Sanjuro

Bluesky

Toshiro Mifune returns as the nameless warrior in Akira Kurosawa's sequel to his 1961 classic Yojimbo. In Japan, Yojimbo was one of the biggest hits of that year. Toho was, understandingly, keen to see a follow-up. Kurosawa took a script which he had been keeping in his back pocket, an adaptation of Shūgorō Yamamoto's novel Hibi Heian that was earmarked for another director, and inserted the unnamed ronin.

In the original, Mifune's character sets two sides in a gang war on a path of mutual destruction. In it tradition and modernity, film noir and the western, comedy and tragedy, conflicting musical traditions are all set on a collision course. It was a violent fusion of styles that had an appeal far beyond Japan. Sanjuro is a more conventional film. It is more in line with the samurai movies of the Fifties and early Sixties.

The plot is not the Dashiell Hammett noir-like one of its predecessor. In this, a group of nine samurai warriors are trying to root out a corrupt official in their clan. They are young and naïve. There is a chance meeting in which the anonymous ronin, displaying his martial prowess, saves their skin. After this the ronin becomes something of a mentor to the nine. Due to the young samurais' stupidity, the chamberlain and his family have been taken prisoner. They have to be freed and the corrupt superintendent exposed.

There is some action and intrigue while the film plays out as a Japanese comedy of manners. The comedy is more overt than it is in Yojimbo. It is mostly concerned with the way that people of different social classes are supposed to behave towards each other. Some of it is obvious to anyone, some you need to know a little bit about Japanese culture to get. Takako Irie, the wife of the chamberlain, and Mifune have a talent for for this sort of comedy.

The two films are differentiated in the way they were shot. Gone are the expansive vistas of the American western, the telephoto lens, the pans and tilts that were so important to Yojimbo. In their place is the careful arrangement and movement of actors, conveying their interpersonal relationships. The image is pulled back and static utilising the geometry of the interior spaces that are so much more prevalent in Sanjuro. As a consequence of being mostly indoors the weather, wind and rain, is obviously not used as it was in Yojimbo. When it is seen, nature is presented in the formally stylised grounds and gardens accessible from the interiors.

The way the two films handle violence is also different. In the first film the ronin is untroubled by the killing of gangsters. They are murderers, rapists, thieves. By choice they are in the game. However at the end of the film he avoids the unnecessary killing of one of the last gangsters. For the time the portrayal of violence is graphic. In the second film, excepting the last scene, it is much less so. Mifune's warrior goes out of his way to avoid killing. For the most part the men he would be fighting are just doing their duty and have no culpability in the corruption. They would most likely be clerks and accountants, warriors in name only. In the first onscreen fight the ronin beats back a dozen with a sheathed sword. When he does kill he is regretful and angry at being forced into doing so.

The film concludes with what is probably the most influential special effect in the history of cinema. The ronin faces off against Hanbei Muroto (Tatsuya Nakadai). A single slash and Muroto is supposed to bleed profusely. The effect goes wrong, the tank containing the fake blood (chocolate sauce and soda water) explodes with such force that it ends up in almost every samurai film that follows. The arterial spray crosses oceans into horror and action movies the world over. It is testament to Tatsuya Nakadai's skill and resolve as an actor that he was able to pull off his death scene after being unexpectedly punched in the gut by several litres of sweet goo.

Sanjuro works as a sequel because it is significantly different from Yojimbo. If Kurosawa had rehashed the original plot and characters and done a rinse and repeat then the film would be nothing to write home about. It would sit amongst the piles of pointless remakes that could never be as good as the original, the ones that are there just to cash in, while playing it safe and adding nothing new.