Producer: Ryuzo Kikushima, Akira Kurosawa, Tomoyuki Tanaka One can imagine Heigo being very proud of his younger brother's Very much and I have never gotten over this feeling of loss." I know now what he must have been feeling. He looked at me, looked into my eyes, and then we parted. He started up the stairs and I had started to walk off, then he stopped andĬalled me back. Was all for today, that I should go home. Taken me to a movie in the Yamate district and afterwards he said that that One day he went into the mountains of Yugashima and killed himself. He had a pass since he worked for a theater,Īnd I used to go to the movies for free. Kodan (a story-telling entertainment where traditional samurai tales "He would take me to yose (traditional Japanese vaudeville) and to Heigo liked to playĪround with art and it looked frivolous- that is why father always had it in Was a former soldier and retained a soldier's outlook. His way of life was too much for him because father Listeners with his detailed psychological descriptions. He specialized in foreign silent films and used to fascinate his Narrator-commentator) appearing under the name Teimi Tsuda at the MusaschinoĬinema. During theĮnd of the silent film period, he was benshi (film His older brother, Heigo: "He was artistic, and he loved films. Surely, Kurosawa's tradition-based melancholy can be traced to the tragic figure of Grammar of the Western." What he added to the mix was an amused cynicism Westerns have been done over and over again,Īnd in the process a kind of grammar has evolved. Kurosawa was entirely forthcoming about his influences. Just as they would have been had John Wayne galloped in on ![]() The townspeople, of course, are saved in the process, Work with Shimura, then shrewdly orchestrates a situation that leads to a "yojimbo.") After studying how the two men operate, Sanjuro accepts Of the situation by hiring himself out to Fujiwara as a bodyguard (or Sanjuro, a warrior who's seen it all, takes advantage Sake merchant, both of whom are brutal tyrants who will stop at nothing to The town's factions are lead by Fujiwara, a silk merchant, and Shimura, a Samurai who happens upon a town that's in the midst of a mini civil war. Kurosawa regular Toshiro Mifune (he starred in 16 of the director's filmsīefore they had an unfortunate falling out) plays Sanjuro Kuwabatake, a traveling With a little bit of cultural retooling, translate smoothly into all Leone as A Fistful of Dollars (1964), proving yet again that genre pictures, ![]() Is so steeped in Westerns, it was eventually recycled by Italy's Sergio Shane (1953) to High Noon (1952) while retaining the evocative Old World flavor of Kurosawa's more emotionally sophisticated films. Its dusty streets and man-to-man standoffs echo everything from Unexpectedly witty samurai yarn that owes a great deal to classic Hollywood Kurosawa's most financially successful film was Yojimbo (1961), an Share Rashomon (1950) and Ikiru (1952) may be cinematic poetry, but Akira After contemplating the piles of corpses strewn about, Sanjuro bids goodby to Gonji and the coffin maker and leaves town. In a duel with the armed Unosuke, Sanjuro prevails, and goes on to kill the rest of his enemies. Learning that Gonji has been captured, Sanjuro returns to town and finds the two factions burning homes and killing each other. Gonji, the local innkeeper and sake seller, helps Sanjuro escape to a hut on the outskirts of town. ![]() Unosuke learns of Sanjuro's betrayal and has him captured and beaten. ![]() Pretending to ally himself with Unosuke, Sanjuro secretly kills several of his men while helping a ravaged farmer, Kohei, to escape. The situation becomes more volatile when Unosuke (Ushitora's younger brother) arrives with a pistol, the only gun in town. He turns down the offer, though, when he learns that Seibei intends to kill him after a battle they are planning, and instead Sanjuro tries to cause the two factions to destroy each other. He needs money for food and lodging, however, and he considers Seibei's offer of 50 ryo to be his yojimbo (bodyguard). Upon learning that the village is divided into two warring camps (one led by merchant Tazaemon and his henchman Seibei, the other by Tokuemon and his cohort Ushitora), Sanjuro calmly surveys the situation and concludes that neither side is worth defending. One of their number, unemployed Sanjuro, arrives in a village. With the fall in the 19th century of Japan's feudal lords, samurai suddenly find that their services are no longer in demand.
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