Yojimbo DVD
Yojimbo is a 1961 jidaigeki (period drama) film directed by Akira Kurosawa. It tells the story of a ronin (masterless samurai), portrayed by ToshirÅ Mifune, who arrives in a small town where competing crime lords make their money from gambling. The ronin convinces each crime lord to hire him as protection from the other. By careful political maneuvering and the use of his sword, he brings peace, but only by encouraging both sides to wipe each other out in bloody battles. The title of the film translates as “bodyguard”. The ronin calls himself Kuwabatake Sanjuro (meaning “Mulberry Field thirty-year-old”), which he seems to make up while looking at a mulberry field by the town.
The film’s look and themes were in part inspired by the western film genre, in particular the films of John Ford. The characters—the taciturn loner and the helpless townsfolk needing a protector—are reminiscent of Kurosawa’s own The Seven Samurai (1954) and have become western archetypes. The cinematography also mimics conventional shots in western films, such as that of the lone hero in a wide shot, facing an enemy or enemies from a distance while the wind kicks up dust between the two.
Kurosawa stated that a major source for the plot was the film noir classic The Glass Key (1942), an adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s 1931 novel. However, it has been noted that the overall plot of Yojimbo is actually much closer to that of another Hammett novel, Red Harvest (1929).
Many of the actors in Yojimbo worked with Kurosawa before and after, especially ToshirÅ Mifune, Takashi Shimura and Tatsuya Nakadai.
At one point the hero, beaten, disarmed and left for dead, recovers in a small hut where he practices with his throwing knife by pinning a fluttering leaf. This effect was created by reversing the film: in reality, the leaf was pinned, the knife yanked away by a wire, and the leaf blown away.
Yojimbo stars Toshirô Mifune and Eijirô Tôno
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