Yojimbo

Production Budget Analysis

The production budget for Yojimbo (1961) has not been publicly disclosed.

CAST: Toshirō Mifune, Tatsuya Nakadai, Yōko Tsukasa, Isuzu Yamada, Daisuke Katō, Seizaburō Kawazu DIRECTOR: Akira Kurosawa CINEMATOGRAPHY: Kazuo Miyagawa MUSIC: Masaru Satō PRODUCTION: TOHO

Box Office Performance

Theatrical box office data is not publicly available for Yojimbo (1961). This may indicate a limited release, direct-to-streaming, or a release predating modern box office tracking.

Profitability Assessment

Insufficient publicly available data to assess profitability.

INDUSTRY IMPACT

Franchise: Yojimbo is part of the Sanjuro Collection.

Both in Japan and in the West, Yojimbo has influenced various forms of entertainment.

Yojimbo has been remade several times, starting with A Fistful of Dollars (1964), a Western directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood in his first appearance as the Man with No Name. Leone and his production company failed to secure the remake rights to Kurosawa's film, resulting in a lawsuit. It was settled out of court for an undisclosed agreement before the U.S. release. A second, looser western adaptation, Django (1966), was directed by Sergio Corbucci and featured Franco Nero in the title role. Other retellings include The Warrior and the Sorceress (1984), a sword and sorcery take, and Inferno (1999, aka Desert Heat). Last Man Standing (1996), a Prohibition-era action film directed by Walter Hill and starring Bruce Willis, is an official remake of Yojimbo: both Kikushima and Kurosawa specifically listed in this movie's credits as having provided the original story.

The film Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo (1970) features Mifune as a somewhat similar character. It is the twentieth of a series of movies featuring the blind swordsman Zatoichi. Although Mifune is clearly not playing the same "Yojimbo" as he did in the two Kurosawa films (his name is Sasa Daisaku , and his personality and background are different in many key respects), the movie's title and some of its content do intend to suggest the image of the two iconic jidaigeki characters confronting each other.

PRODUCTION NOTES

▸ Writing

Kurosawa stated that a major source for the plot was the 1942 film noir classic The Glass Key, an adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's 1931 novel of the same name. It has been noted that the overall plot of Yojimbo is closer to that of another Hammett novel, Red Harvest (1929). Kurosawa scholar David Desser, and film critic Manny Farber claim that Red Harvest was the inspiration for the film; however, Donald Richie and other scholars believe the similarities are coincidental.

When asked his name, the samurai calls himself "Kuwabatake Sanjuro", which he seems to make up while looking at a mulberry field by the town. Thus, the character can be viewed as an early example of the "Man with No Name" (other examples of which appear in several earlier works, including Red Harvest).

▸ Casting

Many of the actors in Yojimbo worked with Kurosawa before and after, especially Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura and Tatsuya Nakadai. Kannuki, Ushitora's giant enforcer, is played by Taiwanese-born Tsunagoro Rashomon (Zhao Yiyue), a former sumo wrestler and professional wrestler.

▸ Filming & Locations

After Kurosawa scolded Mifune for arriving late to the set one morning, Mifune made it a point to be ready on set at 6:00a.m. every day in full makeup and costume for the rest of the film's shooting schedule.

This was the second film where director Akira Kurosawa worked with cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa (the first being Rashomon in 1950). The sword instruction and choreography for the film were done by Yoshio Sugino of the Tenshin Shōden Katori Shintō-ryū and Ryū Kuze.

[Filming] After Kurosawa scolded Mifune for arriving late to the set one morning, Mifune made it a point to be ready on set at 6:00a.m. every day in full makeup and costume for the rest of the film's shooting schedule.

This was the second film where director Akira Kurosawa worked with cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa (the first being Rashomon in 1950). The sword instruction and choreography for the film were done by Yoshio Sugino of the Tenshin Shōden Katori Shintō-ryū and Ryū Kuze.

▸ Music & Score

The soundtrack for the film has received positive reviews. Michael Wood writing retrospectively for the London Review of Books found the film's soundtrack by Masaru Sato as effective in its "jaunty and jangling" approach stating:

The film is full of music, for instance, a loud, witty soundtrack by Masaru Sato, who said his main influence was Henry Mancini. It doesn't sound like Breakfast at Tiffany's, though, or Days of Wine and Roses. The blaring Latin sound of Touch of Evil comes closer, but actually you wouldn't think of Mancini if you hadn't been told. Sato's effect has lots of drums, mixes traditional Japanese flutes and other instruments with American big band noises, and feels jaunty and jangling throughout, discreetly off, as if half the band was playing in the wrong key. It's distracting at first, then you realise it's not decoration, it's commentary. It's a companion to Sanjuro, the sound of his mind, discordant and undefeated and unserious, even when he's grubby and silent and apparently solemn.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

Summary: Nominated for 1 Oscar. 5 wins & 2 nominations total

Nominations: ○ Academy Award for Best Costume Design, Black-and-White (34th Academy Awards)

CRITICAL RECEPTION

Yojimbo was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Costume Design at the 34th Academy Awards. Toshiro Mifune won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the 22nd Venice Film Festival.

A 1968 screening in the planned community of Columbia, Maryland was considered too violent for viewers, causing the hosts to hide in the bathroom to avoid the audience.

Pauline Kael described the film as Kurosawa's "first shaggy man" movie going on to call it a wonderful satire-comedy and "farce of force."

In a retrospective look at the film Michael Wood writing for the London Review of Books found the film to span several genres and compared it to other western and samurai films from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, such as Seven Samurai, A Fistful of Dollars, High Noon, The Outlaw Josey Wales, and Rashomon, stating, "(The film contains) comedy, satire, folk tale, action movie, Western, samurai film, and something like a musical without songs. As everyone says, this work is not as deep as Rashomon or as immediately memorable as Seven Samurai. But it is funnier than any Western from either side of the world, and its only competition, in a bleaker mode, would be Clint Eastwood’s The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)." Yojimbo was also ranked at #95 in Empire magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Films of All Time.