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Yojimbo Overview:

Yojimbo (1961) was a Action - Crime Film directed by Akira Kurosawa and produced by Akira Kurosawa and Tomoyuki Tanaka.

Academy Awards 1961 --- Ceremony Number 34 (source: AMPAS)

AwardRecipientResult
Best Costume DesignYoshiro MurakiNominated
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Yojimbo BlogHub Articles:

Yojimbo (1961)

By Beatrice on Nov 27, 2014 From Flickers in Time

Yojimbo Directed by Akira Kurosawa Written by Akira Kurosawa and Ryûsô Kikushima 1961/Japan Kurosawa Production Company/Toho Company Repeat viewing/Criterion Collection DVD This is certainly the most fun film Kurasawa ever made. For all the violence, it just makes me smile. A ronin (masterle... Read full article

Kurosawa Classic: Yojimbo (用心棒)

By Rachel T on Apr 19, 2014 From Sunset Blvd

One of the best aspects of the study of cinema is watching the story of a magnificent art form unfold, and observing a kind of great conversation blossom between filmmakers across the world. In many ways, Yojimbo is the continuation of the classic Hollywood tradition; one need not look too deeply to... Read full article

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Yojimbo Quotes:

No Quote for this film.
Yojimbo Facts
Tatsuya Nakadai, who plays the flamboyant, pistol-waving Unosuke here, also plays the main villain role in the Yojimbo sequel, Sanjuro.
Akira Kurosawa challenged his assistant directors to come up with an image for the film to let Sanjuro know he was entering a bad town. He shot down all of their ideas, since all of them had already been done. Kurosawa himself then came up with the idea of the dog carrying the human hand.
Yojimbo is an uncredited film version of Dashiell Hammett's novel 'Red Harvest', which has yet to be filmed. Red Harvest is about a detective who comes to a small city and sets two sides of a gang war against one another until both gangs are almost completely wiped out. The scenes where Toshirô Mifune's character is held and beaten, however, was taken from Hammett's novel The Glass Key, which has been adapted for the screen twice.
Akira Kurosawa told Toshirô Mifune that his character was like a wolf or a dog and told Tatsuya Nakadai that his character was like a snake. Inspired by this direction, Mifune came up with Sanjuro's trademark shoulder twitch, similar to the way a dog or wolf tries to get off fleas.
Later remade as A Fistful of Dollars (American title 'A Fist Full of Dollars ' with Clint Eastwood and remade as Last Man Standing with Bruce Willis.
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