Yojimbo

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Toshiro Mifune, one of Japan's greatest actors, known most especially for his sixteen films made for Akira Kurosawa. The Criterion Channel is running a retrospective, and I'm starting with one I saw many years ago and loved, Yojimbo.

Yojimbo was released in 1961, and many will note its similarities with the Sergio Leone film, A Fistful Of Dollars, which made Clint Eastwood a star. Indeed, that is a remake of Yojimbo, which was based on a book by Dashiell Hammett (and was made into a film again some years with Bruce Willis, Last Man Standing). What is essential to all three is that a wanderer, in this case a Samurai, comes across a town with rival factions and plays both sides against the other.

Mifune is the man with no name--although later he will tell someone his name is "Mulberry Field," who is so adrift that he allows a falling stick to point the direction where he will go. He finds a town where rival crime lords are at each other's throats. A restaurant owner advises him to leave, but Mifune tells him that he will stay, as he sees an opportunity to kill people and clean the town up.

Mifune is so great a swordsman that each side wants to make him a bodyguard (yojimbo means bodyguard), and he amuses himself by playing on the stupidity and greed of these rivals. As in most Westerns, which Kurosawa models this film on, Mifune will meet temporary defeat, being beaten within an inch of his life (note how often this happens to the protagonist in Westerns). Another Western trope that Kurosawa uses is the showdown on the main street, which is chillingly effective.

The translation even gets into the game, using words like "cahoots," or "We gotta talk." The last line, in English, is "See you around," which I imagine plays a little differently in the original Japanese, but is perfect here. Mifune also has a great line, as when the restaurant owner accuses Mifune of giving up. "I'm not dying yet," he barks, "I have a bunch of guys to kill."

Yojimbo is a lot of fun, and Mifune was sort of the Japanese version of Eastwood, or the other way around (he did come first). I also enjoyed realizing it is not set in medieval Japan, like so many other Samurai films, but in 1860. This was made clear when a character shows up with a pistol. It's like watching a film you think is set during the Napoleonic Wars and seeing an airplane.