The next morning, she is exchanged for Yoichiro. However, Ushitora double-crosses Seibei at the swap when his brother, Unosuke, shoots the assassins with a pistol anticipating this, Seibei reveals he had ordered the kidnapping of Tokuemon’s mistress. An alarmed Ushitora rewards him generously for his help and orders the kidnapping of Yoichiro, whom he offers in exchange for the two prisoners. With this knowledge, Sanjuro captures the killers and sells them to Seibei, but then tells Ushitora that it was Seibei's men who caught them. Sanjuro soon realizes that Ushitora sent two men to commit the murder when he overhears them discussing it in Gonji's tavern. The bugyō leaves soon after to investigate the murder of a fellow official in another town. His plan is foiled due to the unexpected arrival of a bugyō (a government official), which gives both Seibei and Ushitora the opportunity to make a bloodless retreat and cease their war. Sanjuro leads the attack on the other faction, but then "resigns" over Seibei's treachery, expecting both sides to massacre each other. However, Sanjuro eavesdrops on Seibei's wife, who orders Yoichiro to prove himself by killing the ronin after the upcoming raid, saving them from having to pay him. Seibei decides that with the ronin's swordsmanship, the time is right to deal with Ushitora. When asked his name, he sees a mulberry field and states his name is Kuwabatake Sanjuro ( 桑畑三十郎), where 桑畑 Kuwabatake = "mulberry field" and where 三十郎 Sanjuro ("thirty-years-old"). He first convinces the weaker Seibei to hire his services by effortlessly killing three of Ushitora's men. The town's mayor, a silk merchant named Tazaemon, had long been in Seibei's pocket, so Ushitora aligned himself with the local sake brewer, Tokuemon, proclaiming him the new mayor.Īfter sizing up the situation and recognizing that no one in town cares about ending the violence, the stranger says he intends to stay, as the town would be better off with both sides dead. He tells the rōnin that the two warring bosses, Ushitora and Seibei, are fighting over the lucrative gambling trade run by Seibei Ushitora had been Seibei's right-hand man but rebelled when Seibei decided that his successor would be his son Yoichiro, a useless youth. The stranger heads to the town where he meets Gonji, the owner of a small izakaya who advises him to leave. While stopping at a farmhouse for water, he overhears an elderly couple lamenting that their only son, not wanting to waste his life as a farmer, has run off to join the "gamblers" who have descended on a nearby town overrun with criminals and divided between two rival bosses. In 1860, during the final years of the Edo period, a rōnin wanders through a desolate Japanese countryside. It was unofficially remade by Sergio Leone as the Spaghetti Western film A Fistful of Dollars (1964), leading to a lawsuit by Toho. The film grossed an estimated $2.5 million worldwide with a budget of ¥90.87 million. Yojimbo received highly positive reviews, and, over the years, became widely regarded as one of the best films by Kurosawa and one of the greatest films ever made. The film was released and produced by Toho on April 25, 1961. In both films, the character wears a rather dilapidated dark kimono bearing the same family mon. The two bosses each try to hire the newcomer as a bodyguard.īased on the success of Yojimbo, Kurosawa's next film, Sanjuro (1962), was altered to incorporate the lead character of this film. In the film, a rōnin arrives in a small town where competing crime lords vie for supremacy. The film stars Toshiro Mifune, Tatsuya Nakadai, Yoko Tsukasa, Isuzu Yamada, Daisuke Katō, Takashi Shimura, Kamatari Fujiwara, and Atsushi Watanabe. ' Bodyguard ') is a 1961 Japanese samurai film co-written, produced, edited, and directed by Akira Kurosawa. Yojimbo ( Japanese: 用心棒, Hepburn: Yōjinbō, lit.
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