Akira Kurosawa described his 1961 hit Yojimbo as a tale of “rivalry on both sides, and both sides are equally bad… we are weakly caught in the middle, and it is impossible to choose between the evils”. Toshiro Mifune’s nameless rōnin pitches up a run-down village purely by chance, tossing a stick in the air at a fork in the road to choose which direction to take.
Though taking place in mid-19th century Japan, the sets reflect Kurosawa’s love of classic westerns, the scruffy buildings facing onto a dusty main street. The presence of a dog carrying a severed hand is a bad omen, a dispute over gambling rights between a saké distiller and a silk merchant having tipped over into bloody violence. There’s no law enforcement, and the only resident making any money is the coffin-maker.
This town, “full of men who deserve to die”, needs cleaning up. Mifune’s character, taking the name Sanjuro, is the man for the job. While the sword-fighting scenes are brilliantly choreographed, much of Yojimbo’s appeal is in watching how Sanjuro exploits and manipulates the two sides. Mifune’s portrayal softens as the film proceeds: he’s seen smiling as he overhears villagers gossiping about him and helps Yōko Tsukasa’s kidnapped Nui flee with her husband and son. After being brutally tortured, Sanjuro enlists bar-owner Gonji (Eijirō Tōno) to smuggle him to safety so he can recover, the latter’s shock at seeing his battered, bruised face prompting an exasperated Sanjuro to ask him to “do his staring later”.
That Tatsuya Nakadai’s villainous Unosuke uses a pistol instead of a sword in the final showdown is a sign that times are changing, and that Sanjuro’s character is becoming an anachronism. As Sanjuro leaves the village, his “See ya around” is an irresistible pay-off. Yojimbo was an international success, inspiring Sergio Leone to remake it in 1964 as A Fistful of Dollars, the young Clint Eastwood cast as the man-with-no name. Kurosawa saw it and wrote to Leone demanding compensation (“It is a very fine film, but it is my film”) and was awarded 15% of A Fistful of Dollars’ profits.
Sanjuro was released a year later, Kurosawa adapting a script he’d written before shooting Yojimbo to make Mifune’s character the hero. Tonally, it’s much more varied, scenes of light social comedy unfolding beside the fighting. Sanjuro’s scruffiness is in sharp contrast with the shaven heads and smart outfits of the nine young samurai he mentors, and much of the film takes place in smart bright interiors instead of Yojimbo’s crumbling village. Sanjuro looks increasingly out of place, one female character describing him as “a drawn sword” who’s too ready to kill. Mifune’s weary shrugs and eye rolling are a constant; it’s his intellect as much as his physical strength which is needed to resolve this knotty saga of diplomatic chicanery. Sanjuro gets to repeat his "see ya around" in the closing seconds, just after an bloody, brutal duel sequence.
It’s good to have both films in the same package, the BFI’s booklet containing excellent essays from Hayley Scanlon and Nigel Andrews – the former’s introduction outlining parallels between a modernising post-war Japan and the period depicted on screen. The bonus features are excellent too; I enjoyed Alex Cox’s succinct introductions, and Nic Wassell’s Out of the Dust Storm and Into the Koi Pond looks at the role of the natural world in each film.
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