho.

Plot

In 1860, during the final years of the Edo period and the demise of the Tokugawa shogunate,[lower-alpha 1] a rōnin 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, a silk merchant named Tazaemon, had long been in Seibei's pocket, and Ushitora aligned himself with the local 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 (桑畑三十郎), where 桑畑 Kuwabatake = "mulberry field" and where 三十郎 Sanjuro ("thirty-years-old").[lower-alpha 2]

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 (a government official) forces both sides to make a bloodless retreat and cease their war.

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 killers and sells them to Seibei, but then tells Ushitora that it was Seibei's men who caught them. An alarmed Ushitora rewards him generously 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 a betrayal, Seibei kidnaps Ushitora’s mistress. 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, with Ushitora burning down Tazaemon's silk warehouse and Seibei retaliating by trashing Tokuemon's brewery. After some time, Unosuke becomes suspicious of Sanjuro and the circumstances surrounding Nui's escape, eventually uncovering evidence of the ronin's betrayal. Sanjuro is severely beaten and imprisoned by Ushitora's thugs, who torture him to find out Nui's whereabouts.

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 captured by Ushitora, he returns to town. Sanjuro confronts Ushitora, Unosuke and their men, taking on all of them by himself in a duel and killing them easily. He spares only one terrified young man, who turns out to be the youth he met on the way into town, and sends him back to his parents. As Sanjuro surveys the damage, Tazaemon comes out of his home, in a samurai outfit and beating a prayer drum. Driven mad, he circles around town and then goes after Tokuemon, stabbing him to death. Sanjuro frees Gonji, proclaims that the town will be quiet from then on, and departs.

Cast
  • Toshiro Mifune as "Kuwabatake Sanjuro" (桑畑 三十郎), a wandering ronin and master swordsman drawn into a gang war.
  • Eijirō Tōno as Gonji (権爺), the izakaya (tavern) owner and the ronin's ally and confidant.
  • Tatsuya Nakadai as Unosuke (卯之助), a gun-toting gangster and younger brother to both Ushitora and Inokichi.
  • Seizaburo Kawazu as Seibei (清兵衛), the original boss of the town's underworld. He operates out of a brothel.
  • Kyū Sazanka as Ushitora (丑寅), the other gang leader in town. He was originally Seibei's lieutenant but broke ranks to start his own syndicate in a succession dispute.
  • Isuzu Yamada as Orin (おりん), the wife of Seibei and the brains behind her husband's criminal operations.
  • Daisuke Katō as Inokichi (亥之吉), younger brother of Ushitora and older brother to Unosuke. He is a strong fighter, but is very dim-witted.
  • Takashi Shimura as Tokuemon (徳右衛門), a sake brewer who claims to be the new mayor.
  • Hiroshi Tachikawa as Yoichiro (倅与一郎), the timid son of Seibei and Orin who shows little inclination to take over his father's gang.
  • Yosuke Natsuki as Farmer's Son, a young man seen running away from home at the beginning of the film who joins Ushitora's gang.
  • Kamatari Fujiwara as Tazaemon (多左衛門), the town mayor and silk merchant who is going insane from fear.
  • Ikio Sawamura as Hansuke (半助), the town constable who is completely corrupt and concerned only with keeping himself alive.
  • Atsushi Watanabe as the town's Coffin Maker, who is profiting heavily from the gang war but ultimately chooses to help Sanjuro and Gonji put an end to it.
  • Susumu Fujita as Honma (本間), Seibei's "master swordsman" who deserts his employer before a battle with Ushitora's men.
  • Yoko Tsukasa as Nui (ぬい), the wife of Kohei. She was taken prisoner by Tokuemon because of her beauty after her husband could not pay back his gambling debts.
  • Yoshio Tsuchiya as Kohei (小平), the husband of Nui who lost all of his money gambling and frequently gets beaten for trying to visit his wife.
  • Namigoro Rashomon as Kannuki, Ushitora's giant enforcer.

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).[5] 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.[6]

When asked his name, the samurai calls himself "Kuwabatake Sanjuro", 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).[7]

Casting

Many of the actors in Yojimbo worked with Kurosawa before and after, especially Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura and Tatsuya Nakadai.[8]

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.[9]

This was the second film where director Akira Kurosawa worked with cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa.[10] The sword instruction and choreography for the film were done by Yoshio Sugino of the Tenshin Shōden Katori Shintō-ryū and Ryū Kuze.[11]

Music

The soundtrack for the film has received positive reviews. Michael Wood writing for the London Review of Books found the film's soundtrack by Masaru Sato as effective in its 'jaunty and jangling' approach stating:[12]

The film is full of music, for instance, a loud, witty soundtrack by Masaru Sato, who said his main influence was Henry Mancini. It doesn’t sound like Breakfast at Tiffany’s, though, or Days of Wine and Roses. The blaring Latin sound of Touch of Evil comes closer, but actually you wouldn’t think of Mancini if you hadn’t been told. Sato’s effect has lots of drums, mixes traditional Japanese flutes and other instruments with American big band noises, and feels jaunty and jangling throughout, discreetly off, as if half the band was playing in the wrong key. It’s distracting at first, then you realise it’s not decoration, it’s commentary. It’s a companion to Sanjuro, the sound of his mind, discordant and undefeated and unserious, even when he’s grubby and silent and apparently solemn.[13]

Release

Yojimbo was released in Japan on 25 April 1961.[1] The film was released by Seneca International in both a subtitled and dubbed format in the United States in September 1961.[1]

Reception

Box office

Yojimbo was Japan's fourth highest-grossing film of 1961, earning a distribution rental income of ¥351 million.[14] This was equivalent to estimated box office gross receipts of approximately ¥659 million[15] ($1.83 million).[16]

Overseas, the film had a September 1961 release in North America, but the box office income of this release is currently unknown.[17] At the 2002 Kurosawa & Mifune Festival in the United States, the film grossed $561,692.[18] In South Korea, a 2012 re-release grossed ₩1.566 million[19] ($1,390).

In Europe, a January 1991 limited French re-release sold 14,178 tickets,[20] equivalent to an estimated gross revenue of approximately €63,801[21] ($87,934).[22] Other limited European re-releases sold 3,392 tickets between 2000 and 2018,[23] equivalent to an estimated gross revenue of at least €18,995[21] ($27,934). This adds up to an estimated $678,950 grossed overseas, and an estimated $2,508,950 grossed worldwide.

Adjusted for ticket price inflation, at 2012 Japanese ticket prices, its Japanese gross receipts are equivalent to an estimated ¥9.75 billion[15] ($122 million), or $136 million adjusted for inflation in 2019. The overseas gross revenue of North American and European re-releases since 1991 are equivalent to approximately $1.3 million adjusted for inflation, adding up to an estimated inflation-adjusted total gross of over $137 million worldwide.

Critical response

Yojimbo ranked at #95 in Empire magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Films of All Time.[24] 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.[25] The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Costume Design at the 34th Academy Awards. Toshiro Mifune won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the 22nd Venice Film Festival.

Michael Wood writing for the London Review of Books found the film to span several genres and compared it to films such as Seven Samurai, A Fistful of Dollars, High Noon, The Outlaw Josey Wales, and Rashomon stating, "(The film contains) comedy, satire, folk tale, action movie, Western, samurai film, and something like a musical without songs. As everyone says, this work is not as deep as Rashomon or as immediately memorable as Seven Samurai. But it is funnier than any Western from either side of the world, and its only competition, in a bleaker mode, would be Clint Eastwood’s The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)".[26]

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 an 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 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.

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".[27][28][29]

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 "Yojimbo"[30] as he did in the two Kurosawa films (his name is Sasa Daisaku 佐々大作, 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, stars Mifune as a ronin who looks and acts even more similarly to Sanjuro and is referred to simply as "Yojimbo"[31] throughout the film, but whose name is actually Shinogi Tōzaburō (鎬刀三郎).[32] As was the case with Sanjuro, this character's surname of Shinogi (鎬) 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.[33]

The Warrior and the Sorceress is another resetting of the story, this one in a fantasy world.[34]

Last Man Standing (1996) is a Prohibition-era action film directed by Walter Hill and starring Bruce Willis. It is an official remake of Yojimbo with both Kikushima and Kurosawa specifically listed in this movie's credits as having provided the original story.[35]

Albert Pyun's 1996 science fiction film Omega Doom is a loose remake of Yojimbo set in the future featuring Rutger Hauer playing both sides in a battle between robots and humans.

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.[36]

References
Notes
  1. On screen text at about 00:02:15
  2. 三十郎 Sanjuro is a proper given name (and therefore could very well be the rōnin's true name), but it can also be interpreted as meaning "thirty-years-old".

Footnotes
  1. Galbraith IV 1996, p. 448.
  2. Richie, Donald. The films of Akira Kurosawa. p. 156.
  3. Yoshinari Okamoto (director) (2002). Kurosawa Akira: Tsukuru to iu koto wa subarashii [Akira Kurosawa: It is Wonderful to Create] (in Japanese).
  4. "Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars and the curious case of Kurosawa vs Leone - Entertainment News, Firstpost". Firstpost. 2017-12-18. Retrieved 2020-07-17.
  5. 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.
  6. Barra, Allen (2005). "From Red Harvest to Deadwood". Salon. Archived from the original on 2008-12-05. Retrieved 2006-06-22.
  7. Dashiell Hammett. Red Harvest. ISBN 0-679-72261-0.
  8. "Kurosawa's Actors". kurosawamovies.com. Retrieved 18 November 2016.
  9. 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.
  10. Bergan, Ronald. "Kazuo Miyagawa The innovative Japanese cinematographer whose reputation was made by Rashomon". theguardian.com. Retrieved 18 November 2016.
  11. Li, Christopher. "Interview with Yoshio Sugino of Katori Shinto-ryu, 1961". aikidosangenkai.org. Retrieved 18 November 2016.
  12. London Review of Books, Vol. 29 No. 4 · 22 February 2007, page 17, At the Movies, Michael Wood, Yojimbo directed by Akira Kurosawa.
  13. London Review of Books, Vol. 29 No. 4 · 22 February 2007, page 17, At the Movies, Michael Wood, Yojimbo directed by Akira Kurosawa.
  14. キネマ旬報ベスト・テン85回全史 1924-2011. Kinema Junpo. Kinema Junposha. May 2012. p. 180. ISBN 978-4873767550.
  15. "Statistics of Film Industry in Japan". Eiren. Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
  16. "Official exchange rate (LCU per US$, period average) - Japan". World Bank. 1961. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
  17. "Yojimbo". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
  18. "Kurosawa & Mifune Festival". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
  19. "영화정보" [Movie Information]. KOFIC (in Korean). Korean Film Council. Retrieved 26 August 2019.
  20. "Yojimbo (1961)". JP's Box-Office (in French). Retrieved 20 June 2020.
  21. "Cinema market". Cinema, TV and radio in the EU: Statistics on audiovisual services (Data 1980-2002). Europa (2003 ed.). Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. 2003. pp. 31–64 (61). ISBN 92-894-5709-0. ISSN 1725-4515. Retrieved 23 May 2020.
  22. "Historical currency converter with official exchange rates (EUR)". 31 January 1991. Retrieved 23 May 2020.
  23. "Film #16103: Yojimbo". LUMIERE. European Audiovisual Observatory. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
  24. "The 500 Greatest Movies Of All Time". Empire. Bauer Media Group. Archived from the original on 2011-08-14. Retrieved August 17, 2011.
  25. Joseph Rocco Mitchell, David L. Stebenne. New City Upon a Hill. p. 116.
  26. London Review of Books, Vol. 29 No. 4 · 22 February 2007, page 17, At the Movies, Michael Wood, Yojimbo directed by Akira Kurosawa.
  27. Marco Giusti, Dizionario del western all'italiana, 1st ed. Milan, Mondadori, August 2007. ISBN 978-88-04-57277-0.
  28. Django (Django: The One and Only) (DVD). Los Angeles, California: Blue Underground. 1966.
  29. Alex Cox, 10,000 Ways to Die: A Director's Take on the Spaghetti Western, Oldcastle Books, September 1, 2009. ISBN 978-1842433041.
  30. "archive.animeigo.com liner notes". Retrieved 2018-08-18.
  31. "archive.animeigo.com liner notes". Retrieved 2018-08-18.
  32. "Machibuse (eiga.com)". Retrieved 2018-08-17.
  33. Barra, Allen (17 August 2010). "That Nameless Stranger, Half a Century Later". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 10 January 2012.
  34. DVD Talk - Roger Corman's Cult Classics Double Feature: The Warrior and the Sorceress/Barbarian Queen
  35. "A Comparison of 'Yojimbo', 'A Fistful of Dollars' and 'Last Man Standing'". Retrieved 2018-08-19.
  36. "Samurai Jack: Season 1 : DVD Talk Review of the DVD Video". Dvdtalk.com. Retrieved 2014-04-08.

Sources
  • Galbraith IV, Stuart (1996). The Japanese Filmography: 1900 through 1994. McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-0032-3.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
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