Yojimbo (1961)

Akira Kurosawa | 1hr 50min

Whenever Toshiro Mifune’s rōnin strides through the streets of the small Japanese town in Yojimbo, he always seems to be accompanied by dust swirling in whirlwinds around his feet, underscoring his subtle yet formidable command over the atmosphere itself. He moves in straight lines, unwavering in his confrontation of whatever danger lies ahead of him, and supremely confidently that it too will bend to his mere presence.

He isn’t wrong in his self-assurance either. Akira Kurosawa builds a complex ensemble of characters in this gripping narrative, dividing many of them between two rival crime rings who have taken control of the town’s local trades, and each bidding for the service of this mysterious yet powerful newcomer who has wandered into their midst. When they barter for his protection, he does not even need words to push them up to the price he knows he is worth, instead simply meeting them with a cold, stoic silence. He is factionless, unswayed by their political ambitions and promises, and yet still recognising the necessity of at least some temporary alliances to achieve his ulterior motives – eliminating both warring gangs once and for all, and restoring peace to the village.

Even the identity of this wandering samurai seems concocted on a whim, taking inspiration from a nearby shrub when he is asked his name – Kuwabatake Sanjuro, or ‘thirty-year-old mulberry bush.’ He does not associate himself with any great clan of Japan’s Edo period, nor does he need to when his skill with a sword speaks entirely for itself. He is simultaneously every hero ever spoken about in Japanese folklore, and nobody at all.

The precedent that Mifune sets for Clint Eastwood’s own Man with No Name in Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy is clear, with both being framed as lone figures that have walked straight out of legend and into the real world, though this shouldn’t be a surprise though given that Yojimbo was remade in the first film of that trilogy, A Fistful of Dollars. For all the rich aesthetic and cultural details unique to Japanese history here, pitting sake brewers against silk merchants in beautifully rustic sets, its structure speaks to far broader narrative conventions built into Eastern and Western mythology.

Kurosawa’s love of Shakespeare is evident in the intricate power struggles between the rival crime lords, with Ushitora having previously served as Seibei’s lieutenant before striking out on his own, and both now playing out their feud through kidnapping and trading hostages. It takes Sanjuro’s wit and manipulation to trick both gangs into their first public confrontation, seeing them nervously inching towards each other from either end of the main street while he sits on the sidelines, gleefully cackling at their exposed cowardice and hoping for mutually assured destruction.

The sudden arrival of a government official is all the excuse they need to prematurely halt the battle before any major loss, though tensions have been irreversibly inflamed. When Ushitora’s sadistic brother Unosuke enters the picture, Kurosawa kicks the stakes up another notch, painting him as a ferocious adversary as he stands with a manic grin in front of the warehouse he has set alight. After Mifune, Tatsuya Nakadai gives the next best performance here as Sanjuro’s villainous foil, possessing a similarly cunning mind yet lacking any sort of moral code. It is thanks to him after all that the feud continues to violently escalate, seeing the other gang match Unosuke’s destructive spectacle by stabbing holes in all their enemy’s sake barrels, and erupting fountains of alcohol across the brewery.

True to Kurosawa’s penchant for such dynamic imagery, Yojimbo is brimming with visual majesty, using its widescreen aspect ratio and deep focus as a rich canvas for his epic showdowns. In his long shots of the town’s main road, he effectively turns it into a battle arena lined with taverns and homes that host nervous spectators. There is little privacy to be founded in these establishments, many of which are only separated by wooden beams that intrusively obstruct Kurosawa’s shots, while dramatic high and low angles bring a daunting gravity to the action unfolding just outside. The percussive, jazz-adjacent score that Masaru Sato injects into these scenes is not at all conventional fit for a film so rooted in the samurai genre, and yet the fusion here of jaunty, brassy melodies and traditional Japanese instruments rings out with a discordant confidence that matches Mifune’s own defiant, swaggering presence, similarly bucking cultural conventions.

It isn’t until the film’s extraordinary climax though that Kurosawa unites all these formal and stylistic elements together into its greatest scene, building a steady rhythm in the editing between Sanjuro’s restrained stride up one end of the road, and Unosuke leading his yakuza down the other. The dust which once blew in small flurries around Mifune’s feet is now whipped into the air through enormous gusts of wind, lashing his robes and hair while he persistently moves forward at the same measured pace, and in total command of his environment. With each cut between him and Nakadai, Kurosawa’s camera moves incrementally closer to both, studying their furious expressions until their shared acknowledgment registers – both men know this final fight will be the end for one of them.

Even when up armed with a gun, Unosuke is no match for Sanjuro’s blades, finding himself incapacitated almost right away when a dagger is thrown into his arm. Our hero makes short work of the rest of his men, cutting each of them down with his sword and only granting mercy to one young man he realises still holds onto a shred of innocence and regret. Like John Wayne at the end of The Searchers though, or Alan Ladd in the final scene of Shane, Sanjuro cannot continue living in the peaceful new paradise he has established, free from danger and crime. Kurosawa’s mythologising has rarely been so potent as it is here in Yojimbo’s circular arc, leading this lonely samurai back into the realm of wilderness and legend where he came from, ready to emerge whenever Japan’s commonfolk are most in need.

Yojimbo is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel. You can also buy Yojimbo on DVD from Amazon.