Just the Ticket #193: Yojimbo
a.k.a. The Ticketmaster.
Nearly forty issues of Just the Ticket and one year ago, I reviewed Last Man Standing, wherein I gave a first hour (or so I thought, until I realized that I didn't remember anything past the thirty-minute mark) first impression of the movie that it and Sergio Leone's A Fistful Of Dollars were adapted from. And seeing as how I have some unfinished business with Yojimbo, I knew immediately that it should be the Friday feature for Samurai Week in the month of Anime August, even before I replaced my regular New Comic Book Day and Throwback Thursday content with a Snow White mockbuster and Seven Samurai, respectively. The timing was practically fated to be; chosen by the tossing of a stick or the spin of a bottle.
I will attempt to edit the following reprint of Just the Ticket #154: Last Man Standing (List Lookback) FROM August 30, 2024 to separate my opinions of Yojimbo from the lesser context of its later adaptation before continuing on with a fresh perspective on the remainder of the film, as I watch the Kurosawa classic anew from the beginning.
The villains—or rather, the status quo perpetuators of systemic corruption, because Kurosawa seems to write his characters akin to the film stock available at the time (in shades of grey)—for example, are yakuza families with differing and competing vice-based enterprises (gambling vs. prostitution), and the protagonist (Toshiro Mifune's Sanjuro - a Usual Suspects-style pseudonym) is given a clear but simple motive for his change in tactics: Sanjuro has morality. Yes, he is initially just a master-less samurai looking to make money (and it's demonstrably clear that he has none), and his overhearing the matriarch of the Seibei family planning to betray him is a clear motivator, but even before that, he has already decided that the derelict town would be better off with both families dead, and it's only a matter of waiting for the right opportunity to act.
As I said above, the half-hour point (following Sanjuro's eavesdropping on Seibei and his wife) is the most I can recall from when I stopped watching last year, partly for time constraint reasons. Those are still a factor, unfortunately, but I have since long distanced myself from remake bias and the stigma of long-form, subtitled content. So with my mind fresh and a new appreciation for Toshiro Mifune, let's get back to the samurai with no master, no allegiance but to morality and money, and no known real name!
Sanjuro is a more subdued, methodical, calculating character performance for Mifune (more akin to Kambei in Seven Samurai than to his own portrayal of Kikuchiyo in that film, though Sanjuro and Kikuchiyo have their similarities, such as their use of fake names to achieve their goals) with bouts of explosive but easily tamed aggression when it comes time for battle (and the sword fights in Yojimbo are quick, savage, and understandably bloodless, but have some cool dismemberment effects for the time). Watching and hearing the wheels turn in Sanjuro's brain as he almost nonchalantly plays both crime families against each other is when Yojimbo is at its best.
That feeling holds until we're introduced to Unosuke (The Human Condition trilogy's Tatsuya Nakadai in his second film credit), the creepy, shrewd, volatile younger brother in the Ushitora family (the gambling racketeers). He brings genuine menace to the film and may be one of the first instances of the "wanna see something cool?" trope (he says "interesting" because "cool" wasn't popular slang yet in the 50s, but I'm counting it) when he reveals that he has the movie's only gun. His cocky attitude and unsettling, grinning, too-handsome face, the gun, and his intellect (a trait we don't see often in self-assured villains in modern day fiction) make him a presence onscreen. Unosuke is like a sadistic genius slasher villain in a samurai movie, and I dig it.
What I didn't dig as much was the third act, where Sanjuro's double-agency shenanigans start to wear thin (maybe Yojimbo could have been edited down a bit more?), and Unosuke catches on to his betrayal (the cover-up scene where Sanjuro wipes out six men to reunite a gambling debtor and his imprisoned wife, then stages the carnage of a larger fight was incredible) and has the family enforcer Kannuki (Taku Iyaku, an actor and possible Japanese wrestler with acromegaly whom I couldn't find much about online) torture him and beat him nearly to death...until plot contrivance and offscreen rest bring Sanjuro back to fighting shape while he watches the two crime families wipe each other out (also mostly offscreen), then finishes the job and leaves, as if a town with three businesses and no population can possibly function on its own.
Add on the opening conceit of the rōnin arriving there by chance, and the larger implications of the yakuza's influence (killing someone in the next town over to distract a visiting inspector—a character we never see—so they can keep killing each other) in the movie's world, and suddenly a brilliant story of psychological warfare becomes almost silly, if not cynical about its own premise. Can one man truly change the world for the better if he has the right tools and timing? Or are we all just narrow-minded, self-serving fools operating at the whim of society and fate, destroying the bigger picture because there's one pixel of it we don't agree with like life is one morbid, unending game of r/place?
I understand that may be the point of Yojimbo, but as a narrative divorced of its message, it's bad writing, and with its message, it's still a bleak statement of the human condition that maybe needs to be heard right now, but is also too nihilistic to explore sincerely.
C+
That's the best grade I could think of to give Yojimbo. As a Kurosawa joint with Mifune in the lead and a villain like Unosuke keeping things interesting, it didn't feel right to just rage-fail it for the ending and the pacing. But I feel like I would have given it an undeservedly high grade as a direct comparison to Seven Samurai.
A hot take to end the week on, I know. But that's what I'm going with.
Yojimbo did prove popular enough at the time that a script treatment of Shūgorō Yamamoto's short story Hibi Heian was re-written into a sequel, titled Sanjuro. I may watch it next year, or I may not, depending on a coin-flip.
If you enjoyed Samurai Week (or even if you're just here to scroll & lol), please Stay Tuned to see what plans I may retcon next week, and as always, remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, help out my ad revenue as you read so I don't die playing both sides for a paycheck, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.
Ticketrōnin,
My Work Here Is Done.
Ticketrōnin,
My Work Here Is Done.
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