Yojimbo

Yojimbo (Japanese 用心棒, literally Bodyguard) is a Japanese jidaigeki film directed by Akira Kurosawa and produced by Toho and Kurosawa Production. It premiered in Japan on 25 April 1961. The story is set in 1860, at the end of the Edo period (bakumatsu). A masterless swordsman, Kuwabatake Sanjuro, played by Toshiro Mifune, arrives in a town controlled by two hostile yakuza gangs competing over gambling, and begins to set them against each other. The martial component of the film is Japanese swordsmanship with the sword. The sword instruction and choreography were prepared by Yoshio Sugino, a representative of the Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto-ryu school, together with Ryu Kuze. Kurosawa named Hammett's The Glass Key as the source of the story. Researchers, by contrast, see a closer match with Hammett's Red Harvest (1929); whether this is intentional or coincidence is unclear. Toshiro Mifune won the Volpi Cup for best actor at the 22nd Venice Film Festival for the role. Sergio Leone drew on Yojimbo when making A Fistful of Dollars (1964).

Martial arts in this work

Fight choreography

Yoshio Sugino, a representative of the Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto-ryu school, provided the film's sword instruction and choreography. The fights in this jidaigeki were thus prepared by a representative of a traditional Japanese sword school. Ryu Kuze is also named for instruction and choreography; we have not been able to establish his school or whether he practised swordsmanship himself. We did not find in the sources how the fights were filmed, or whether Toshiro Mifune, who plays the main swordsman Kuwabatake Sanjuro, practised swordsmanship himself.

Influence

Sergio Leone made A Fistful of Dollars (1964) based on Yojimbo without obtaining the rights. A lawsuit over the borrowing of the story followed, which the parties settled out of court before the American premiere of Leone's film; the terms of the agreement were not made public. Other works also follow Kurosawa's film: Django (1966) by director Sergio Corbucci and Last Man Standing (1996) by director Walter Hill. A direct sequel to Yojimbo itself is the film Sanjuro (1962).

People and martial arts

• Akira KurosawaDirector
• Yoshio SuginoFight choreographer· Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto-ryu (real practitioner)
• Ryu KuzeFight choreographer
• Toshiro MifuneActor — as Sanjuro· Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto-ryu (real practitioner)

Awards

• Won · Benátský filmový festival – Volpi Cup, nejlepší herec (1961) — Toshiro Mifune